Stockholm-based Sortrace, a company developing AI technology for waste analysis, has raised approximately $800,000 in a funding round. The round was led by Almi Invest, with participation from Antler, Gorilla Capital and several angel investors.

Sortrace was founded by Rahel Surshi (CEO) and Tomas Kjellstrand. The company develops technology that uses AI, cameras and data analysis to help municipalities and waste management companies monitor how households sort their waste.

In Sweden, municipalities have increasing responsibility for making sure that household waste is sorted correctly. However, many lack enough data about the types of waste being collected. This makes it difficult to measure how well recycling programmes are working and where improvements are needed.

Sortrace aims to solve this problem by installing cameras on waste collection vehicles. These cameras capture images of household waste as bins are emptied, allowing the company’s AI technology to examine the waste.

The technology identifies different types of waste and turns the images into useful data. This helps municipalities and waste management companies find sorting mistakes, understand waste collection patterns and identify areas where recycling can be improved.

“Municipalities face new requirements and are investing heavily in collection and in information to households. But without data, no one knows whether those efforts work. We make mis-sorting visible at every emptying, so municipalities can act where the problems actually are,”said Rahel Surshi, CEO and co-founder of Sortrace.

he new funding will help Sortrace meet growing demand from municipalities and expand its technology to other areas of waste management beyond collection vehicles.