The fundraising environment for technology startups is still quite challenging, but there are still some regions and particular businesses that are piqueing investors' attention because they seem poised to defy global macroeconomic trends.

Today, a Munich-based startup called IntegrityNext announced that it had secured its first-ever investment, a €100 million equity round, for a novel take on supply chain software: a platform that aids businesses with a large number of suppliers in automatically auditing and monitoring those businesses for compliance with environmental and sustainability governance rules, both those set by the companies themselves and those derived from a growing body of regulation.

A single investor, EQT Growth, is providing the funding, which will be used to further expand the platform's breadth and the business's go-to-market position. IntegrityNext has a growing customer base across the U.S. and Europe, and there are even a few potential suppliers. The strategy is to develop more capabilities to take advantage of this opportunity.

There are currently no plans to incorporate audits around, for example, whether a supply chain implicates a company in the act of breaking embargoes on countries over political disputes or issues of national security. However, those capabilities will remain in the area's environmental and ethical labour commitments.

The core of the solution is a platform that functions as a big data ingestion engine, gathering data that is publicly accessible to aid in the development of risk profiles for various markets and firms, and supplemented by routine interaction with supply chain enterprises to provide specifics. All of this information is gathered into a database that IntegrityNext's customers can use to better understand what is happening in their supply chains through audits and a warning system.