Unwritten, the climate risk platform for private markets, held the first event of its AI & Sustainability Series at Asia House in London. Hosted by Dr. Phillip Marks (CEO, Unwritten) the session brought together Martin Bang-Löwgren (Ex-Head of Sustainability, Polaris Private Equity), Aga Siemiginowska (Head of Sustainability, Oakley Capital), and Mikey Duncan (Head of Enterprise Applications, With Intelligence).

Key takeaways

1. AI is becoming part of the investment decision architecture. Private equity firms are moving AI from a nascent productivity tool to a core input into driving investment decisions and value-creation strategy.
2. AI helps sustainability teams find what is material. AI can ‘sift through the noise’ of hundreds of sustainability indicators to identify the few that drive deal value.
3. Governance is the main gap in AI adoption. The panel discussed the ‘black box’ problem: who is accountable when an algorithmic recommendation has no human in the loop to verify it.
4. AI carries its own sustainability cost. The panel noted that AI’s global electricity use now rivals Bitcoin’s. Firms may soon report metrics such as compute used per sustainability indicator across portfolio companies.
5. Context engineering matters more than an ‘AI board member’. Participants discussed the prospect of an AI agent sitting on the investment committee, but the consensus was that the immediate priority is grounding AI outputs in each firm's own investment thesis.

How is AI changing sustainability work in private equity?

The panel focused on three workflows where AI is changing how private equity sustainability teams work.

Automating sustainability data gathering

Collecting sustainability data across portfolio companies is complex and time-consuming. The panel discussed how AI can automate much of this gathering and create value-creation and resilience opportunities for private market portfolios.

Bringing sustainability metrics into investment committees

Once material indicators are identified, AI can help sustainability findings reach the IC as decision-relevant deal drivers rather than background reporting.

Nuances of high-stakes reporting

The panel discussed the complexities of using AI in high-stakes sustainability reporting, where outputs must be reliable and verifiable for the private market audience.

About Unwritten

Unwritten is a London-based climate risk platform for private markets. Its platform, Unwritten AI, helps private equity and infrastructure investors assess physical, transition and nature risk at fund, portfolio company and site level.

The platform uses artificial intelligence to automate complex climate risk data workflows and drive value-creation opportunities for private markets investors, asset managers and corporate risk leaders. Unwritten helps leaders move beyond minimum compliance to actively manage risk and build operational resilience that creates value at the PortCo level.