Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tony Fadell’s Build Collective led the oversubscribed
round of this deep-tech startup to ensure the sustainability and profitability of textile
factories worldwide.
Smartex has developed hardware-enabled, machine-vision-driven software to detect textile
defects in real-time. This automated identification process reduces textile waste, CO2
emissions, energy, water, production time, and capital expenditure by automatically shutting down production in order to prevent waste of materials. Defects in the textile industry tend to be compounded, meaning that when fabric travels down the supply chain with defects that were not detected it often leads to entire textile rolls being discarded or burned, causing enormous environmental and financial impact in one of the world’s largest industries.
The textile and fashion industry is the 3rd most polluting industry in the world – producing a monstrous amount of textile waste each year with no signs of slowing down. It is estimated that 150 billion garments are produced annually in this $3T industry which accounts for 20% of global water waste and 10% of global carbon emissions.
The textile industry operates on thin margins and has a considerably high defect rate. The
industry is currently dependent on human vision and manual inspection to detect textile
defects. Smartex empowers textile manufacturers to take control of their production line
through real-time textile defect detection, data-driven analysis, and alerts.
“Our customers are just as engaged as we are with the products we are building,” says Co-
founder, CTO, and winner of Web Summit’s 2021 PITCH Competition Antonio Rocha. “In
order to create solutions to best serve them, we are always listening and open to their
feedback. Together we are working on a new era of high-quality, waste-free manufacturing which will lead to improved transparency and traceability across the textile supply chain from yarn to retail.”
Customers include leading innovators in knitted fabric production such as Tintex Textiles,
Families, Toraman Tekstil, Ekoten, among many others. During a video case study, Mario Jorge Silva, Founder of Tintex Textiles & HATA, says that “Smartex – with its artificial intelligence and tracking processes – is an economically viable solution because it not only saves time but anticipates and helps in the elimination of problems that may arise later on.”
Other notable investors in this $24.7M Series A round include H&M Group, DCVC, SOSV’s HAX, Spider Capital, Momenta Ventures, Bombyx Growth Fund, and Fashion for Good with
which Smartex initiated multiple projects with its partners such as the Kering Group (Gucci,
Balenciaga, etc), PVH (Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, etc), Pangaia, and others. This follows
their $2.9M Seed round in 2019 co-led by DCVC and Spider Capital.
These Series A funds will allow Smartex to expand the business strategically to new
geographies, continue to grow the team as well as develop product lines to help manufacturers and fashion brands improve control of their production while increasing textile quality and traceability.
As the global sustainability movement continues to gain traction, consumers and regulators
are increasingly pushing the fashion and textile industry to adopt cleaner, more responsible
production. The European Commission has recognized Smartex as fundamental for Industry
4.0 Projects in textile factories.
Gilberto Loureiro, Co-founder, and CEO of Smartex says, “We are privileged to be in a very
unique position to add intrinsic value to a giant industry that is fundamental and touches so
many lives, fueling our mission to sustainability and profitability of textile factories worldwide. With our technology and talent, we will be able to pioneer a new chapter in the fashion industry and ultimately to reduce waste and costs. All efforts are necessary to generate a positive impact as we strive to solve this global challenge and contribute to a more sustainable world.”
Smartex is currently present in several markets across Europe, Central Asia, South America, and Africa, and has plans to expand further into Asia in 2023. With steep growth in revenues, clients, and headcount, the company continues to hire worldwide talent to join the mission of empowering factories all around the world to produce with less waste.
