Galvanize backs AMP with $70M to build AI waste-sorting infrastructure
What's the deal? AMP, a maker of AI-powered sorting systems for the waste and recycling industry, has closed $70 million in project debt financing led by Galvanize. The money will fund a new sortation facility and an organics processing system in Portsmouth, Virginia.
What's the endgame? The facilities are the next phase of AMP's 20-year partnership with the Southeastern Public Service Authority (SPSA)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, signed in late 2025. At full scale, the regional system is designed to process more than half a million tons of municipal solid waste annually — over 1,400 tons a day — and divert at least half from landfill.
How it works: Unlike conventional recycling, which relies on households and businesses to separate recyclables, AMP's technology processes raw waste, including sealed trash bags. Its system uses AI-powered cameras, robotics, and pneumatic jets to recover plastics, metals, fiber, and organic material.
Why now? The financing builds on more than two years of operating experience at AMP's flagship Portsmouth facility, where it demonstrated commercial-scale sorting. That track record underpinned the SPSA deal.
A second sortation facility is expected online in early 2028. An adjacent plant will convert recovered organics into biochar, a charcoal-like material that stores carbon and will initially serve as landfill cover. Its production generates carbon removal credits tied to AMP's agreement with GoogleDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to remove 200,000 metric tonnes of CO2e by 2030.
By the numbers: Over the 20-year partnership, AMP and SPSA expect to recycle 20% of SPSA's waste — more than double the region's highest-performing community — and extend the local landfill's life into the next century.
"Galvanize's investment is an important validation that AI-powered waste sorting has moved from novel technology to financeable infrastructure," said Mary Macpherson, senior vice president of finance at AMP.
Suresh Vasan, a partner at Galvanize, called waste "a massive, under-modernized infrastructure market" and pointed to AMP's "proven AI-powered technology, long-term contracted demand, and measurable economic and environmental benefits."
The signal: The deal marks a shift from equity-style bets on climate tech toward project debt — the financing structure that funds roads and power plants. Backing waste sorting with infrastructure capital suggests investors now treat AMP's model as a repeatable, bankable asset rather than an experiment.
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