Microsoft’s top AI expert, Lila Tretikov, joins a London startup to fight climate change

Microsoft Deputy CTO brings decades of climate science, technology, and business acumen to the Climate Intelligence innovator.

Cervest, creator of the world's first AI-powered Climate Intelligence platform, has tapped Lila Tretikov to lead its Board of Directors. An award-winning senior technology executive, engineer, and former CEO, Tretikov will share her expertise in scaling companies for rapid growth to assist Cervest in bringing its Climate Intelligence (CI) platform and EarthScan product to market.

Tretikov is an expert across Artificial Intelligence (AI), technology-enabled business transformation and climate science. She currently serves as Corporate Vice President and Deputy Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Tretikov was SVP of Engie SA, a multinational energy company, and CEO and Vice Chairman of Terrawatt, a subsidiary focused on altering the Earth’s ecology through energy transition to CO2-negative systems.

In addition, she served as CEO and Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia Endowment, the organisation that manages Wikipedia (at the time, the world’s fifth largest internet site). Her life’s work is focused on solving humanity’s most challenging problems through technology.

“Climate is finally on the top of the agenda for boards and governments,” said Lila Tretikov. “Cervest’s platform serves an immediate and growing need for leaders to factor climate risk into corporate operations, capital allocations and corporate disclosures. Cervest will enable organisations to understand and mitigate these risks, improve their planning, and become more resilient in the face of extreme climate events as leaders across the globe forge a more sustainable future.”

Powered by Earth Science AI technology, Cervest’s Climate Intelligence platform combines climate data, machine learning and statistical models to present a unified view of climate risk across millions of global assets for the first time. EarthScan, the first product on Cervest’s platform, gives enterprises and governments on-demand access to current, historical, and predictive intelligence on how combined climate risks can impact the individual assets they own or manage.

“Lila’s experience is incredibly unique,” said Iggy Bassi, CEO of Cervest. “She brings to Cervest an important combination of climate and sustainability knowledge coupled with technology and AI expertise. She understands the strategic and operational issues CEOs face and shares our vision that Climate Intelligence will one day be at the core of all business decision-making. Her leadership will prove extremely valuable as we bring the Cervest platform to enterprises and governments worldwide.”

Tretikov will join existing Cervest Board of Directors members Iggy Bassi (Founder & CEO), Dr. Ben Calderhead (Chief Scientific Advisor), Vinoth Jayakumar (Partner and Fintech Practice lead, Draper Esprit), and George Coelho (Co-founder, Astanor Ventures).

Startup Details

Startup Details

TOTAL FUNDING AMOUNT £26.6m
CB RANK (COMPANY) 6,654

Cervest

Cervest is cloud-based provider of AI-powered Climate Intelligence that helps organizations manage and adapt to asset-level risk globally.

  • Headquarters Regions
    London, UK
  • Founded Date
    2016
  • Founders
    Iggy Bassi
  • Operating Status
    Active
  • Number of Employees
    51-100