- AMP Robotics, a pioneer in AI and robotics for the recycling industry, announced it raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital
AMP Robotics — a pioneer in AI and robotics for the recycling industry — announced it has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital with participation from previous investors. With this round of funding, AMP will further scale operations and develop new AI products that help improve the economics of recycling. And as part of the investment, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire, PhD will join AMP’s board of directors.
“Our new partners at Sequoia have a history of building category-defining businesses, and we are deeply excited to be executing on this vision with their experience, along with our existing world-class consortium of investors,” said Matanya Horowitz, founder and chief executive officer at AMP. “We are perfectly positioned to expand the scope of our technology and the geographies where we do business, furthering our mission to change the fundamental economics of recycling and help make the circular economy possible.”
AMP has commercialized the AMP Cortex high-speed robotics system to precisely automating the identification and automated sorting of municipal waste, e-waste, and construction and demolition debris. And AMP’s robots consistently pick twice as fast as humanly possible and with much greater accuracy.
“We are excited to partner with AMP because their technology is changing the economics of the recycling industry,” added Maguire. “Over the last few years, the industry has had their margins squeezed by labor shortages and low commodity prices. The end result is an industry proactively searching for cost-saving alternatives and added opportunities to increase revenue by capturing more high-value recyclables, and AMP is emerging as the leading solution.”
The AMP Neuron AI platform guides the robots to perform sorting tasks and apply computer vision and machine learning to recognize different colors, textures, shapes, sizes, patterns, and brands to identify material characteristics. The AI platform transforms millions of images into data, digitizing the material stream, capturing data on what goes in and out so informed decisions can be made about operations and performance.
“Our team is proud to have backed AMP since its very earliest stages in the seed round through Sidewalk Labs, and we are thrilled to make AMP Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners’ first investment, and to help AMP scale rapidly, because we believe that their proprietary technology will fundamentally transform the infrastructure of recycling to make it both more economic and more sustainable,” explained Mike Delucia, Principal at Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners who led the investment in AMP.
AMP completed the install of fourteen AI-guided robots at Single Stream Recyclers in Florida last month. This was the single largest global deployment in the recycling industry. And the robots were installed on a number of different sorting lines throughout the facility, processing plastics, cartons, fiber, metals, and other materials.
Along with the addition to Florida, AMP also has installations at numerous facilities across the US, including California, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
“We believe that AMP’s artificial intelligence and robotics technology are poised to solve many of the central challenges of recycling, not only in the United States but around the world,” commented Abe Yokell, AMP Board member and Managing Partner at Congruent Ventures. “The opportunity for modernization is high as the demand for recycled materials continues to climb from consumers and the growing circular economy.”
