
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.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Live production in the cloud is a growing trend across the industry, and Major L...
04/08/2026
LAFC co-managing owner will succeed Don Garber on Jan. 1, 2027, as league prepar...
04/08/2026
In 2022, when the PGA TOUR was breaking ground on its new, state-of-the-art broa...
04/08/2026
Provided by POVORA, the new camera angle offers a dealer's-eye view of the c...
04/08/2026
Spiideo will provide the camera setup, with NEP handling broadcast integration and off-site video operations...
04/08/2026
Production team streamed more than 750 youth rugby matches using ATEM switchers,...
04/08/2026
Agreement gives KTC early access to NDI's Advanced SDK for integration across commercial displays, digital signage, and interactive panels...
04/08/2026
Twelve projects across four categories recognize collaborative work in productio...
04/08/2026
Multi-year agreement will introduce SkeleTRACK, semi-automated offside, automate...
04/08/2026
Three mc 56 consoles, dual A__UHD Core engines, RAVENNA networking, and HOME management supported live sound, monitoring, and international broadcast production...
04/08/2026
New contribution products support ultra-low-latency video transport across fixed, remote, and mobile production environments...
04/08/2026
Company will showcase updates across PRIME, Chyron LIVE, Paint, virtual production, newsroom workflows, and venue control...
04/08/2026
Exhibit will feature SilverBack, VersaBrix, VersaFrame, VF-9100, and FiberSaver-10G platforms...
04/08/2026
Platform updates target cloud-based production, high-density ST 2110 monitoring,...
04/08/2026
LMG will take control of Gravity Media's U.S. mobile-unit fleet as the compa...
04/08/2026
Amp-modelling rigs get major upgrade
HeadRush have recently released a major firmware update that brings some powerful new features to their Prime, Core and...
04/08/2026
Generate a choir from a single voice track
Following years of development, Am I Audio have just officially launched their debut plug-in. Created in collabor...
04/08/2026
Official EMT-endorsed reverbs now available to all
Two more of Universal Audio's renowned UAD plug-ins have just gained new native versions that can be ...
04/08/2026
SBS helps Australians understand why every Census counts
Media releases
As Australia prepares for the 2026 Census on Tuesday 11 August, SBS is helping ensur...
04/08/2026
Canada invests in the future of HF communications with Rohde & Schwarz solutions After selection by the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) as the p...
04/08/2026
Blendkit Expands Beyond Blender
Brie Clayton August 4, 2026
0 Comments
Popular 3D Asset Library Launches Alpha Plugins for Maya, Godot, and Rhino
Blend...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Ikegami has chosen the 11-14 September 2026 International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam as the European market launch venue for additions to its UNICAM p...
04/08/2026
Appear (IBC2026 booth 1.C61) will showcase new X & VX Platform capabilities that extend broadcast-grade performance from venue to cloud
Appear ASA (OSE: APR), ...
04/08/2026
LiveU, the global leader in live IP-video solutions, today highlighted the crucial role its EcoSystem played in Broadcast Management Group's (BMG) successfu...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
04/08/2026
Homecoming Artist Spotlight: Dreion The singer, songwriter, and producer talks about finding his village at Berklee ahead of his Homecoming performance on Sep...
04/08/2026
Tuesday 4 August 2026
Sky Sports agrees deal with SANZAAR for international rugby rights 2026 - 2030
The deal means Sky will have exclusive rights to the inau...
04/08/2026
Kill Tony Launches on Supercast, Giving Fans Premium & Ad-Free Access to Comedy&...
04/08/2026
More details coming soon....
04/08/2026
More details coming soon....
04/08/2026
More details coming soon....
04/08/2026
Surging AI demands are driving the need for massive datasets and context windows that burst past the confines of system memory.
But rising needs aren't me...
04/08/2026
For robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles (AVs), the hardest problems aren'...
04/08/2026
Members of the Open Secure AI Alliance - now more than 120 organizations strong - are developing new guidelines to strengthen agentic AI cybersecurity as the an...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
03/08/2026
SVG's annual TranSPORT conference returns to New York City for a full day of sessions focused on the current state of live-sports-transmission technology. S...
03/08/2026
A five-time Emmy winner, this esports vet has built a production career on live storytelling, audience connection, and meeting viewers wherever they are
The sp...
03/08/2026
Live production in the cloud is a growing trend across the industry and Major Le...