After a quarter-century of nonprofit status, disclosure platform CDP will join the private sector later this year under a deal that will see a private equity firm assume majority ownership.
The agreement, announced last week, will also see the creation of the CDP Foundation, a nonprofit that will continue to develop new disclosure methods.
Coming amid a period of turbulence at CDP, the move appears to be the most significant one undertaken by CEO Sherry Madera since she jumped from Mastercard in 2023. It has, however, prompted questions from sustainability leaders, not least because private equity firms are known for prioritizing short-term profits over long-term value. Trellis talked to Madera about the thinking behind the deal and what companies should expect.
The context for the switch
It has not been an easy few years for CDP. Technical glitches impacted the disclosure cycles for data from 2023 and, to a lesser extent, 2024. Renewal rates suffered and an expected increase in commercial revenue was delayed, CDP said in its 2025 report. The proliferation of mandatory disclosure requirements has also prompted some companies to reconsider the need to report to CDP, contributing to a fall in disclosures in 2025 — the first in the organization’s history.
The organization laid off around a fifth of its workforce a year ago, in part to channel funds into improving its technology. Selling a majority stake to Permira is meant to accelerate that work. The private equity firm has invested in several software-as-a-service companies, including Klarna, a payment provider, and Carta, a platform for managing company stock. Terms of the CDP deal were not disclosed, but Permira said it would provide a “significant capital injection to drive investment in people, technology and innovation.”
“What that market is telling us is that they need to be able to use [CDP’s] data in an even more efficient way,” said Madera. The way the organization is structured right now, she added, doesn’t allow for investment to meet those needs.
What will change for companies
CDP already follows a “write once, use many” approach designed to ensure that a single submission to the platform can be used by multiple stakeholders, including supply chain partners and investors. One immediate focus, said Madera, is improving the “write” part of the process so companies can upload documents they have already produced, such as annual sustainability reports and regulatory filings, then let the system automatically extract the relevant data.
Madera was less forthcoming on an area that has attracted complaints: fees charged to users, including those that access the platform to collect data from suppliers. The question of whether the platform will become more expensive was difficult to answer, she noted, because CDP’s offerings are likely to evolve. “Let’s discuss this in six months,” she said.
Approval for the restructuring from the Charity Commission, a U.K. regulatory body that oversees nonprofits, is expected within that same timeframe, CDP said. The next disclosure cycle, which begins this week, will operate as normal. Meanwhile, the organization will continue to provide scores to company, said Madera. Currently, CDP assesses companies on climate, forests and water, awarding grades from A to D-.