AMP, which started off offering sortation robots that could be added into existing recycling facilities, recently shifted its focus to include full facilities. | Courtesy of AMP Robotics
AMP recently raised $91 million in a financing round and plans to use the funds to accelerate the deployment of its AMP ONE sortation system.
The system can sort both single-stream recycling and municipal solid waste. There are currently AMP ONE systems operating in Portsmouth, Virginia; outside Cleveland, Ohio at a secondary sortation facility; and in Pitt County, North Carolina at an RDS facility. Last month, AMP announced it would also equip and operate one of Waste Connections’ single-stream recycling facilities in Colorado.
“AMP ONE provides a full-scale facility solution to sort various material streams and capture more of the billions of dollars in value otherwise lost to landfills or incinerated annually,” a press release noted.
The funding was led by Congruent Ventures and also included Sequoia Capital, XN, Blue Earth Capital, Liberty Mutual Investments, California State Teachers Retirement System, Wellington Management, Range Ventures and Tao Capital Partners.
Matanya Horowitz, founder of AMP, said in the press release that recycling rates have stagnated in the United States, and “this latest investment enables us to tackle larger projects and deliver real outcomes for waste companies and municipalities – by lowering sortation costs, capturing more material value, diverting organic waste, and extending landfill life – all while helping the industry optimize its strategic assets.”
AMP uses AI and deep learning to continuously train itself as it processes materials, using pattern recognition of colors, textures, shapes, sizes and logos to identify recyclables and contaminants in real time. When it was first founded, it offered sorting robots that could be added into existing recycling facilities, but it recently shifted its focus to include full facilities.
“With near-zero manual sorting, unprecedented reliability and pervasive data, these facilities make the recovery of commodities safer and more cost-effective than ever and have grown to encompass MSW sorting, an offering out of reach to the industry prior to the advent of AMP’s technology,” the press release added.