98% of companies have never been checked for ESG risk. All of them sit in someone's supply chain.
Metis is an AI platform that finds, scores and fixes ESG risk, how a company treats its workers, the environment and the law, inside supply chains and investment portfolios. Suppliers receive one link and drag their documents into it. The AI reads the evidence, rates the supplier, tells them exactly how to improve, then re-rates them. No questionnaires. No auditors. No headcount on the client side.
What the gap costs when it opens
Pick your market. The exposure is already there.
The gap nobody closes
1.1 million companies employ 50+ people. Fewer than 25,000 carry any ESG rating.
Ratings agencies read public disclosure, and under 50,000 companies on earth are listed, so the tools that exist structurally cannot see a private supplier. Nobody has assessed the risk the other 98% pose.
Rigorous, and rationed. An on-site audit runs USD 2,000 to 3,000 per supplier, so an enterprise can only afford to point it at 5 to 10% of the base. The unchecked nine-tenths is where the risk sits.
Cheap, and self-graded. Suppliers answer their own questions with no evidence attached, so what comes back is unverified and routinely gamed. The resulting score cannot be defended to a regulator, a customer or a court.
What Metis is
Five modules, one closed loop
The engine reads private documents rather than public disclosure, which is why it reaches the 98% nothing else can. Assessment logic is built on the leading international labour, human-rights and reporting standards (OECD, UNGP, ILO, GRI, SA8000), weighted so that what matters most in each industry counts most in the score.
Others solve one piece: questionnaire platforms collect self-declarations, public-data raters cover only listed companies, auditors reach a sample. Nobody else closes the loop from private-document evidence to a fix on the company that needs one. USD 149 to 199 per supplier per year. The USD 112K/yr tender win prices a 600-to-750-supplier deployment at exactly this model, the six-figure contract the pricing is built for. The audit it replaces runs USD 2,000 to 3,000 and reaches a tenth of the base. Audit rigour. Questionnaire reach. Zero friction.
Traction
USD 500K in. A repeatable enterprise machine out.
Three live deployments, a tender win over the Big Four, and a thousand-plus suppliers through the engine, in 18 months from a standing start.
12+ open opportunities behind these, ranging from USD 25K to USD 592K. Every dollar so far has come from one of two repeatable routes: start-small pilots that grow into larger contracts, and competitive tenders won with reference clients. The pilots were priced to win proof first; the expansion prices the base.
One collaboration between Emirates Flight Catering and Metis ESG deployed a document-driven ESG due diligence platform, giving procurement and sustainability teams auditable visibility into supplier risk across a global supply base.WAM, Emirates News Agency · 29 April 2026 ↗
Recognition
Independently recognised, twice over
Deloitte Technology Fast 50 · Impact category winner5th edition, Middle East & Cyprus, April 2026. Independent validation of the same engine that won the tender.Results page ↗
Microsoft for Startups · GrowthX AcceleratorAI for Impact cohort, with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office · USD 100K in Azure cloud credits (services, not cash).Cohort announcement ↗
Emirates Global Aluminium, Ramp-Up supplier programme
C3 (Companies Creating Change) Innovator badge
Dubai AI Campus resident · Made in the UAE feature ↗
Dubai Founders HQ, first intake · source of the Emirates Flight Catering engagementThe team
We lived the problem, then built the solution
Built by people who ran these programmes inside large enterprises, delivered by an 8-person team across machine-learning engineering, product and ESG analysis.
The round
- What it funds: delivery on the contracts already won, runway through the targeted institutional seed (end Q1 2027), and the sales push into Q4, when enterprise budgets release and we are already inside those conversations.
- UK entry alongside signed partners Kumi Consulting (a supply-chain human-rights consultancy) and Nossa Data (an ESG reporting platform).
- Next build: Meet Metis, software that operates the platform itself under rules the client writes. Clients buy a due diligence manager rather than a tool, which raises revenue per client without raising delivery headcount.
- Target: USD 1M run rate within 12 months, the level at which institutional funds price the next round, through the contracts won, the award pending and expansion inside the existing base.
In plain terms: a SAFE is the standard early-stage investment agreement. Your money converts to shares when institutional funds price the next round, and the USD 6M cap means you convert as if the company were worth at most USD 6M, whatever that round prices at. USD 25K converts to approximately 0.4% before later dilution. Targeted institutional round: end of Q1 2027.