SuperCircle raises fund: Retailers worldwide face a waste problem. Every year, billions of dollars’ worth of unsold or returned products are discarded, damaged, or written off. Most of this ends up in landfills or incinerators, and brands incur costs while struggling to meet new regulations that require responsible disposal.
With more than 85% of textiles wasted, the industry has long needed a system to manage end-of-life products more efficiently and profitably.
Based in New York, SuperCircle aims to address precisely this. The US startup has built a full-stack, AI-powered platform that helps retailers manage and reuse textile waste rather than discard it. By analysing every item and routing it to the best reuse or recycling option, the company turns what was once a cost into a revenue opportunity.
“In my early career inside major retail supply chains, I saw firsthand how much product was written off or discarded annually, garnering only pennies on the dollar because there were no better, viable end-of-life pathways,” said Chloe Songer, CEO and Co-founder of SuperCircle.
She added, “We built SuperCircle to give retailers a scalable, financially sound system for end-of-life, enabling value generation from textiles long after purchase via consumer trade-in, and drastically reducing supply chain losses on excess, damages, and returns — capturing maximum value from every t-shirt, sneaker, sheet set, and handbag produced.”
The company has raised $24M in Series A funding led by Foundry, with participation from BBG Ventures, Renewal Fund and Elemental Impact.
How does the platform work?
SuperCircle is a textile waste management platform that collects clothing, shoes, accessories, and home textiles, among other items. It uses AI to sort these materials and directs them to over 50 reuse and recycling options, ensuring nothing ends up in landfills.
The company ingests 50+ garment-level data points to create a digital twin of each textile, building a rapidly compounding dataset that continually strengthens its sortation engine. This intelligence leads to measurable cost savings, minimises waste handling and write-downs, and opens up additional revenue streams.
With its advanced technology, SuperCircle maximises recycling opportunities, achieving a high fibre-to-fibre recycling rate. Brands receive the data and digital infrastructure necessary to thrive in the new era of retail, where the utility and value of every produced asset must be maximised long after production.
The company partners with well-known brands such as J.Crew, GUESS, and Reformation to provide solutions that enable consumers to trade in their old textiles and collect unused fabric, damaged items, and returns.
In a broader competitive landscape that includes circularity and resale platforms like thredUP, Trove and Vestiaire Collective on the consumer side, and textile‑to‑textile recyclers and take‑back solutions such as Circ, Evrnu, Recover, or Renewcell’s partners on the infrastructure side, SuperCircle positions itself as the operating system layer that connects retailers to multiple downstream options rather than a single resale or recycling channel.
What’s next?
The new capital will help the company grow its technology, expand supply chain integrations, and bring more major retailers onto its platform. SuperCircle’s mission is to end textile waste, and to date, it has recycled over 6 million garments.
“Retail needs a turnkey system that flips the script on its waste reckoning — turning would-be cost centres into revenue streams,” added Nisha Dua, Managing Partner at BBG Ventures. “SuperCircle has built the digital infrastructure to move the industry beyond incremental fixes and point solutions, enabling an entirely new system at scale.”
“SuperCircle is giving retailers unprecedented visibility and control at end-of-life, an area historically dominated by opaque, low-value liquidation,” said Jaclyn Hester, Partner at Foundry. “Their platform is the new industry standard for waste management infrastructure, delivering regulatory readiness, measurable impact, and profitable financial outcomes.”
