AI startup Fleek raises £19m led by Burda Principal Investments with eBay
This article covers Fleek, an AI startup building infrastructure for the global secondhand clothing industry, which has raised £19m in a growth funding round led by Burda Principal Investments. The funding will be used to expand its AI engine, boost supply on its marketplace and scale inventory processing to support wholesale suppliers, graders and buyers in the secondhand apparel sector.
Fleek, an AI startup building infrastructure for the global secondhand clothing industry, has raised £19m in a growth funding round led by Burda Principal Investments. The raise — which brings Fleek’s total funding to more than £30m — will be used to expand its AI engine, boost secondhand supply on its marketplace and scale inventory processing across new markets.
Why it matters
The secondhand apparel market is estimated at more than $200bn but remains heavily manual, fragmented and opaque. Fleek aims to digitise the pipeline between donation bins, sorting hubs and retail buyers, using machine learning to standardise grading, pricing and discovery. If successful, that could improve recovery rates for suppliers, make sourcing more efficient for buyers and reduce clothing waste — outcomes that matter to retailers, resellers and policymakers focused on circular fashion.
Inside the product
At the core of Fleek’s offering is Fleek Sort, a custom vision-language model trained on millions of secondhand marketplace transactions collected by the company over four years. The model analyses photographs and videos to identify, categorise, grade and merchandise garments. Fleek says Fleek Sort is already deployed with graders in sorting hubs in Pakistan, India and Dubai and is in pilot phases in the UK, Europe and the US.
Once inventory is processed, it is automatically listed on Fleek’s B2B marketplace. The platform combines pricing, search, recommendation and matching systems so wholesale suppliers and graders can connect with buyers around the world. Fleek positions each transaction as additional training data that refines its proprietary intelligence layer and, in turn, improves future grading and matching accuracy.
Fleek reports its network now links more than 2,000 verified wholesale suppliers and graders with over 50,000 retailers, resellers and boutiques across 100+ countries. The company says it has helped keep 12 million items in circulation, the equivalent of saving an estimated 13 billion litres of water and avoiding 23,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Burda Principal Investments, a European investor that was an early backer of Vinted and lead investor in its Series C round. Other participants include eBay, FJ Labs and H14, alongside existing backers such as Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital and Y Combinator.
Burda’s support signals continued institutional interest in platforms and infrastructure for recommerce; the firm’s prior investment in Vinted underlines its experience backing consumer marketplaces that scale in secondhand fashion. eBay’s participation is notable given its global marketplace presence and existing role in used goods commerce. FJ Labs and H14 are known for marketplace and AI-led commerce investments, while a16z, HV Capital and Y Combinator bring startup and growth-stage experience.
Julian von Eckartsberg, Managing Director Europe at Burda Principal Investments, said:
We backed Vinted when secondhand fashion was still considered niche. We know what it takes to build a platform that scales in this market. From its growing supplier network to the technology behind it, Fleek is building the infrastructure the next generation of fashion will rely on.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of AI venture capital firms in the UK
- Browse our directory of AI angel investors in the UK
Founder perspective
Abhi Arora, co-founder and CEO of Fleek, framed the company’s mission around the hidden logistics of used clothing and the need for better infrastructure.
Abhi Arora, Co-founder & CEO at Fleek, said:
Most people have no idea what happens to a piece of clothing after they part with it. It travels thousands of miles, gets sorted by hand in a warehouse in Karachi, and finds its way back to a vintage shop in London or New York, if it's lucky. We started Fleek because that system is broken, the market it serves is exploding, and nobody is building the technology and infrastructure to fix it.
Co-founder and CTO Sanket Agarwal highlighted the data opportunity Fleek is exploiting.
Sanket Agarwal, Co-founder & CTO at Fleek, said:
There's more data locked inside the global secondhand supply chain than almost any other market, yet historically very little of it has been captured. We've built the world's first AI trained specifically to understand secondhand inventory - what it is, what it's worth, who wants it and where demand exists. Every transaction improves that understanding, creating an intelligence layer we believe will become critical infrastructure for the future of the industry.
The bigger picture
Fleek’s raise comes as demand for secondhand fashion grows three times faster than traditional apparel, according to Boston Consulting Group. The company positions itself as an infrastructure player rather than a consumer-facing marketplace, focusing on automating grading and linking wholesale supply to buyers globally. That approach targets persistent frictions in the recommerce value chain: inconsistent grading standards, disconnected trading networks and limited pricing transparency.
For the UK and Europe, Fleek’s expansion has implications on several fronts. Greater automation in sorting hubs could support local textile recycling efforts and improve export transparency for used-clothing trade hubs. It also reflects broader investor appetite for AI applied to industrialised parts of retail and logistics.
The funding round underscores growing interest from AI investors in practical enterprise applications that tackle waste and supply inefficiencies in apparel — a theme likely to stay relevant as circular-economy targets and regulatory scrutiny of textile waste increase across Europe.
They've invested in Fleek
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| Investors | Investment Focus | Startup Investments | Round Size | Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Burda Principal Investments( ) Munich, Germany  | FleekHungryPanda | |||
 FJ Labs( ) NYC, US  | ||||
 a16z( ) This venture capital firm focuses on sectors such as AI, Bio + Health, Consumer,... San Francisco, US | ||||
 HV Capital( ) BACKINGTHOSEWHO DARE supports exceptional founders in building market-leading di... Munich, Germany | ||||
 Y Combinator( ) Y Combinator is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology startup... San Francisco, US | ||||
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