I want to share something I've been noticing in my own content.
Every time I post about a company turning agricultural waste into something valuable, mushroom packaging, rice husk charcoal, sugarcane fiber, olive pit composites, the response is enormous. Tens of thousands of views. Plenty of comments. People asking real questions: how does it scale, who's investing, where can I buy it.
These stories resonate because they're genuinely compelling. A problem everyone can see, solved in a way that feels almost obvious once you understand it.
And yet, when I looked at where circular economy capital actually went in 2026, I found something that didn't match the engagement at all.
Recycling platforms, the companies that process materials already flowing through existing industrial systems, captured 86% of all circular economy funding so far this year. Two companies alone, Redwood Materials and Cyclic Materials, took in roughly $500 million between them.
Circular design platforms, the companies making new materials from waste, the kind of story that goes viral on LinkedIn, produced a third of all deals. They captured less than 8% of the capital.
The stories getting the attention and the stories getting the capital are almost entirely different stories.
That gap isn't because the design platforms are worse businesses. It's because turning a working prototype and a compelling narrative into something an investment committee can underwrite requires a completely different skill set than building the technology.
I've spent thirteen years watching this exact pattern, in Zurich and Frankfurt, where institutional capital sits with mandates it genuinely wants to deploy, and in the emerging markets where the technology and the traction already exist. The two sides understand each other. What's usually missing is someone who can translate a compelling product story into the specific, structured evidence a fund can actually act on, and then run the actual commercial process of getting there.
That's the work I do now, formally, for companies in exactly this position.
If you're building something in circular materials, bio-based products, or waste-to-value, and you have the traction but not yet the commercial infrastructure to reach the capital that's already looking for exactly what you're building, I'd like to hear where you are.
— André
Source: New Market Pitch — Circular Economy Funding Trends 2026, July 2026