Verna secures £3m seed to make nature recovery commitments measurable with AI
This article covers Verna, a greentech startup, which has closed a seed funding round of £3m co-led by NAP and Übermorgen to expand its software for turning nature recovery commitments into measurable action. The funding aims to help businesses and public bodies convert nature-related reporting into long-term, verifiable delivery by scaling the product and developing AI tools to optimise recovery plans.
Verna, a greentech startup, has closed a seed funding round of £3 million co-led by NAP and Übermorgen to expand its software for turning nature recovery commitments into measurable action. The funding matters because businesses and public bodies are under growing pressure — regulatory and commercial — to move from nature-related reporting to long-term delivery, and Verna says it will use the new capital to scale its product and develop AI systems to optimise recovery plans.
Why it matters
Nature loss is creating material risks for businesses that depend on land or supply chains. Investment into nature is already measured in the hundreds of billions per year, and policy shifts such as the UK’s Biodiversity Net Gain framework are pushing organisations to plan and deliver projects that restore habitats over decades. The challenge is not just allocating capital but converting commitments into verifiable, long-term outcomes — a problem Verna targets by helping teams coordinate data and delivery across time and stakeholders.
Inside the product
Verna’s platform aggregates and operationalises heterogeneous nature data rather than generating new field data. The company says its data-agnostic approach lets users integrate multiple sources, run decision workflows and track delivery over long time horizons. Since launch, Verna reports more than $1 million in annual recurring revenue, roughly 3,000 users and over 100 customer organisations using the system to plan, implement and monitor nature recovery programmes.
The product’s early traction has focused on projects built around Biodiversity Net Gain, a methodology developed in the UK that is gaining international attention. Verna plans to extend support for other frameworks and to build AI tools intended to optimise recovery plans and make long-term monitoring and reporting more actionable.
Who are the investors?
The round was co-led by NAP and Übermorgen, with participation from UK funds including Vanneck, Love Ventures, Concrete Ventures and Climate VC.
In the announcement, Jonas Hornung, Investor at Übermorgen, said:
Verna demonstrates a strong, mission-led focus on delivering measurable customer outcomes rather than driving feature-led adoption. The platform is intentionally data-agnostic, allowing users to integrate, compare and operationalise heterogeneous data sources according to their relevance to specific decision workflows, rather than privileging any single dataset or provider. The team also shows a clear understanding of the long time horizons and multi-stakeholder coordination required for effective nature recovery, designing collaboration and continuity into the product to support use cases that span organisations and decades.
In the announcement, Claude Ritter, Managing Partner at NAP, said:
Nature recovery is a large-scale data problem, spanning ecosystems, timescales, and uncertainty. Verna’s technology and team bridge ecology and computation to make that complexity not just measurable, but actionable.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Rafi Cohen, Co-founder & Co-CEO at Verna, said:
As threats to the natural world become more urgent, any organisation dependent on land - whether directly or through their supply chain - has a business resilience need to invest in nature recovery. At Verna, every week we receive inbound requests for help from businesses and public bodies across the UK, Europe, the US, and further afield. This fresh investment will enable us to deploy the latest technology, including AI, to meet that demand.
Cohen’s quote frames the round as a response to inbound commercial demand from a mix of private and public sector customers. Leadership details beyond Cohen’s role were not disclosed in the release.
The bigger picture
In the announcement, Tom Butterworth, Director for Nature at Arup, said:
Businesses across the world are recognising that nature isn’t just about regulatory compliance and reporting - repairing nature is a core driver of business resilience and growth. Measuring and improving biodiversity is even more complex than carbon. Businesses won’t be able to meet their nature goals without technology tailored to this challenge.
The financing reflects a broader market for tools that move companies from compliance and disclosure to delivery. The UK’s early work on Biodiversity Net Gain gives domestic vendors an exportable methodology to productise, while investors — including greentech investors — are increasingly interested in software that can translate capital into monitored, long-duration outcomes.
This deal will be watched by policymakers and corporate nature teams across Europe as they wrestle with how to measure, finance and deliver biodiversity outcomes. Verna’s push into AI-driven planning and its focus on interoperable data speak to a growing segment of the market seeking operational solutions rather than measurement alone.
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