Tempe, AZ — February 16, 2021 — Persefoni, a category-creating ClimateTech SaaS startup focused on intelligent carbon footprint management, was selected as a Finalist in the Enterprise & Smart Data category for the 11th annual SXSW Pitch®.  

SXSW Pitch is the marquee event of South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Online (March 16-20, 2021), where leading startups from around the world showcase some of the most impressive technological innovations to a panel of hand-picked judges and a virtual audience. Out of the more than 500 companies that applied to present at SXSW Pitch 2021, Persefoni was selected among five Enterprise & Smart Data Finalists.  

The two-day event will be presented on Wednesday, March 17th and Thursday, March 18th during SXSW Online. Persefoni will present among four other companies in the Enterprise & Smart Data category on Thursday, March 18, 2021.   

Persefoni Co-founder and CEO Kentaro Kawamori remarks, "It's an exciting honor for Persefoni to be selected as a Finalist. As an entrepreneur, it’s an achievement just to be considered for SXSW; it’s a marquee event. Some of the world's most successful startups have made their way through SXSW Pitch and we're excited to have our team's work validated as belonging in such rare company.  

“Most of all, this is an important milestone in the fight against Climate Change – we need innovation from ClimateTech startups like Persefoni for businesses, investors, and governments to achieve the targets set forth in the Paris Agreement." 

Persefoni’s pitch calls for the world’s largest companies and institutional investors to calculate, report, and reduce their carbon footprints. It highlights the requirement these organizations have for tools/capabilities to tackle this task with the same confidence that they currently address their financial accounting. Describing how, as a planet, we are past our inflection point, and that our inability to accurately quantify environmental destruction has made us all mere spectators in our planet’s demise.  

The Persefoni platform integrates and hosts thousands of data points from across the business value chain to calculate organizational carbon footprints. It’s a long list, but the good news is all companies have this data: it comes directly from various parts of operational, financial, and supply chain systems greatly reducing manual processes. Once the data is in the platform, advanced analytics and AI models surface critical insights and intelligence to help organizations understand how and where to systematically lower their carbon footprints.   

Best of all, Persefoni’s platform works across all industries and sectors – which is critical, because what gets measured, gets done. 

 “SXSW Pitch is having an incredible year in the recruiting, and showcasing of, the best and the brightest startups from around the globe. Despite the global pandemics, the startup community has responded positively to our call for participation, and with this SXSW is able to feature an incredible class of startups that we believe will change the landscape of the technology world”, said SXSW Pitch Event Producer Chris Valentine.  

2021 SXSW Pitch® categories include Enterprise & Smart Data, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics & Voice, Entertainment, Gaming & Content, Future of Work, Health, Wearables & Wellbeing, Innovative World Technologies, Smart Cities, Transportation & Logistics, Social & Culture. The winners for each category will be announced during the SXSW Pitch Award Ceremony on Thursday, March 18th at 3:05 pm.