Danu Robotics founder Amy Ma started the company after a career as a software developer at a London bank, where she noticed the building’s recycling bins were being emptied into the same trash stream. The deeper issue, she found, is that recycling economics often depend on humans sorting waste by hand. Her response is H.E.R.O., a robot designed to sort recyclable material cheaper and faster, developed over six years and now coming to market by the Edinburgh, Scotland-based startup.

H.E.R.O. uses a pincer claw rather than the suction-based arms used by competitors such as Glacier and RecycleEye, and Danu says the larger advantage is a business model built on AI that continuously improves the robot’s software. The company reports letters of interest from two large customers, $500,000 in signed contracts, and more than 200 customers in its sales pipeline, giving it a path into the estimated $20 billion market for recycling sorting across Europe and North America. On that momentum, Danu raised $5 million in late-seed funding.

Founder Amy Ma argues the economics of recycling create an immediate return for a working robot, since facilities earn money from the materials they sort. She estimates one site with the robot on its sorting line would earn $485,000 in additional revenue versus a $160,000 initial investment and $24,000 in annual maintenance costs, making it cheaper than the competition. The next goal is to make H.E.R.O. sturdier, smaller, and more portable, opening use cases beyond waste facilities such as events, shopping centers, hospitals, and airports that could recycle waste at the source.