Novata Closes Series B Funding Round With $30 Million Raised

February 28, 2023 at 08:00 AM EST

Novata expands unique funding consortium of non-profit and for-profit leaders, welcoming new investors including Microsoft.
Novata announces over 3,500 private companies are contracted to use its platform, enabling a wide range of highly accurate benchmarking capabilities.

Novata, an innovative technology platform and public benefit corporation that provides the private markets with a cutting-edge Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) solution, has announced a Series B funding round with $30 million raised. This significant capital raise enables Novata to continue to meet the private markets' critical need for a simple and secure data management and analytics platform to enable investors to align their capital flows with the metrics that matters to them.

Hamilton Lane (NASDAQ: HLNE) led the funding round, with participation from existing investors – the Ford Foundation, S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) and Novata’s founders. The company is also announcing that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has joined the investor consortium through its Climate Innovation Fund. In addition, partners and managing directors from a range of private equity firms participated in the Series B, including Canson Capital Partners, Clearlake Capital, Hellman & Friedman, Kohlberg & Company, Lindsay Goldberg and The Vistria Group.

“We are grateful to the broad range of leading investors supporting Novata, including financial institutions, large technology companies, non-profit organizations and private equity firms, which underscores how major facets of global economic activity are coming together to address our most critical common challenges,” said Alex Friedman, CEO & Co-Founder at Novata. "As sustainability priorities have undisputedly changed over the last decade, Novata is ideally positioned to meet the evolving challenges and to help drive progress on ESG transparency and reliability in the private markets.”

Since its successful commercial launch in April 2022, Novata has experienced significant global demand and today has more than 3,500 private companies contracted to use the platform. Novata launched its unique benchmarking capabilities in November 2022, enabling clients to compare key non-financial data against public and private market industry averages and identify opportunities for improvement. Novata’s broad-reaching analytical tools are a market differentiator, offering an unprecedented view of ESG performance in private markets by providing clients with access to anonymized and reliable data from thousands of companies in its contributory database.

“We consider Novata to be the critical infrastructure needed to accelerate sustainability and strong governance in the private markets,” said Erik Hirsch, Vice Chairman and Head of Strategic Initiatives at Hamilton Lane. “As our industry continues to grow, we all face increasing expectations from investors, regulators, and the broader society to ensure that strong investment performance is delivered alongside responsible business practices. Novata is exactly the kind of neutral intermediary the private markets ecosystem needs to collect the metrics that matter and put them in context.”

Novata’s simple, customized and partner-agnostic offering represents a major step forward in the current landscape of sustainability tools and metrics. The Novata solution takes a much-needed systems-wide approach in the private markets, bringing together the non-profit and for-profit sectors to help drive impact toward sustainable and inclusive capitalism.

“Better collection and use of enterprise data will create new opportunities for every organization to achieve progress in addressing the world’s toughest environmental and social problems,” said Brandon Middaugh, Senior Director, Climate Innovation Fund at Microsoft. “Software technologies like Novata offer the capability to record and track sustainability metrics, informing corporate actions to build a more sustainable and inclusive future.”

Novata’s ESG Advisory Council, comprised of a broad range of global industry experts, provides direction on methodology and advises on the best path forward for ESG data in the private markets. Novata’s General Partner Advisory Committee, made up of leading private equity and credit firms, serves to both inform its approach to product development and enable participating firms to share best practices.

To learn more about Novata’s platform offerings and to schedule a demo, visit the website and follow Novata on LinkedIn to keep up with the company’s latest news and views.

About Novata

Novata is a public benefit corporation that enables the private markets to achieve a more sustainable and inclusive form of capitalism. Novata’s technology platform makes navigating the ESG landscape simple for private markets by identifying a clear starting point for selecting the metrics that matter, streamlining data collection, and contextualizing data to drive reporting and action. Novata, which is backed by the Ford Foundation, Hamilton Lane, Microsoft, Omidyar Network, and S&P Global, is majority controlled by mission-driven organizations and its employees. For more information, please visit https://www.novata.com/.