Every day, billions of bottles, cans, cartons, and other discarded materials move through recycling facilities with little visibility into what is actually being thrown away. Greyparrot wants to change that with artificial intelligence. The London-based startup has raised $27 million in Series B funding to scale its AI waste intelligence platform after its systems crossed a milestone of more than 1 trillion waste detections.
The round, led by technology investor Omar Mir, brings Greyparrot’s total funding to $60 million. The fresh capital will help the company grow its network of AI-powered Analyzer systems, expand its waste dataset, and support its goal of helping prevent more than 1 million tons of waste by 2030.
The funding arrives at a time when governments are tightening recycling rules, manufacturers face growing pressure to improve packaging, and recycling operators are looking for better ways to recover valuable materials from waste streams.
AI waste startup Greyparrot secures $27M Series B to turn every discarded item into data
Greyparrot’s technology sits above conveyor belts inside recycling facilities. Its AI camera systems, known as Analyzers, identify materials, products, and brands in real time, transforming what was once an opaque waste stream into structured data.
That information has become valuable across the recycling industry. Waste management companies including WM, Circular Services, Veolia, Biffa, and FCC use the platform to improve sorting accuracy, recover more valuable materials, and increase operating efficiency.
The company’s data reaches far beyond recycling plants. Consumer goods companies including Unilever, L’Oréal, and Kenvue rely on Greyparrot’s Deepnest platform to see what happens to their packaging after consumers throw it away. Those insights can shape future packaging designs and support compliance with recycling regulations.
Governments are beginning to benefit from the same intelligence. Verified waste data gives policymakers stronger evidence when developing Extended Producer Responsibility programs and conducting national waste audits.
“Waste intelligence will do for materials what satellite data did for navigation,” said Ambarish Mitra, co-founder of Greyparrot. “For decades, waste has been a blind spot. Nations compete for resources while burying and burning existing resources. What’s been missing is the ability to measure what they’re losing. Once you can measure a material, you can trade it and invest in it. That is when the circular economy stops being an ambition and becomes infrastructure.”
A trillion detections reveal what recycling has been missing
Greyparrot’s biggest asset may be the dataset it has built.
The company says its AI has now identified more than 1 trillion pieces of waste, creating one of the largest collections of waste intelligence ever assembled. That figure exceeds the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way, a comparison that highlights the scale of the company’s data operation.
The dataset is already exposing the amount of recyclable material that slips through existing systems. Greyparrot estimates it has detected 17.4 billion PET bottles, enough to circle the Earth more than ten times, along with 4.2 billion aluminum items. Aluminum can be recycled using up to 95% less energy than producing new metal, making recovery financially attractive and environmentally significant.
Those insights arrive as much of the waste industry still relies on manual sampling. Less than 0.1% of the world’s 2.3 billion tons of annual solid waste is currently audited, leaving one of the world’s largest industries operating with limited visibility.
Research from Pew and Systemiq estimates that between $80 billion and $120 billion in plastic value is lost every year through today’s linear consumption model.
AI meets a growing resource challenge
Greyparrot is betting that waste data will become increasingly valuable as countries compete for critical resources.
The company’s announcement points to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026, which ranks conflict over natural resources among the leading global risks over the next two years. Resource shortages rank among the decade’s most significant long-term threats.
Without reliable measurement, recycled materials remain difficult to value at scale. Greyparrot argues that detailed waste intelligence gives governments, manufacturers, investors, and recyclers the information needed to treat secondary materials as measurable economic assets instead of unpredictable waste.
Its platform has already identified an estimated $2.5 billion in recoverable material value. Recycling facilities using verified data have reported efficiency improvements ranging from 10% to 30%. At one facility, those gains generated more than $2 million in annual savings.
Regulation is creating new demand
New environmental regulations are adding another tailwind for companies that can provide reliable waste data.
Seven U.S. states, including California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, now have active Extended Producer Responsibility laws covering paper and packaging. Those rules require companies to report packaging performance and recycling outcomes with greater accuracy than before.
That shift places reliable waste intelligence closer to the center of both compliance and business operations.
“Waste is one of the planet’s largest untapped resources, and data is the infrastructure that unlocks it,” said Mikela Druckman, co-founder and CEO of Greyparrot. “This funding lets us scale rapidly across North America and Europe and grow our AI, data science and product teams. The technology, the demand and the momentum are all here, and for the first time the world can see what it has been throwing away.”
Greyparrot’s latest funding round reflects a broader shift taking place across industrial AI. Much of the recent investment boom has centered on software assistants and generative AI. Greyparrot is applying machine learning to physical infrastructure, turning recycling facilities into continuous sources of operational data.
If that approach continues delivering measurable financial returns for recyclers, manufacturers, and governments, waste intelligence could become a standard layer of the circular economy rather than a niche technology. After crossing 1 trillion waste detections, Greyparrot now has fresh capital to test that thesis on a much larger scale.
