Dive Brief:
- EBay Ventures, the capital arm of resale platform eBay, has made a $300,000 investment in recycling technology firm Refiberd and was named eBay’s Circular Fashion Innovator of the Year, according to a Wednesday press release.
- The funds are earmarked to help scale Refiberd’s artificial intelligence system, which can differentiate between fabric types to enable more accurate sorting and recycling, per the release.
- Refiberd beat 11 shortlisted businesses across the U.K., U.S., Germany and Australia to win the award. The competition is designed to celebrate fashion startup companies that work to create a more sustainable fashion industry, per the release.
Dive Insight:
By the end of 2025, eBay’s Circular Fashion Fund will have provided $1.2 million to fashion innovators and small businesses worldwide, the company said in its release. The funding is intended to help these companies scale their circular solutions, which range from production to end-of-life and also include rental and repair services.
Award winner Refiberd’s technology is designed to be integrated into existing recycling infrastructures and help turn textile waste into new fibers, per the release.
“The investment from eBay Ventures will help us close a significant round of fundraising for the business, allowing us to expand our technology to new recycling partners, strengthen our AI capabilities, and move faster toward our mission of enabling true textile-to-textile recycling,” Sarika Bajaj, co-founder and CEO of Refiberd, said in the release.
Refiberd has also partnered with H&M Foundation, Fashion for Good and Google for Startups, per its website.
“With this added support we can accelerate our impact and help build a future where circular fashion is the norm — not the exception,” Bajaj added.
The Circular Fashion Fund is supported by partnerships with the British Fashion Council, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the Fashion Council Germany and the Australia Fashion Council, per the release. Since launching in 2022, the fund has supported 27 businesses and provided more than 200 hours of mentoring and upskilling from industry experts.
