When I cofounded Connected Data in 2016 the objective was simple – to grow interest in the awesome, but extremely niche at the time, intersection of technologies around #Graph, #LinkedData, #Semantictech and #AI.  Fast forward almost 10 years & the long held belief that the meaning and structure of data is key to accurate AI systems has gone mainstream.  Knowledge Graphs & Ontologies are no longer banned words – indeed the interest in #GraphRAG is unprecedented.

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In 2016 I also founded Neural Alpha with a key aim of driving adoption of these technologies for sustainability within finance and corporates. Whilst many were relatively well adopted at the time in certain areas of finance like financial crime prevention, risk management & customer 360 there wasn’t anyone really doing anything with graph for sustainability use cases.

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Moving to present day hundreds of global financial institutions have used solutions built by Neural Alpha often unaware they were using graph technology for screening, research, duedil & many other use cases spanning deforestation, biodiversity loss and countless other ESG / sustainability topics.  Indeed our flagship product Responsible Capital is powered by a comprehensive Knowledge Graph and as of August 2025 covers over 200k global companies, 1.2m financial & sustainability disclosures, 300k physical asset locations, 16m news stories and many other classes of data.

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Knowledge Graph adoption has grown rapidly in recent years

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🤔Aside from being trendy why are we committed as a consultancy to continue investing in these technologies and keep apace with fast moving innovation?

🕸️CONNECTIONS:  Connections and relationships are key in sustainability and first class citizens in Knowledge Graphs, much as they are in real world commerce.  Take supply chains for example and understanding the sustainability risks, competitive opportunities and resilience characteristics. Analysing data about suppliers, geographic sourcing regions, competitors, tariffs is all about relationships.  Its essential for areas like Supply Chain Management, Lifecycle Assessment (LCA)and competitive advantage in sustainability. Knowledge Graphs make this kind of analysis easy.

🧎 FLEXIBILITY: Raw data for sustainability use cases are diverse and incredibly messy so having strong and flexible data integration tools is key. Common standards and consistent formats in source data are largely absent, entities like locations and companies are often not entity resolved and many different modelling approaches are used.  Integrating this data consistently for advanced analysis needs a flexible data model and the atomic nature of graphs is perfect for this task.  Entity resolved Knowledge Graphs enable the precision and holistic analysis capabilities required in modern ESG analysis.

💡CONTEXT: The connections between sustainability concepts, topics and entities are critical for real-world understanding of issues & opportunities. Take Materiality as a key concept – its incredibly nuanced necessitating strong, real world semantics& a 360 degree data perspective.  Business activity, revenue size, geography, reputational impact, regulation, laws, input costs, price elasticity, market size are just a few of the factors analysts consider when conducting a materiality assessment.  Automating this type of analysis is difficult due to the variety of different types of data required to analyse.

🤖 AI PERFORMANCE: GraphRAG (Graph-based Retrieval Augmented Generation) approaches enable us to inject structured context into Large Language Models (LLMs) for improved model reasoning(increasingly incorporating neuro symbolic approaches), accuracy, relevance and explainability in AI answers over standard LLMs. In a nutshell its key to building smarter AI systems for complex sustainability use cases.

🔀 EXPLANABILITY & PROVENANCE: Knowledge Graphs treat metadata and data as equals. All facts and assertions can be explained in terms of sources, evidence and rules applied to derive data. This is hugely valuable in understanding ratings and classifications and maximising the value in the connection. It’s also critical for Enterprise grade, auditable reporting, disclosures and analysis that can stand the scrutiny of evolving sustainability regulations and demands in fast paced competitive environments.

Industry leaders are increasingly leveraging Knowledge Graphs for sustainable advantage. Indeed they are being used every day by leaders in sustainable investing and lending at Blackrock, UBS and JPMorgan Chase to name a few with even greater uptake in industry.  Companies like IKEA, Siemens, Schneider Electric and BASF are leveraging the technology to incorporate sustainability into areas such as logistics, supply chain resilience and industrial Knowledge Management. All key topics for key sustainability initiatives and frameworks such as TCFD,TNFD, ISSB, CSRD and many others.

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Interested in getting started?  Responsible Capital is an excellent place to start for rapid KG-powered sustainability analysis for research, peer benchmarking and sustainability reporting. If you’re interested in more bespoke and tailored offerings we can also help through our consultancy services.  It’s easier than you think and doesn’t have to be a huge project with our expert Engineers and Product Managers delivering sustainable advantage in days.  

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