
Matanya Horowitz smelled a problem in 2014.
Fresh out of CalTech with a Ph.D., he saw that recycling centers lacked robotics and computer vision to pick through heaps of garbage-contaminated recyclables.
Horowitz founded AMP Robotics that year to harness AI run on NVIDIA GPUs to turn sorting out the trash into cash.
It's a ripe opportunity. People worldwide produce 2 billion tons of waste a year, with 37 percent going to landfill, according to the World Bank.
Sorting by hand on conveyor belts is dirty and dangerous, and the whole place smells like rotting food. People in the recycling industry told me that robots were absolutely needed, said Horowitz, the company's CEO.
His startup, which has 130 employees, can double sorting output and increase purity for bales of materials. It can also sort municipal waste, electronic waste, and construction and demolition materials.
Neuron's Heaping Dataset AMP has collected one of the world's largest labeled datasets of images for recyclables with its Neuron AI platform.
It's well into the millions now, said Horowitz.
That's used in training its image recognition models, run on NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs. Training with such a massive dataset from packaging types from all over the world, different lighting conditions and many unique recycling businesses has provided AMP as much as 99 percent accuracy on inference.
A National Science Foundation grant in 2015 helped Horowitz hatch a small team to jump on the problem early.
AMP, based outside Boulder, Colo., has scooped up business with more than 40 recyclers. Along the way, the company has attracted $75 million in funding as it's become the rising star of AI for recycling. It recently landed on the Forbes AI 50, a list of the top AI companies to watch.
The company is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a virtual accelerator program that helps startups in AI and data science get to market faster. Direct connections to NVIDIA and training credits provided from the Inception program helped accelerate experimentation and innovation for AMP, said Horowitz.
Dirty Recyclables Ban Recyclers can't keep up with sorting. Tighter restrictions against contamination in recycled materials sent to China have made combing through it more work, creating more landfill. Worse yet for recyclers, these new added sorting costs come amid a tight labor market.
U.S. exports of plastic scraps to China have slid nearly 90 percent, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Recycling processors worldwide are struggling to better sort trash to produce cleaner recyclables and stay in business.
The problem now for U.S. recyclers is that the costs of sorting domestically - if labor is even available - are close to the value of the materials on the commodities markets, said Horowitz.
GPU-Driven Recyclers AMP has changed the economics for recyclers. Its image classification models are deployed on NVIDIA GPUs to enable robot arms with suction cups to zip about conveyor belts, picking out trash to help.
The computer vision system for the robot arms can recognize an ever-expanding number of items. It can swiftly sort everything from Starbucks cups, PET plastic bottles and clamshell containers, to office paper, aluminum cans, hazards and many more items. The system identifies dozens of categories simultaneously.
The company's millions of labeled images drive its highly accurate image classification models, capable of identifying thousands of recyclables in milliseconds, so its robotic arms can sweep into action. AMP Robotics relies on NVIDIA GeForce RTX or V100 GPUs, depending on the recycling center, to run this split-second inference.
AMP uses the end-to-end NVIDIA workflow to train its Neuron AI platform. The system can train on over a billion types of garbage and recyclables and run on the network in real time. NVIDIA TensorRT enables a doubling in speed-up on inference and a 50 percent reduction in latency.
Because AMP keeps a fixed amount of computing resources for latency and inference, anything the company can do to accelerate existing networks allows the company to reinvest that into larger networks that unlock more performance.
The startup now has more than 120 recycling robots deployed worldwide. Its customers span the U.S., Spain, Japan, Canada and other countries that are soon to launch.
Accelerated Business Prospects Another capability AMP Robotics provides is data collection and analytics. This way recyclers can keep track in real time of how much revenue-generating materials are being collected and how much is being sent to landfill. Previously this was nearly impossible to track, Horowitz said.
AMP Robotics NVIDIA GPU-driven systems enable customers to bring costs down as well as sort plastics into different categories to achieve better returns. For instance, it can sort out HDPE color plastics, which is more valuable, from other plastics.
Also, the neural network can learn new materials over time, offering a wider range of sorting capabilities and new opportunities for revenue.
You can separate out by color, brand or form factor, and when you start to do this, you can make the material worth a lot more, he said.
Learn more about AMP Robotics from its GTC 2021 presentation.
North America Stories
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
At BroadcastAsia 2026, Interra Systems will demonstrate its latest innovations in automated quality control (QC), real-time monitoring, and captioning. The comp...
07/05/2026
At this year's Broadcast Asia, PlayBox Neo is set to unveil recent innovations across its PlayBox Neo Suite and integrated range of broadcast media solution...
07/05/2026
Strategic three-year partnership marks delivery phase of BFBS' next-generation media vision
Media organisation and military charity BFBS (British Forces Br...
07/05/2026
Amagi, the agentic industry cloud platform for unified broadcast, streaming, and monetization, today announced the availability of its In-Content Ads offering v...
07/05/2026
Lightware Visual Engineering has developed Rack Taurus for rack-based environments such as education and corporate training spaces. It enables clean and simple ...
07/05/2026
Jigsaw24, the UK's leading media equipment supplier and systems integrator, will showcase its expanded end-to-end workflow capabilities at MPTS 2026, signal...
07/05/2026
Ease Live, an Evertz company, today announced that it has been granted a US Patent for its proprietary graphical overlay technology, the foundation for interact...
07/05/2026
Test & measurement innovator Leader Electronics of Europe will present an extensive range of Leader, PHABRIX and LeaderPhabrix test and measurement solutions at...
07/05/2026
At Broadcast Asia 2026 (Stand 5H3 8), LiveU is redefining live production with its most powerful IP-video EcoSystem to date built to help broadcasters and con...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/05/2026
Recreating the 1974 Doctor Who Time Tunnel in After Effects
Graham Quince May 6, 2026
0 Comments
The Time Tunnel from Doctor Who titles is one of th...
07/05/2026
Less typing, more tanking.
Faster logins mean more time in the gaming action - and this week provides GeForce NOW members with a smoother path straight into th...
06/05/2026
Gravity Media Chief RF Communications Engineer Glenn Willems uses Wisycom RF over Fiber and wireless solutions across major cycling events and international mar...
06/05/2026
A Sennheiser Spectera module is now available in Bitfocus Companion and Buttons, enabling direct integration of Spectera with the two software platforms. The mo...
06/05/2026
Ted Turner, the visionary media entrepreneur whose appetite for disruption helpe...
06/05/2026
Peacock is going all-in on the beautiful game - streaming all 104 FIFA World Cup...
06/05/2026
Polands Miecznik-class frigates are part of the largest contract in Polish shipbuilding history. (Image Credit: PGZ Stocznia Wojenna)...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Riedel Communications today announced the expansion of its leadership structure as part of a strategic initiative to strengthen both its operational management ...
06/05/2026
For nearly three decades, Veteran Production Sound Mixer and Five-time Emmy Award Winner Dirk Sciarrotta has helped define the sonic identity of the long-runnin...
06/05/2026
ZEISS CinCraft LensCore: Cinema Lens Looks for Compositing
Brie Clayton May 6, 2026
0 Comments
ZEISS announces the launch of CinCraft LensCore, a nove...
06/05/2026
Wisycom Solves Extreme RF Challenges Across Miles of Live Action for Gravity Med...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Narrative Entertainment has partnered with Encompass to deliver high-quality subtitling of its Great! network content using the Altitude Intelligence AI assiste...
06/05/2026
SipRadius, widely recognized for making content processing and connectivity secure and seamless, is proud to launch a dramatic new approach to AI content creati...
06/05/2026
When the broadband and media industry gathers at ANGA COM in Cologne from May 19 to 21, Big Blue Marble will be at the forefront. The international broadcast an...
06/05/2026
Cinegy GmbH, a leading developer of software-defined television technology, is proud to exhibit at MPTS for the first time. Visitors to the stand will discover ...
06/05/2026
Val Jeanty Receives 2026 Doris Duke Artist Award Jeanty, a composer, percussionist, and turntablist, is the fourth Berklee recipient of the prestigious award ...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
06/05/2026
When live cycling races and international marathons stretch for miles across cities and countryside, there is no margin for RF failure in live broadcast. As Chi...
06/05/2026
Oberkochen/Germany, May 5, 2026
ZEISS announces the launch of CinCraft LensCore, a novel solution for creating physically based cinematic lens looks for visual...
06/05/2026
The race to build the world's most powerful AI factories demands networking ...
06/05/2026
How changes to proteins can alter drug interactions for new precision therapies Scripps Research team maps how chemical modifications to proteins affect drug bi...
05/05/2026
Three phones were hardwired for power and transmission to the truck; camera feat...
05/05/2026
The creative studio behind campaigns for the NBA, Fanatics Sportsbook & Casino, ...
05/05/2026
Nielsen has announced results from a co-viewing pilot program covering February&...
05/05/2026
viztrick AiDi, an on-device AI solution developed by Nippon TV, delivered global...
05/05/2026
ARRI has announced Omnibar, a battery-powered, IP65-rated multi-color LED linear...
05/05/2026
Imagine Communications has announced that France T l visions is the first broadc...
05/05/2026
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and Bell Media today announced a multiyear agreement to broadcast and stream WNBA games in Canada beginni...
05/05/2026
SVG is proud to announce Warner Bros. Discovery's Techwood Studios in Atlant...
05/05/2026
With no operator required, AutoMic workflow automates talent identification on U...
05/05/2026
A crash in 2015 set the industry back, but this winter proved that drones are he...