PlanetAI in New York: Resilience Is the New Competitive Edge

We are spending this fall in New York. PlanetAI has been selected for the NYC AI Nexus fall cohort run by C10 Labs, a three-month accelerator supported by New York State.

The program has a clear purpose: connect young AI companies with investors and potential customers, and help them get a real foothold in the US market. For us, as a company building AI tools that turn sustainability work into competitive advantage and new sales, it is a chance to test our idea in the world's most demanding market.

The timing is interesting. We are betting on a theme that has become politically unpopular in Washington. We think the opportunity has never been bigger.

Seeing risks and opportunities in real time

We work at the heart of building a resilient business: environmental responsibility, social responsibility and good governance. We have built an AI platform that lets businesses easily follow what their customers and suppliers are doing, saying and what they are aiming for.

That visibility has two sides. It shows companies where the risks are in their value chain. It also shows them where new business opportunities are opening up, because a customer's sustainability goals are often a buying signal.

The practical difference is speed and scale. "What used to take several weeks now takes a few minutes," Korpikoski says.

We have worked with Silo AI, the AI lab founded by Peter Sarlin, and we are now working with Nokia.

The idea behind our product is simple: sustainability should not live in a separate report that few people read. It should be data that sales, procurement and leadership use every day.

Out of fashion but critical in the boardroom

A few years ago, sustainability was the buzzword of the moment. Companies took on large amounts of new reporting, and responsible investing became a major trend.

Then the trend partly collapsed. Critics called much of it greenwashing, and the backlash gained momentum from the US administration. Despite the falling out of fashion, we still see the theme is more relevant than ever. What has changed is the vocabulary.

"Today the conversation is about resilience, about how to make the energy for data centers sustainable, and how to build AI factories in a sustainable way. That is a critical competitiveness factor for companies," Korpikoski says.

Resilience has become a magic word for businesses. Supply chains, energy and infrastructure have to hold up under pressure, and the AI boom itself depends on power that is reliable and sustainable. Companies that see those risks and opportunities early have an advantage over those that do not. Helping them see early is what we do.

Making sustainability part of the business

This is the core of our bet. Sustainability does not move faster through more reports or louder promises. It moves faster when it becomes part of how a company makes money.

"We believe the fastest way to accelerate the sustainability transition is to make it a direct part of business," Korpikoski says.

That is also why New York matters to us. The NYC AI Nexus program puts us in the same room as the investors and enterprise buyers who can turn that belief into contracts and capital. Over the next three months, we want to bring strategic investors on board, sign our first US customers and sharpen a story that connects business and impact.

The political climate around sustainability may be cold. We are betting that the business case is not.

As seen in Kauppalehti (In Finnish)