Using AI To Help Take Out The Trash

AI for waste management. Cryptocurrency vulnerabilities. Anthropic is moving more into science. There’s all that and more in this week’s Prototype. To get it in your inbox, sign up here.

AI often makes headlines for what it can do for computer programmers, drug discovery and other major applications, but Neil Chaudhary and John Tan co-founded a company with a much more mundane idea for automation: waste management.

Their startup, TrashLab, has designed a vertically integrated software platform that offers a one-stop solution for the industry. An interesting thing about waste haulers and recyclers: although big players like Republic Services are well known, “most of the market is family-owned, multi-generational, private businesses,” Chaudhary said.

This week, TrashLab raised a $12 million investment round led by Ventana, capital it plans to use to expand its business of offering AI services for all parts of the business: an AI voice agent to handle calls and automate work orders, route optimization, computer vision to flag potential issues around dumpster sites, automated billing and more. This, Chaudhary said, replaces fragmented, often analog systems his customers are currently using.

The startup already has customers across the country, and Chaudhary said that his solution has enabled them to grow, citing one customer that was able to expand from a five to 25 truck fleet without adding headcount to its back office. Others have been able to double or triple their customer service reps’ workload capacity. “Our customers see a return from fuel savings, leaner back offices and faster collections within weeks of going live,” he said.

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Follow-Up Friday

Some stories and companies we’ve covered in the newsletter this year have had some major updates this week. Here are a few: