SuperCircle Raises $24 Million Series A to Revolutionize Retail Textile Waste Management

SuperCircle, the New York‑based circular technology startup focused on solving one of retail’s most intractable environmental and financial challenges, has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round to scale its AI‑powered textile waste management platform, marking a significant milestone in the company’s mission to transform how global brands handle end‑of‑life textiles. The new capital will power product development, deepen supply‑chain integrations, expand reverse logistics and processing capacity, enhance data architecture for compliance reporting and support rapid onboarding of enterprise retailers.

The Series A was led by Foundry, a venture capital firm that backs innovative technology‑enabled businesses, with participation from BBG Ventures, Renewal Fund and Elemental Impact. This investor mix reflects broad confidence in SuperCircle’s approach to converting what has traditionally been a cost center for retailers into an opportunity for revenue generation and sustainability gains.

Founded in 2022 by Co‑Founders Chloe Songer and Stuart Ahlum, SuperCircle offers a full‑stack technology and reverse logistics platform that enables brands and retailers to capture value from unsold inventory, returns, damaged goods, excess stock and post‑consumer textiles by routing items to the most profitable and environmentally responsible next lives. At the core of its offering is an AI‑powered proprietary sortation engine that processes more than 50 garment‑level data points to create a digital twin for each item, determining optimal reuse or recycling outcomes.

The company’s platform powers textile disposition for more than 75 leading retail partners, including well‑known brands such as J.Crew, GUESS, Reformation, FIGS and Parachute Home, across both consumer trade‑in programs and backend supply‑chain disposition operations spanning stores and distribution centers throughout the United States and Canada. Already, SuperCircle reports having diverted more than six million textiles from landfills, with a bold goal of diverting more than one billion items by 2030.

SuperCircle’s technology enables retailers to comply with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations, which require brands to manage environmental impacts at the end of a product’s life, while also unlocking new revenue streams from resale and recycling. By providing traceability, real-time data and profitability insights across textile lifecycles, SuperCircle aims to shift industry thinking from waste disposal toward circular economy outcomes that deliver both sustainability and financial benefits.

According to CEO Chloe Songer, the company was born from firsthand experience within major retail supply chains where “products were written off or discarded annually, garnering only pennies on the dollar” because of a lack of scalable end‑of‑life pathways. Under her leadership, SuperCircle has developed an operating system that makes textile waste visible, actionable and profitable for brands that have historically struggled with the complexity and opacity of reverse logistics and recycling markets.

Investor commentary highlights SuperCircle’s role as a pivotal player in the emerging circular retail economy. Nisha Dua, Managing Partner at BBG Ventures, noted that retail “needs a turnkey system that flips the script on its waste reckoning,” calling SuperCircle’s digital infrastructure essential for moving the industry beyond incremental fixes to systemic solutions. Jaclyn Hester, Partner at Foundry, added that SuperCircle’s platform offers retailers “unprecedented visibility and control at end‑of‑life,” serving both regulatory readiness and sustainable financial outcomes.

The $24 million infusion comes at a time when global textile waste represents a nearly $163 billion loss for retailers annually, with more than 85 percent of end‑of‑life textiles ending up in landfills or incinerators, underscoring the economic and environmental stakes of innovation in this space. SuperCircle’s platform not only addresses these inefficiencies but also translates discarded or underutilized inventory into measurable value through reuse, resale and responsible recycling pathways.

Going forward, SuperCircle plans to use the funding to accelerate the build‑out of its digital platform and physical infrastructure, enabling deeper integrations with supply chains and back‑end partners, and to onboard larger enterprise clients with complex reverse logistics challenges. The company’s long‑term vision situates it as a critical operating system for retail brands looking to meet sustainability goals, comply with evolving regulations, and capture economic value from material that once carried high operational costs and limited visibility.

With its recent funding success and a growing roster of brand partners, SuperCircle is poised to play a defining role in reshaping the economics of retail waste, advancing the circular economy, and helping global brands transition from traditional disposal models to intelligent, profitable end‑of‑life textile management.