Greyparrot raises £20.3m led by Omar Mir
This article covers Greyparrot, a startup, which has raised £20.3m in a series B funding round to expand its AI systems that convert discarded objects into data for recycling and waste management. The funding will be used to grow its on-site camera network and dataset to provide continuous, auditable measurements for recycling facilities, consumer goods brands and policymakers.
Greyparrot has raised £20.3m in a series B funding round to expand its AI systems that convert discarded objects into data for recycling and waste management. The capital will be used to grow the company’s network of on-site camera systems and its dataset, which Greyparrot says now exceeds one trillion waste detections — a scale the firm argues is necessary to turn materials into tradeable, investable assets.
Why it matters
Poor data has long been a constraint on the circular economy. Only a tiny fraction of global waste is audited, leaving operators, brands and policymakers to make decisions on incomplete information. Greyparrot’s dataset aims to change that by providing continuous, machine-generated measurements of what is actually entering recycling streams.
The company reports that its dataset includes billions of PET bottles and aluminium items, and estimates £1.9bn of recoverable value identified so far. Facilities using the data have seen 10 to 30 percent efficiency gains, and one site reported more than £1.5m in savings in a single year. Those sorts of improvements matter for operators trying to lift margins and for regulators enforcing reporting obligations such as extended producer responsibility.
In the announcement, Ambarish Mitra, co-founder of Greyparrot, said:
Waste intelligence will do for materials what satellite data did for navigation. For decades, waste has been a blind spot. Nations compete for resources while burying and burning existing resources. What's been missing is the ability to measure what they’re losing. Once you can measure a material, you can trade it and invest in it. That is when the circular economy stops being an ambition and becomes infrastructure.
Inside the product
Greyparrot deploys AI camera systems called Analyzers above sorting belts in recycling facilities to identify material type, product and brand in real time. The analytics feed into a platform Greyparrot calls Deepnest, which aggregates detections and produces datasets and reports for operators, consumer goods companies and policymakers.
Operational customers include household names in waste management — WM, Circular Services, Veolia, Biffa and FCC — where the technology is used to boost recovery rates and throughput. Consumer goods companies such as Unilever, L’Oréal and Kenvue use the insights to assess how packaging performs after disposal and to inform redesign for recyclability and compliance. These partners demonstrate two clear use cases: improving plant operations and closing the loop on packaging design.
Greyparrot also positions its data as a source of verified evidence for audits and policy design. The company highlights regulatory momentum — particularly in US states adopting EPR laws — as a factor increasing demand for systematic waste measurement.
Who are the investors?
The series B round was led by Omar Mir, a technology investor. The £20.3m raise brings Greyparrot’s total funding to £45.1m. Greyparrot says the funds will be used to expand its Analyzer network, scale its dataset and platform, and grow AI, data science and product teams across North America and Europe.
Investor rationale in the announcement centres on accelerating deployment to abate more than 1 million tons of waste by 2030 and on commercial use cases that improve plant economics and support compliance. The company did not disclose additional participating investors in the announcement.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Mikela Druckman, co-founder and CEO of Greyparrot, said:
Waste is one of the planet’s largest untapped resources, and data is the infrastructure that unlocks it. This funding lets us scale rapidly across North America and Europe and grow our AI, data science and product teams. The technology, the demand and the momentum are all here, and for the first time the world can see what it has been throwing away.
Druckman frames the product as infrastructure: measurement that enables markets to recognise secondary materials as assets and that helps operators and brands meet regulatory and commercial targets.
The bigger picture
Greyparrot’s claim of one trillion detections underlines how machine vision can produce granularity at scale where manual sampling cannot. The company links that scale to broader macro risks: resource scarcity and geopolitical tensions over materials cited in global risk reports, and the economic inefficiencies identified by organisations estimating large annual losses of plastic value.
That said, the path from detection to large-scale material markets involves multiple steps beyond measurement: standardisation of data, verification frameworks, and trading mechanisms for secondary materials. Greyparrot’s role is to supply the first of those elements — continuous, auditable data — but wider market structures and regulation will determine how much of the identified value becomes tradable.
This funding round adds another data-point for UK and European startups working at the intersection of AI and supply chain infrastructure. As EPR rules and reporting requirements spread, demand for machine-generated waste intelligence is likely to grow across markets that need verifiable, high-frequency information to guide investment and compliance.
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