Sesamm bags $37M to give corporates ESG insights using natural language processing

Sesamm, a French startup that helps financial firms and corporates adhere to their ESG goals by using natural language processing (NLP) to generate insights from digital content, has raised €35 million ($37 million) in a round of funding to expand internationally. Despite a growing backlash against ESG efforts from some politicians and vocal executives, companies are still cognizant of the reputational and commercial risks of ignoring their environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) responsibilities -- this applies both to their internal practices and those of third-parties they do business with. With that in mind, Sesamm enables businesses to track textual data from across the web -- including news portals, NGO reports, and social networks -- and convert this into actionable insights. Founded out of Paris in 2014, Sesamm has amassed a fairly impressive roster of clients from across the financial realm specifically, including U.S. investment giant Carlyle Group, French corporate and investment bank Natixis, Japanese multinational insurance holding company Tokio Marine, and U.K.-based asset management firm Unigestion. Companies can access Sesamm's flagship product, TextReveal, via several conduits, including an API that brings Sesamm's NLP engine into their own systems.