NEW YORK, NY, U.S.: Circular technology and logistics platform SuperCircle announced today the raising of the company’s $7M Pre-Series A financing to scale and meet the surging demand for its textile recycling solutions for brands and retailers. This round was co-led by Radicle Impact and Ulu Ventures, with additional investors including Earthshot Ventures, BBG Ventures, Lyra Ventures, and Blueprint Ventures.
Textile waste has outpaced the growth of plastic waste in the United States over the past two decades, with 60% of clothing now ending up in landfill within a year. SuperCircle has built the technology and reverse logistics infrastructure to power recycling solutions for brands and retailers, including Reformation, Parachute, A.L.C., tentree, and UNIQLO (US), to name a few. It connects waste management with innovative fiber-to-fiber recycling solutions, packaged in plug-and-play tech that allow brands and retailers to easily prop up brand-owned recycling programs or offload bulk inventory, all with unprecedented transparency.
This strategic financing will expand SuperCircle’s infrastructure – linking previously fragmented shipping, consolidation, sorting, grading, and recycling services – to service brands and retailers both domestically and internationally. It will also accelerate brand partnerships across brand-owned recycling programs and bulk inventory solutions. Lastly, the Pre-Series A round will enable key, strategic growth hires across sales, operations, technology, and engineering to stand up circularity solutions for as many brands as possible.
“We’ve seen such an acceleration in retail’s adoption of circularity and extended producer responsibility over the last five years, and recognized the need to create a bridge between retail brands and the recycling industry today,” says Chloe Songer, CEO and Co-Founder of SuperCircle. “SuperCircle’s end-to-end technology and logistics platforms allows brands to collect, sort, and process pre-consumer and post-consumer apparel and footwear, while providing garment level tracking and tracing through responsible end-of-life. This is a first of its kind technology that both enables fiber-to-fiber recycling and provides real time impact metrics to our partners.”
Since launching in 2022, SuperCircle has powered post-consumer recycling programs for brands and recycled over 1 million garments. Partners on the platform have seen strong returns on investment through customer trade in, providing a scalable circular solution that aligns their business and environmental goals.
"We are proud to support SuperCircle's vision of building a comprehensive textile recycling platform connecting brands to recyclers to address the urgent and growing problem of 11.3M tons of textile waste going to landfills each year in the US. As consumers become increasingly aware that the current system of textile recycling is broken, SuperCircle enables brands to become a critical part of the solution. Through SuperCircle, brands can easily launch sustainable brand-owned recycling programs, bolstering customer retention and loyalty while ensuring the highest-quality end use for textile waste." says Ami Naik, Partner at Radicle Impact
“SuperCircle is the connective tissue that links consumers, retailers, logistic providers and recyclers, coordinating the entire process, end-to-end,” said Kathy Chen, partner at Ulu Ventures. “With tremendous buy-in from the retail industry, we now have the momentum to make circularity a reality.”
SuperCircle has dozens of brand partnerships slated to launch in 2024.
ABOUT SUPERCIRCLE : SuperCircle is creating a world where clothing and textiles never become waste. SuperCircle has unified the fragmented waste system by bridging consumers, brands, waste management, supply chain partners, and recycling innovators. The reverse logistics company has already launched recycling programs with Reformation, Parachute, A.L.C., tentree, Uniqlo (US), and more. It is the brainchild of Chloe Songer, Co-Founder & CEO, and Stuart Ahlum, Co-Founder & COO – who also founded the first circular sneaker brand, Thousand Fell, as a testing ground and proof-of-concept to build and scale a recycling platform for the broader industry. They are joined by fellow Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer Phong Nguyen, former Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Gilt Group and Luminary.
ABOUT RADICLE IMPACT: Radicle Impact is an early-stage venture fund committed to addressing climate change and economic inequality through transformative solutions in climate and fair finance. Radicle focuses on companies that create significant social and environmental value alongside financial success. Founded in 2013, the firm is based in San Francisco, CA.
ABOUT ULU VENTURES: Ulu Ventures is a leading seed stage venture fund in Silicon Valley focused on innovation across enterprise, fintech, consumer, health, and sustainability. Ulu generates great financial results using a disciplined, repeatable decision-making process that analyzes risk-reward trade-offs and also reduces cognitive bias. The majority of Ulu portfolio companies are founded by diverse teams that include women, minority, URM and/or immigrant founders. Ulu’s investment thesis is based on the concept that diversity is profitable. The firm has more than $200M AUM, 10 unicorns in the portfolio and is dedicated to increasing diversity in the entrepreneurial and assets allocation communities.
ABOUT EARTHSHOT VENTURES: Earthshot Ventures invests in entrepreneurs making a dent in climate change. Collectively, the team has invested in 175+ startups over the last twelve years. Harnessing a global network, the fund accelerates climate technology adoption and creates iconic brands. Earthshot is led by Mike Jackson, a 15 year climate tech VC and entrepreneur, and by Dawn Lippert, Founder and CEO of Elemental Excelerator.
