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Intro to SESAMm

Thank you very much, Greg. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this presentation. I’m Sylvain. I’m CEO and co-founder of SESAMm. SESAMm is an AI company. We extract billions of articles and messages from the web in order to identify critical insights related to financial institutions and corporates. We’re a team of close to a hundred people. And what we aim to show you today is our new product that helps financial institutions and corporates identify ESG controversies in the form of alerts on all of their investments, on all of their clients, and all of their suppliers.

So there are more than 23 million companies in the world right now. These companies are your investments, your suppliers, your clients, and no one is actually tracking them. Most of these companies are never tracked day to day. SESAMm’s solution aims at automatically identifying controversies on these companies and finding the critical information that you’re missing.

See a dashboard example

So let’s take a quick example first. Here we have dashboards where we analyze a company called Wirecard. Wirecard is a fintech company—German—that went bankrupt a few years ago due to a two billion fraud scandal. That company was heavily embedded into the financial sector, working with a lot of banks, a lot of corporates worldwide.

On our dashboards, we can immediately identify all of the key controversies and all of the key risks on the companies. And we have a score called a virality score that helps assess the severity of each ESG event so as to understand whether that company should be excluded from your list of suppliers, for example, or even discussed as a client.

SESAMm solution benefits

There are key benefits to providing this information and to the way that this product is brought to the market. First, SESAMm covers more companies than anyone else. We cover close to five million firms, whereas most ESG providers have coverage limited to 50,000 firms in total. In addition to that, we’re able to detect controversies in real time and generate daily alerts where normally a bank, for example, would have to go through that process manually and update it just a few times a year instead of receiving that live information.

In addition to that, as you can see on the demo here, we have information for more than 14 years of data. So anytime you onboard a new supplier, anytime you check for information—ESG information, on a new client, or on an investment—you’ll automatically be able to go back in history and understand whether that company was exposed to issues in the past.

Trusted by major financial institutions

SESAMm solutions are already adopted by major banks such as Raiffeisen or Nomura, for example, in this industry, major private equity firms such as Carlyle. And what’s interesting in this solution is that we’re seeing specific interests from commercial banks that are missing the solution in order to track ESG risk on their suppliers and their clients. And it makes sense. Most of these suppliers and clients are small firms, local firms that no one else is going to track. And AI is enabling us to automate the process of monitoring these firms and making sense of that data in real time.

SESAMm's solution in action

So now, let’s go to the second part of the demo. We want to take an actual life example. So let’s take a company like Twilio, for example. So you may know Twilio communications, API, messaging services, phone services, and the like. This company is a typical provider of banks or of financial institutions or any other corporates in the world.

So you see on the left, we immediately identify all of the information related to Twilio. And we can rank this based on negative sentiment so as to understand what are the key critical topics that I should care about and that I should evaluate before actually working with Twilio or in the context of already working with Twilio. We go through that process by handling more than 20 billion articles and messages from more than four million sources worldwide. So that’s an insanely large amount of information.

And on Twilio—say Twilio is one of your suppliers or one of your clients—we immediately identify a large controversy related to a data breach and cybersecurity issue, and we identified both in news but also in some of the specialized cybersecurity websites. In addition to that, we can go in even more granularity and look transparently at the content themselves, read the contents from the platform, and not just rely on a numeric rate saying that “Hey! This company is problematic.” We can actually read the underlying content and understand how the controversy emerged.

SESAMm solution benefits

So the key benefits and the real advantages of that solution is getting information immediately. You don’t have to wait for a due diligence for someone to check for someone to send a questionnaire to the company. You just type in the name, get the information in a few seconds wherever the company is, and however local that company is. It could be the most obscure company. And as you can see our system also covers many different languages, including Asian languages that are monitored automatically.

The second part is that we have access to millions of sources, including very industry-specific sources. I was mentioning cyberthreats. We also have access to NGO websites that identify these types of ESG issues in real time.

So this is really the information that is aimed at helping you monitor controversies and ESG events in just one place on any number of companies, public and private, whether they are your suppliers, your clients, or your investments. You can make sense of that data in real time using AI.

Presentation summary

I’ll finish this presentation a bit early, and we’ll actually bring the point to three calls to action. The first one is, first, please come to our booth. We’re actually on the left of the exhibit hall right when you come in. The second one is, please visit our website. It’s spelled SESAMm, sesamm.com, and you can get a free trial from the website. And finally, come talk to our amazing team with Dave and the rest of our team at our booth. And please ask us for a free POC—whether you’re a bank, an asset manager, or a fintech company—and help us help you track all of the ESG controversies on millions of companies.

Thank you very much.

Reach out to SESAMm

TextReveal’s web data analysis of over five million public and private companies is essential for keeping tabs on ESG investment risks. For example, ESG Alerts provides a better way to research and monitor your investment portfolio. To learn more about how you can analyze web data or to request a demo, reach out to one of our representatives.

CEO Sylvain Forté demonstrates SESAMm’s NLP platform TextReveal® ESG Alerts and Monitoring for public and private companies at FinovateSpring 2023. He uses Wirecard, a German FinTech company that went bankrupt following a fraud accusation, as an example to illustrate the platform's ability to identify potential controversies and assign them severity scores automatically.

Furthermore, he demonstrates another use case with Twilio, an API messaging and phone services provider, which had previously been exposed to major cybersecurity issues. TextReveal ESG Alerts and Monitoring was able to immediately identify the controversial events, providing valuable insights to users.

In this video, Sylvain Forté also showcases what differentiates our solution from competitors while shedding light on our massive 20-billion article data lake, our advanced AI technology and algorithms, and how we combine both to provide major financial institutions, private equity funds, and banks with timely and accurate data to help them detect any issues with investments, suppliers, or clients.

Watch the full recording:

Reach out to SESAMm

TextReveal’s web data analysis of over five million public and private companies is essential for keeping tabs on ESG and other investment risks. To learn more about how you can analyze web data or to request a demo, reach out to one of our representatives.

Executive Summary

The physical infrastructure powering the AI boom (the data centers that house it, and the hardware that runs it) has become one of the most ESG-exposed sectors in the global economy. As demand for computing accelerates, so does the scrutiny on the companies enabling it.

This scorecard examines three major players across the AI infrastructure stack: Equinix and Digital Realty, two of the world's largest data center operators, and Supermicro, a leading manufacturer of high-performance AI server hardware. Despite their different roles, all three are navigating the same storm: a convergence of governance failures, environmental friction, and national security risk that is reshaping how investors, regulators, and communities assess the sector.

Our analysis reveals three defining pressure points: governance failures spanning accounting manipulation, board instability, and fraud; environmental and social friction from community opposition, resource strain, and safety violations; and national security exposure through data breaches, export control violations, and supply chain risk.

Together, these risks represent a fundamental shift for the sector. ESG in AI infrastructure is no longer about carbon reporting - it is about fiduciary integrity, operational transparency, and the social license to keep building.

Supermicro: Fraud, Malware & Supply Chain Violations

With a controversy exposure score (CES) of 80/100, Supermicro’s ESG profile is dominated by extreme governance risks centered on systemic accounting failures and geopolitical compliance breaches. The company is currently battling a U.S. Justice Department probe, Nasdaq delisting threats, and a series of securities fraud lawsuits following a 2024 accounting scandal that forced the search for a new CFO and echoed a prior $17.5 million SEC fine from 2020. 

Beyond financial integrity, the firm faces severe national security scrutiny over the alleged smuggling of restricted Nvidia AI chips to China, alongside 2025 investigations into "spy chips," unremovable motherboard malware, and multiple patent infringement claims from competitors like AMD and Lenovo. Socially, the company’s risk is compounded by a 2025 whistleblower retaliation suit and labor rights violations involving Filipino workers at its semiconductor supply chain partners, as well as multiple OSHA safety penalties for workplace hazards.

• Supermicro Pays $17.5M SEC Fine Over Alleged Accounting Violations
• Super Micro and Dell suspected of exporting Nvidia chips to China
• Super Micro Whistleblower Advances Suit Over Retaliation  
• Taiwan: Filipino workers at semiconductor factories allege rights violations
• Supermicro server motherboards can be infected with unremovable malware

Equinix: Accounting Manipulation & the AI Infrastructure Backlash

Similarly, Equinix’s CES of 79/100 is defined by a volatile combination of intensifying community opposition, environmental resource strain, and severe governance scrutiny. Socially and environmentally, the company faces a "Global AI Arms Race" backlash, where massive 340-acre proposals on local farmland in Minooka and "green belt" developments in South Mimms have sparked significant resident opposition over air pollution and traffic, while regulators in Dublin have begun blocking gas-powered facilities that violate national climate targets. These operational hurdles are compounded by a lack of transparency regarding massive water consumption and a series of high-profile safety and security failures, including data center fires in São Paulo and Madrid and a recurring "cybersecurity blind spot" in building systems. On the governance front, Equinix is navigating a severe trust deficit following a $41.5 million settlement over allegations of "major accounting manipulations" and the systematic over-selling of power capacity.

• South Mimms data centre team address environmental concerns
• The Small English Town Swept Up in the Global AI Arms Race
• Equinix loses appeal to get permission for gas-powered data center in Dublin
• Equinix (EQIX) Faces Class Action, DOJ and SEC Investigations After Hindenburg Accuses EQIX of Manipulating Accounting
• Equinix Sued By Data Center Tenant, Accused Of Stealing Intellectual Property”

Digital Realty: Board Instability, Gas Leaks & Cybersecurity Breaches

Although it has a lower CES of 48/100, Digital Realty’s ESG profile is defined by governance instability and intensifying environmental friction in key urban hubs. The abrupt 2022 termination of its CEO and the 2023 resignation of its Chairman, who alleged bias against female directors, highlight deep-seated board-level conflicts, further exacerbated by 2026 investigations into director bias and a $3.4 million loss of tax breaks in Hillsboro. 

Environmentally, the company faces formal legal notices in Marseille over fluorinated gas leaks and "imminent dangers to health," as well as noise complaints in Chicago and a 2024 fire in Singapore. Socially, the firm is navigating a Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) lawsuit over scanning workers' fingerprints without consent, a major 2025 "Salt Typhoon" hacking breach, and mounting federal scrutiny over the industry's role in driving up local electricity and water costs.

• $3.4 Million Reality Check: Digital Realty Loses Massive Hillsboro Tax Break
• Digital Realty among victims of Salt Typhoon Chinese hacking gang 
• Chicago residents complain of noise from Digital Realty data center
• Digital Realty among victims of Salt Typhoon Chinese hacking gang 
• NYSE: DLR Investor Alert: Investigation over Possible Wrongdoing at Digital Realty Trust 

Conclusion 

The ESG challenges facing AI infrastructure operators are no longer peripheral concerns; they have become central to the sector's long-term viability. As the cases of Equinix, Supermicro, and Digital Realty illustrate, the consequences of their unchecked growth range from community backlash and environmental violations to governance failures and national security breaches. The AI infrastructure industry stands at an inflection point: continued expansion without proportional investment in transparency, accountability, and sustainability risks eroding stakeholder trust, inviting heavier regulation, and ultimately undermining the very infrastructure it seeks to build.