Reinsurance startup Kettle has announced its seed financing round. The $4.71 million round was led by True Ventures, with participation from Acrew Capital, Homebrew Ventures, Anthemis, and Inspired Capital.
Founded by Andrew Engler and Nathaniel Manning, Kettle is structured as a reinsurance company that can underwrite risks that are on the increase, with a climate change focus and starting with wildfires.
Engler has more than a decade of experience working in the insurance and reinsurance industries, most recently as the vice president of digital at the public reinsurer, Argo Group.
Manning has years of experience working with data for humanitarian efforts as the CEO of Ushahidi, an open source software platform for community crisis response, and as the first chief data officer of USAID.
Kettle’s technology and proprietary algorithms use terabytes of data from public and private data sources, such as NOAA weather data and NASA’s MODIS and LIDAR satellites. Its neural networks run upward of 140 million model parameters to calculate probabilities of fire damage at the half square mile resolution across the state.
Manning said: “I’ve spent years building software to enable people to get help in the aftermath of a crisis. But I noticed it was the insurance companies who were providing the financial safety nets to help these communities rebuild. That’s why we founded Kettle, to make an impact.
“In 2020, all of us across the world understand that catastrophic risks are possible and likely whilst also having detrimental effects. Kettle is about marrying the powers of human cooperation with machine intelligence to better protect people and society from these catastrophes.”
Engler further noted: “Reinsurance is the last stop against climate change. It’s the safety net below the safety net. It is a moral imperative that we improve this industry to protect people from the increasing disasters caused by climate change.”
Adam D’Augelli, partner at True Ventures added: “We like to invest in companies that use technology to improve the world. Reinsurance for climate-related events is an increasingly vital part of the insurance market and will continue to be.
“We’re thrilled to support mission-driven founders like Andrew and Nathaniel who are using software to tackle big and important problems.”
