Risk assessments rooted in historical data struggle to capture the scale and unpredictability of climate change. Financial institutions relying on static models often overlook emerging threats, rising sea levels, extreme weather, and cascading supply chain disruptions, leaving them vulnerable to sudden shocks and regulatory crackdowns. This growing gap between current risk tools and future realities creates a critical need: a forward-looking, science-driven approach that integrates both asset-level exposure and complex climate dynamics.

RiskThinking.ai, founded and led by Dr. Ron Dembo, rises to meet this challenge. An esteemed academic turned serial entrepreneur, Dembo previously established Algorithmics, a dominant enterprise risk software firm later acquired by Fitch and IBM, and Zerofootprint, a cleantech pioneer. Leveraging his expertise in stochastic modeling and optimization, he now architects a transformative response to climate-linked financial risk.

Under Dembo’s leadership, RiskThinking.ai has developed VELO®, a platform backed by the patented Dembo algorithm that fuses granular physical asset data with probabilistic climate scenarios, spanning from 2025 to 2100, to simulate Value‑at‑Risk across millions of global assets. Their Climate Earth Digital Twin (CDT™), deployed on AWS, processes trillions of simulations to stress-test portfolios under interlinked climate hazards like floods, wildfires, and temperature extremes.

Recognized by Bloomberg and Canada’s financial regulators, RiskThinking.ai empowers banks, insurers, investors, and corporates to price climate risk dynamically and comply with emerging standards like CSRD and TCFD. By transforming climate uncertainty into actionable insight, RiskThinking.ai helps institutions not only anticipate risk, but strategically invest, adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world.

From Finance Roots to Climate Vision

When Ron Dembo founded Algorithmics in 1989, he wasn’t just building software. He was building trust, creating systems that 70% of the world’s top banks and four of the five largest insurers relied on to manage financial uncertainty. Fast‑forward to 2020: with just three teammates, Dembo set out to do for climate risk what he did for credit risk, except this time, the stakes include the planet.

He didn’t blindly replicate old tools. Instead, Dembo drew a hard line between what worked in finance and what fails in climate forecasting. It’s not about working harder. It’s about working smarter. That became RiskThinking.ai’s mantra. The Climate Digital Twin, a stochastic simulation engine modeling trillions of climate scenarios, stands as proof. It makes global systems testable, transparent and real-time.

But why does climate need this level of sophistication? Because traditional models treat the future like the past, deterministic, linear, comfortable. What this really means is that when catastrophe strikes, we lose more than assets. We lose clarity. Dembo insists: Not every risk leads to regret. But every regret comes from a risk not taken. And ignoring climate risk is a gamble no one wins.

Building the Climate Digital Twin

In 2024, RiskThinking.ai launched its Climate Digital Twin (CDT), an AI‑driven simulation engine built on over 33 billion data points covering every asset on land and sea . Grounded in stochastic methods across 51 climate models, it embraces uncertainty to surface possibilities, temperatures spiking, flood zones expanding, insurance regimes evolving.

Here’s the thing: banking and insurance operate on collateral, premiums, probabilities. But when climate sneaks into calculations unannounced, portfolios misprice, capital misallocates. RiskThinking.ai bridges that gulf. It lets institutions layer their own data atop the CDT, customize assumptions, and stress‑test for the worst‑case scenarios.

The value is not theoretical. Bloomberg has integrated RiskThinking.ai’s physical‑risk analytics into its terminals. Canada’s OSFI tapped them for regulatory reporting. TMX Datalinx includes their datasets in its ESG hub. That’s real impact, data supercharged, decisions refined, resilience built.

Inventing with Data and Math

RiskThinking.ai stands at the intersection of climate science, financial systems, and mathematical rigor. It’s where candid truth meets innovation. Their patented models run more than 16 billion multi‑factor stress tests across 3.5 million assets drawn from 250,000+ companies.

They built this by hiring climate scientists, financial engineers, data experts, collaborators who don't just deliver, they challenge each other. Dembo calls it the secret sauce: smart people who respect what others bring to the table . Surround yourself with expertise, he says, and you fail fast, learn fast, and build faster.

And here’s where they flip the script: the product isn't a flash of dashboard polish. The problem is not the plan. It's the pressure to follow it perfectly. Instead, the CDT facilitates intelligent deviation, data-driven judgment calls under uncertainty. Institutions used to reactive models now run future-forward stress tests. That’s working smarter, not harder.

Real-world Results and Recognition

RiskThinking.ai hasn’t just built technology; it’s shaped markets. In 2023, Environmental Finance named CDT Global Product Innovation of the Year. Bloomberg’s investment in 2022 signaled market confidence. Verdantix recognized the company’s unique blend of transition and physical risk modeling.

Assets across sectors are now stress‑tested for flood, heat, wildfire, freeze‑thaw events out to 2100. Banks can better price loans; insurers can recalibrate premiums; corporates can retrofit supply chains. When Extremes hit, institutions that adopted stochastic models don’t just recover, they adapt.

But impact stretches beyond finance. Regulators in Canada and the EU lean on their data. Corporates use it to comply with TCFD, CSRD, IFRS sustainability rules. What was once compliance burden now becomes a strategic asset. RiskThinking.ai didn’t create another obligation. They gave us clarity in the chaos.

Leadership, Culture, and Vision Forward

At the core, Dembo’s leadership blends humility, urgency, and conviction. He says: taking a risk is one side of the coin, managing risk is equally important He surrounds himself with people who challenge, not conform, and build systems fast yet sound. Fail fast, recover quickly, iterate.

His transformation from Algorithmics to RiskThinking.ai reflects a deeper shift: from optimizing bank books to protecting society’s future. Parallelism in action: the same mathematical engines now power climate resilience. The difference is hindsight replaced by foresight.

Looking ahead, RiskThinking.ai plans to scale global coverage, deepen analytics, and broaden adoption. They will continue refining CDT, layering in transition risk, biodiversity impacts, water scarcity, all to give users an expandable, modular risk engine.

In Dembo’s words: “We need to price climate so behavior reflects those prices.” The company he built doesn’t just quantify uncertainty, it equips leaders to act. And the bigger vision? A world where no investment or policy is blind to climate’s ripple effects.