AMP Robotics raises US$91M to “rewrite the economics of recycling” through AI-enabled automation

04 Nov 2022 --- AMP Robotics has landed US$91 million in corporate equity from a Series C financing round. The company intends to use the funding to expand artificial intelligence-(AI) enabled automation applications for the US recycling industry, which it says will help packagers achieve recycled content targets and reduce waste. 

The financing follows a US$55 million Series B financing led by XN in January 2021. Congruent Ventures and Wellington Management led the latest round. 

“Advancements in robotics and automation are accelerating the transformation of traditional infrastructure, and AMP is seeking to reshape the waste and recycling industries,” says Michael DeLucia, sector lead for climate investing, Wellington Management. 

“By bringing digital intelligence to the recycling industry, AMP can sort waste streams and extract additional value beyond what is otherwise possible.”

Demand for robotics to retrofit existing recycling infrastructure continues to thrive, says AMP, along with historical demand for recycled commodities of all types. 

Automation is increasingly important within the recycling industry.Recycling robots 
The new capital will enhance AMP’s manufacturing capacity to support a fleet of approximately 275 robots worldwide and further AMP’s development of new AI-enabled automated recycling applications. One of these is AMP Vortex, the company’s latest innovation for recovering film and flexible packaging. 

“Our focus from the outset has been our application of AI-powered automation to economically and sustainably improve our global recycling system,” says Matanya Horowitz, founder and CEO of AMP Robotics. 

“With this new funding, we’ll accelerate our efforts to modernize and expand our recycling infrastructure, aiding society’s path to a circular economy.” 

According to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, the recycling industry contributes nearly US$117 billion to the US economy, and the industry processes 130 million metric tons of valuable commodities annually. 

The global waste and recycling services market is expected to grow considerably in the coming years amid heightened consumer concern and tightening environmental legislation.

Data and sortation advances 
AMP’s proprietary technology applies computer vision and deep learning to identify and recover plastics, cardboard, paper, cans, cartons, and many other containers and packaging types reclaimed for raw material processing. 

The company’s AI platform, AMP Neuron, has recognized more than 50 billion objects in real-world conditions, making it the largest known dataset of recyclable materials for machine learning. 

As part of the National Recycling Strategy released last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency cited measurement standardization and increased data collection as one of its five objectives. Better data provides opportunities to identify gaps in material capture, transparency on the amount of recyclable material recycled, and a basis for standardized measurement.

AMP says its AI also makes secondary sorting technically and economically feasible. Through its secondary sortation model, AMP recovers mixed paper, metals, and a portfolio of plastics in various form factors and attributes. The company resells these commodities to end-market buyers, including bespoke chemical and polymer blends needed by processors and manufacturers. 

AMP recently expanded its partnership with Waste Connections, its largest customer. Since late 2020, Waste Connections has booked or deployed 50 of AMP’s high-speed robotics systems on plastic, fiber, and residue lines, becoming the industry's largest operator of AI-guided robotics. 

Lucrative waste recovery 
Of the estimated 44 million metric tons of plastic waste managed domestically in 2019, approximately 86% was landfilled, 9% was combusted, and 5% was recycled, according to a recent Department of Energy report on plastics. Landfilled plastics represented significant losses to the country’s economy in 2019: an average of US$7.2 billion in market value. 

The recovery of US plastic packaging and food-service plastic alone could represent a pool of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of US$2 billion to US$4 billion per year. 

“AMP’s technology is rewriting the economics of recycling, marrying purpose with profit for our recycling partners,” says Abe Yokell, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures.

By Louis Gore-Langton

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