Valis Insights Inc. closes seed round funding

Valis Insights Inc., based in Worcester, Massachusetts, has oversubscribed its seed round investment early in September. The round was led by Closed Loop Partners’ Ventures Group, with participation from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), GS Futures, Refashiond Ventures, the WPI Commercialization Fund and Angels from Launchpad Venture Group and Wire Group.

Investment funds will be targeted toward the expansion of the Valis team, including software development, sales and operations, to support the at-scale rollout of the solution across the metals recycling ecosystem.

The funding follows the pilot-scale launch of Valis’ flagship product, Vali-Sort, with Radius Recycling (formerly Schnitzer Steel Industries), earlier this year and will accelerate the growth of the company’s team and technology, Valis says.

The Valis team has been researching and developing AI capabilities for recycling since 2019, with support from Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The company was incorporated in July 2022 and says co-founders CEO Emily Molstad and Cheif Technology Officer Caleb Ralphs bring a blend of expertise in metals processing, recycling, data science and machine learning, while Product Director Ben Longo brings a skillset in software-as-a-service product development and system integration.

Maximized recycling of postconsumer metals is critical to low-carbon metals production as using recycled metal generates approximately 80 percent fewer emissions than primary metal. However, the metal recycling industry is limited by inefficiencies along the value chain, leading to the significant loss of valuable metals worth more than $50 billion each year, Valis says.

According to the company, its technology is working to make existing infrastructure more efficient, a key solution to a healthy supply chain and a drastic reduction in emissions associated with metal production. Vali-Sort increases transparency around material separation at recycling facilities by integrating directly with sensor-based sorting equipment to provide plant and sales managers with high-value insights into the quality and value of material flowing through the system, Valis says.

Vali-Sort is the first step in the company’s long-term plan to create an integrated platform that bridges gaps along the entire recycling value chain. This technology is designed to enable data sharing between facilities, offer visibility for manufacturers on their products at end of life and incorporate optimization along every point of the recycling process to ensure the materials of yesterday are effectively recovered to meet the demand of tomorrow, Valis says.

“Recycling facilities are generating a wealth of data that is currently going to waste,” Molstad says. “This data has the power to transform how process decisions are made, material quality is assessed and recyclable metals are sold. At Valis, we’re putting AI-powered tools in the hands of recyclers by integrating directly with their equipment and current operations. We’re enabling data-driven decision-making so they can be confident their processes are optimized even as material and market trends shift."

Aly Bryan, and investor with New York-based Closed Loop Partners’ Ventures Group, says, “Existing metal processing is opaque to most of us. When a car or an appliance reaches the end of its useful life, we trust that the valuable metals make their way back into new products. That is often not the case—nor do we have the tools today to know exactly where and why materials are falling out of the system. The team at Valis is committed to building out that transparency and, with it, greater economic value for metal processors and everyone within the metals recycling value chain. We are excited to support them on that journey.”