Circular technology and logistics startup SuperCircle announced that it has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round, with proceeds aimed at scaling its AI-powered platform to help retail and fashion brands reduce waste and realize value from end-of-life textiles.
According to the company, the new financing comes as nearly $163 billion of unsold inventory is discarded globally each year, with more than 85% of textiles end up in landfills or incinerators, and with retailers absorbing losses tied to returns, damaged goods, processing costs and unsellable stock, and required to comply with new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations holding brands accountable for end-of-life processing.
Launched in 2022 by co-founders Chloe Songer and Stuart Ahlum, New York-based SuperCircle provides a technology and reverse logistics infrastructure platform to power recycling solutions for brands and retailers of textiles and clothing. The company’s AI-powered sortation system ingests more than 50 garment-level data points to create a digital twin of each textile and determine the most viable reuse or recycling pathway. Brands are also provided with traceability and reporting tools to support regulatory compliance. SuperCircle works with more than 75 partners, including J.Crew, GUESS and Reformation, supporting customer trade-in programs and the disposition of excess, damaged and obsolete inventory across stores and distribution centers in the US. and Canada.
To date, SuperCircle said that it has diverted more than six million textiles from landfill, and aims to divert more than one billion textiles by 2030.
Chloe Songer, CEO and Co-Founder of SuperCircle, said:
“In my early career inside major retail supply chains, I saw firsthand how much product was written off or discarded annually, garnering only pennies on the dollar because there were no better, viable end-of-life pathways. We built SuperCircle to give retailers a scalable, financially sound system for end-of-life, enabling value generation from textiles long after purchase via consumer trade-in, and drastically reducing supply chain losses on excess, damages and returns – capturing medium value from every t-shirt, sneaker, sheet set and handbag produced.”
The funding round was led by Foundry, with participation from BBG Ventures, Renewal Fund and Elemental Impact. SuperCircle said that the new capital will be used to accelerate technology development, expand supply chain integrations, grow its processing and reverse logistics footprint, advance data architecture to support compliance reporting, and support the onboarding of enterprise retailers.
Jaclyn Hester, Partner at Foundry, said:
“SuperCircle is giving retailers unprecedented viability and control at end-of-life, an area historically dominated by opaque, low-value liquidation. Their platform is the new industry standard for waste management infrastructure, delivering regulatory readiness, measurable impact and profitable financial outcomes.”
