Resilience Through Intelligence

On this week’s episode of Profit Meets Purpose, Sustainable Times speaks with Karan Chopra, Co-founder of Earthena AI, and Kevin Vranes, Chief Product Officer at supply chain specialists Worldly, about how artificial intelligence (AI) is helping companies manage risk, improve efficiency, and find opportunity in an era defined by climate uncertainty.

Founded by Chopra and Iggy Bassi in 2023, Earthena AI offers “decision intelligence for resilience”. The company has developed an AI reasoning engine that helps organisations respond to the forces reshaping global business, from climate volatility and energy transitions to regulatory change, geopolitical risk, and technological disruption.

“We’re helping companies make sense of these interconnected challenges,” Chopra explains. “It’s about quantifying complexity and translating that into business decisions that drive both resilience and ROI.”

Listen to the full episode here. 

As AI continues to promise sweeping transformation, investors have rushed to capture its growth potential. In 2025 alone, AI ventures attracted an extraordinary $192.7 billion in venture capital, eclipsing funding across nearly every other industry. Many observers have drawn parallels between today’s AI fervor and the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, noting both the excitement and the risks that come with rapid innovation. For investors, grasping how this technology delivers tangible business value is key to understanding its true impact and identifying the right investment opportunities. Earthena AI offers a compelling glimpse into how AI is delivering tangible efficiencies.

Partnerships that unlock insight

Earlier this year, Earthena AI went into partnership with Worldly, a leading supply chain intelligence platform for consumer goods. The company collects social and environmental data from tens of thousands of suppliers around the world.  

The collaboration matches Worldly’s proprietary supply chain data with Earthena’s reasoning capabilities and access to global datasets. 

“Together, we can map patterns at both macro and micro levels, benchmark suppliers, identify opportunities, and model risks with unprecedented precision,” says Vranes. This helps businesses see where risks lie and where investment can create the greatest return.

One of the clearest benefits is speed. “Customers told us, ‘This question used to take two or three weeks to answer - it now takes five minutes,’” said Vranes. “The AI engine analyses data patterns and provides clear, natural-language insights. It’s transforming how companies understand their operations.”

In a world of escalating climate impacts, the ability to make faster, evidence-based decisions will enable business resilience.

Finding opportunity

Too often, the conversation about climate and AI focuses on mitigating loss. Chopra and Vranes want to reframe that discourse to reflect the opportunity that AI offers.

“Companies can use this intelligence to prioritise investments,” said Chopra. “For example, in decarbonisation, they can identify which regions or facilities offer the highest ROI, where renewable energy is most available, and which actions create the most value. That’s not just risk management - it's a competitive advantage.” This precision allows sustainability to evolve from a compliance or risk management exercise into a driver of strategic growth.

Both acknowledge that there is potential risk around the development of AI. However, Chopra emphasises that AI itself is neutral and it’s the intent behind it that matters. “Technology can be used positively or negatively,” he says. “We have to be deliberate about using it to empower, not exclude.”

Vranes adds that, “the real concern isn’t AI going rogue. It’s whether we, as a society, are making the right choices about climate action. These tools can guide better decisions but only if we choose to care enough to use them.”

From data to action

Looking ahead, Chopra envisions a future where AI-powered decision intelligence is embedded across every layer of business. Sustainability will continue to be a key focus. But this is largely due to the far-reaching nature of sustainability-related risks and opportunities.

“Five years from now, Earthena shouldn’t live only in sustainability teams,” he says. “It should inform sourcing, finance, logistics, anywhere decisions are made.”

Vranes agrees, adding that “ultimately, this is about helping companies optimise across multiple objectives - cost, sustainability, and resilience - in a single, integrated decision-making engine.”

Listen to the full episode here.