Statista chooses Upright as data partner for 2026 global impact rankings

• Global impact rankings launched: Statista’s corporate impact rankings to be powered by Upright's net impact model.
• Comparable across all companies: Enables like-for-like comparison of impact across industries, geographies, sizes with no company-reported data.
• From narrative to measurable performance: Reflects a wider shift toward impact modeled by third parties over only company reports.

Statista, the global data-as-a-service platform, and Upright, the Finnish impact data company, announce a strategic data partnership launching in spring and summer 2026 with a suite of Statista’s global corporate impact rankings, including the World’s Most Impactful Companies of 2026, to be featured in TIME.

The rankings aim to assess companies’ real-world impact in a way that is transparent, comparable, and independent of company disclosures. They will be powered by Upright’s proprietary net impact model, in development since 2017. Upright’s data complements Statista’s broader ranking methodology, which is based on multiple inputs.

Upright’s model quantifies the sum of costs and benefits companies create to the environment, health, society, and knowledge through their core business – the products and services they sell – considering their full value chain. Data is based not on any company-reported information but Upright’s proprietary value chain taxonomy, combined with an AI-enabled analysis of hundreds of millions of scientific research papers and public databases from the likes of IPCC, OECD, and WHO, for granular impact information.

Upright’s model is used by organisations including Swarovski, Nasdaq, the European Investment Bank, PwC, and Orkla.

The first ranking, America's Top GreenTech Companies of 2026, was published on March 25, with additional lists released throughout the year.

Why Statista chose Upright

Niels Terfehr, Vice President of Research and Analysis at Statista, said:

"We chose Upright for its transparent, science-backed methodology, enabling objective comparison of companies’ impacts across industries, geographies, and sizes – including private companies, where sustainability information is limited. As impact becomes more measurable and comparable, these rankings carry increasing weight for the companies themselves.”

A shift in how impact is assessed

Annu Nieminen, founder and CEO of Upright, said:

"The sustainability industry has long rewarded good storytelling, as impact was seen as too complex to measure. That assumption no longer holds – with AI-enabled modelling, impact can be quantified, and companies are expected to show it. Seeing Statista making that same bet, with TIME as media partner, signals where the industry is going.”

“The lists will have surprises. The true leaders in creating value for people and the planet are not always who dominates the sustainability conversation. That gap is exactly what this data is designed to show."

About Upright

The Upright Project is a Helsinki-based data company producing impact data on companies, funds, and products using scientific research and AI-enabled modelling. Its data is used by more than 300 companies and investors globally.

About Statista

Statista is one of the world's leading Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) companies for statistical and market data, empowering people globally to make fact-based decisions. With an extensive database of over 1.5 million statistics on more than 80,000 topics, statista.com provides high-quality, reliable and relevant data for international businesses, governments, research and educational institutions. Through API solutions, Statista data can also be integrated directly into enterprise and software platforms, making trustworthy, high-quality information accessible wherever decisions are made.

Founded in 2007 in Germany, Statista now employs more than 1,350 people at 7 locations worldwide.