Seattle-based textile recycling company Ravel has announced the close of an oversubscribed $8.2 million seed round to take its textile-to-textile recycling technology from pilot stage to commercial production scale. The round was led by One Small Planet, with a large follow-on from AP Ventures, participation from Overlay Capital and Lichen Ventures, and continued backing from existing investors At One Ventures, Collateral Good and Betterway Ventures — At One Ventures having previously led the company's pre-seed round.

Ravel is targeting what the textile recycling industry widely regards as its hardest problem: blended fabrics. Weaving different fibers together improves garments' durability, performance and affordability, making blends extremely common, but separating those fibers once discarded is technically and economically difficult. Ravel's "Purification Recycling" process is designed for exactly this: it accepts mixed feedstock directly, separates fiber combinations such as polyester and elastane commonly found in activewear, and purifies the waste into single-material fibers, with an emphasis on lowering energy consumption and avoiding damage to the recycled material. The company describes its output as "drop-in ready," able to enter existing textile manufacturing systems without customers building new production lines.

Feedstock flexibility is another core element of Ravel's commercialization strategy. According to Textile Exchange data cited by the company, roughly 85% of textiles fall into four major material categories, and these materials are often mixed within products. Conventional recycling processes demand high feedstock purity, with sorting, transport and pre-treatment all driving up costs; Ravel instead aims to widen the range of acceptable blended inputs, reducing operational complexity on the feedstock side for recycling plants.

"The biggest factor determining the success of any recycling business is feedstock," said Helen Lin, partner at At One Ventures. How much waste a process can actually absorb, how much purity it requires, and how far the material must travel directly determine unit economics and scalability.

CEO Zahlen Titcomb put it bluntly: "Blended fibers offer countless benefits for clothing, but existing infrastructure cannot recycle blends — that is precisely Ravel's entry point."

On pricing, Ravel is targeting parity with conventional textile materials, relying on neither subsidies nor requiring customers to pay a premium for recycled content. Jack Wielebinski of One Small Planet said the ability to produce recycled material at a cost competitive with virgin materials was key to its investment thesis, and that the firm believes Ravel has combined material recovery and production cost.

Ravel currently operates a pilot plant in Seattle, and the new funding will be used to transition to commercial scale, with next steps including validating the technology within textile supply chains and proving that its purification process can maintain performance and economics at higher volumes. The company is also seeking partnerships with brands and manufacturers to test different blended waste streams and verify how well recycled material integrates into existing manufacturing processes. Such partnerships will only grow more important as extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations push more textile waste responsibility onto brands and manufacturers; related policies are also expected to create new demand for recycling capacity capable of handling post-industrial and post-consumer materials at scale.

Source: Ravel Raises $8.2 Million Seed Round to Scale Blended Textile Recycling · Originally published 2026-09-17