News in the spotlight: EcoVadis partners with Vertice to integrate ESG into procurement
EcoVadis and Vertice have announced a partnership to embed EcoVadis sustainability ratings directly into Vertice’s AI-driven procurement platform, making ESG performance available alongside pricing, peer benchmarks, contract terms and risk data during purchasing decisions.
Products and Services
Epoch receives funding of USD 4.25m for scaling EUDR offering
Epoch, a first-mile supply chain intelligence platform, has raised USD 6.26m, including a USD 4.25m seed round led by Burnt Island Ventures and Sand River, and launched a self-serve compliance product for small and mid-sized businesses starting with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Rather than relying on supplier questionnaires, Epoch uses geospatial AI and agentic research to map where raw materials originate, locate production plots and assess deforestation and legality risk, generating cited Due Diligence Statements for submission to the EU’s TRACES system. The EUDR applies to large and medium operators from 30 December 2026 and to most micro and small operators from 30 June 2027, requiring proof that commodities such as cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood are deforestation-free, legally produced and traceable to plot level. Epoch argues that a single first-mile analysis can serve multiple regulations, reducing repeated supplier outreach as requirements multiply. The company already reaches more than 30,000 enterprises through integrations with Altana, Assent, Resilinc and 3E, and says the new funding will support product, infrastructure and commercial expansion.
ESG Data and Analytics
Clarity AI releases new solution to measure climate goal progress
Clarity AI has launched a Transition Credibility Assessment covering more than 12,500 companies, designed to help investors distinguish climate pledges from evidence of delivery. The tool evaluates companies against sector-specific decarbonization requirements and reported evidence across seven dimensions: emissions performance, low-carbon technology deployment, emissions disclosure, ambition and targets, decarbonization strategy, green capital expenditure and governance. It applies detailed criteria to high-impact sectors and a simplified, sub-industry-calibrated approach for others, drawing on sector net-zero pathways and frameworks including the Transition Plan Taskforce and Climate Action 100+ benchmark. Ratings distinguish reporting quality from actual performance, with a High rating requiring companies to meet all applicable performance criteria, and every rating is traceable to underlying disclosures, often down to specific quotations and pages. Clarity AI’s research finds that fewer than half of the world’s highest-emitting companies disclose green CapEx, limiting investor visibility into transition investment.
EcoVadis partners with Vertice to integrate ESG into procurement
EcoVadis and Vertice have announced a partnership to embed EcoVadis sustainability ratings directly into Vertice’s AI-driven procurement platform, making ESG performance available alongside pricing, peer benchmarks, contract terms and risk data during purchasing decisions. The integration is intended to move sustainability from a separate reporting exercise into the day-to-day buying workflow, allowing procurement teams to weigh supplier ESG performance against cost and commercial factors in real time. EcoVadis brings ratings covering more than 175,000 companies, while Vertice contributes a procurement intelligence dataset spanning more than 250,000 negotiated contracts, over $75 billion in global indirect spend and more than 2 million price points across 32,000 SaaS vendors. Shared customer Capita is already using the combined approach, with its procurement leadership describing the integration as a way to ensure sustainability considerations are evaluated alongside cost, risk and commercial factors.