Root Sustainability raises €1M to bring AI-powered, audit-ready sustainability data to Europe’s retail brands
PUBLISHED: 16 Dec 2025
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 16 December 2025. Root Sustainability, an Amsterdam-based climate tech startup, has raised a €1,000,000 seed round led by Borski Fund, with participation from VC investor Rockstart and angel investors Spotlight and Empower Impact, along with additional private investors.
Root provides the AI-powered data foundation for sustainability teams at retail brands. Their solution transforms scattered operational data across the value chain into auditable, high-granularity sustainability insights. Retailers, including HEMA, O’Neill and Holland & Barrett, use Root to operationalise sustainability data for product carbon footprints and reduction scenarios, and to meet upcoming EU transparency and reporting requirements such as Digital Product Passports, CSRD and VSME.
“This investment allows us to bring our solution to retail brands across Europe,” said Maud Schijen, co founder of Root Sustainability. “Today, many companies waste hundreds of hours and millions of euros on consultants just to calculate their company and product carbon footprint. It’s slow, fragmented, and outdated. By building an AI-powered platform, we help sustainability teams turn incomplete, scattered data into clean, auditable datasets in minutes instead of months, enabling faster decisions, real impact, and measurable ROI.”
“Root is solving a real challenge for retail brands today: the lack of accessible, accurate, and actionable sustainability data,” said Anieke Lamers, Operating Partner at Borski Fund. “For example, Dutch retailer HEMA can find out exactly how much impact selling vegetarian versus original hot dogs has. We believe Root is the right team to tackle this issue. Root is building the data backbone retailers need to be successful under new sustainability regulations and consumer expectations.”
The funding will accelerate Root’s expansion across Europe and strengthen its AI capabilities for data optimisation and decarbonization, positioning the company as the go-to sustainability data platform for retail.
Media Contact: Maud Schijen, Co-founder
maud@root-sustainability.com