SuperCircle Secures $24 Million Series A to Scale AI-Driven Textile Waste System

SuperCircle has secured $24 million in Series A financing to scale its textile waste-management operating system, a move investors say positions the company at the center of retail’s accelerating shift toward circular supply chains. The round was led by Foundry, with participation from BBG Ventures, Renewal Funds, and Elemental Impact, according to the company.

The funding comes as retailers face rising waste-disposal costs and mounting pressure to comply with extended-producer-responsibility (EPR) rules taking shape in the U.S. and Europe. Industry data cited by SuperCircle shows nearly $163 billion in unsold inventory is discarded globally each year, while more than 85 percent of textiles end up in landfills or incinerators.

Analysts say those losses are expected to grow as returns volumes continue to rise and brands struggle with surplus stock created by volatile demand forecasting.

Founded to address these inefficiencies, SuperCircle provides an AI-powered operating layer that helps brands track, sort, and recover value from unwanted textiles across post-consumer and post-industrial streams. 

According to reports, the platform already supports more than 75 partners, including J.Crew, GUESS, Reformation, FIGS and Parachute Home, through trade-in programs and supply-chain disposition at stores and distribution centers across the U.S. and Canada. Retail-operations consultants note that this type of digitized end-of-life visibility has been largely absent from the industry’s reverse-logistics workflows.

Chief executive and co-founder Chloe Songer said the company’s goal is to convert waste from a balance-sheet liability into a revenue generator. She added that early retail experience showed her “how much product was written off or discarded annually” due to the lack of scalable reuse and recycling pathways.

SuperCircle’s proprietary sortation engine applies more than 50 item-level datapoints to create “digital twins” of garments, determining their highest-value next use and routing them through certified channels. The system aims to reduce write-downs, cut waste-handling costs and open new secondary-market revenue streams.

Investors argue the platform is emerging as core infrastructure for a sector confronting regulatory and economic pressures. Foundry partner Jaclyn Hester said SuperCircle offers retailers “unprecedented visibility and control at end-of-life,” replacing a legacy system dominated by liquidation and bulk waste. BBG Ventures managing partner Nisha Dua said the company’s model “moves the industry beyond incremental fixes” toward fully integrated circular supply chains.

The new capital will accelerate technology development, expand reverse-logistics capacity, integrate more enterprise retail systems and strengthen compliance reporting architecture. Observers note that states including California and New York are advancing EPR proposals for textiles, increasing demand for standardized reporting and traceability tools.

SuperCircle says it has already diverted more than 6 million textiles from landfill and aims to surpass one billion by 2030, a target analysts view as ambitious but increasingly aligned with corporate sustainability commitments.

Source: SuperCircle

SUNSHINE Spotlight: SuperCircle’s $24 million raise signals growing investor confidence in digital systems built to capture value from retail’s expanding waste stream.