Seattle startup Ravel announced Thursday it raised $8.2 million to scale its planet-friendly technology for recycling clothing by unwinding the components of synthetic fabric blends.
Ravel has targeted the textile fiber known as elastane, which is also called spandex or Lycra. It’s added to athletic wear, jackets, jeans, underwear, socks, t-shirts, gloves and every other category of apparel. Even in small amounts, elastane makes clothing difficult to recycle.
Ravel has developed a technology for unblending fabrics that include elastane. It turns the recovered ingredient into cost-competitive, recycled plastic pellets that serve as the raw material for making polyester fabrics.
The startup calls its process “purification recycling” and emphasizes that it is energy efficient, uses safe chemicals and does not create added waste or byproducts.
“Even though most of us don’t see it regularly, the ‘behind the scenes’ of materials recovery and valorization is a massive undertaking (and thus massive opportunity),” Ravel CEO Zahlen Titcomb said on LinkedIn.
The investment allows Ravel to transition from its Seattle pilot plant toward commercial-scale operations. It also helps the business validate its solution at production scale with textile partners.
Much of the clothing that is collected for recycling today is downcycled into lower-value uses rather than spun back into new apparel. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has estimated that less than 1% of material used to make clothing is ultimately recycled into new clothing.
As fast fashion accelerates, apparel brands today are making about twice the amount of clothes that were produced in the early 2000s.
Ravel announced in March 2025 that it had raised pre-seed funding, but did not say how much. The company was a finalist for the Sustainable Innovation Award at the 2026 GeekWire Awards.
The seed round was led by One Small Planet with “significant participation” from AP Ventures. Other backers included Overlay Capital and Lichen Ventures, plus existing investors At One Ventures, Collateral Good and BetterWay.
“I’m excited to have found some great folks to roll up the sleeves with,” Titcomb said.
