We followed on in Humara's €1.2M Seed round to fix how recycling plants get built

Humara just closed a €1.2M Seed round led by Impact Shakers, with Inclimo joining as a new investor. Zubi Capital, the founding angel syndicate, and we at Ship2B Ventures all followed on in full. We first backed Humara through our pre-seed programme, and we are proud to keep supporting the team as they scale.

The problem Humara solves

We first backed Humara because of a simple bet: the waste sector is enormous, it has to decarbonize, and the software running it is decades behind. Most recycling plants are still designed in Excel and CAD files that don't talk to each other. Humara is fixing that.

What truly convinced us was the combination of a team with deep, hands-on industrial knowledge, a market with no real alternative, and an impact thesis that's hard to argue with: the world generates around 2 billion tonnes of waste every year, the EU recovers only 30% of it, and an estimated 100,000 new treatment plants will need to be built by 2050. Laura Rodriguez and Martín Nogueira had worked together for over six years at Valtalia, a waste management company, they knew the problem from the inside, and they had built something the market needed.

The team, Laura, Martin and Víctor Gonzalez, built a physics-based platform that simulates 82 different waste materials through real separation equipment. What used to take four months now takes a few days. More than 250 plants in Europe and Latin America have been designed on it, and customers like Voolia, FCC, PreZero, EGF, Ecoembes and Bianna are reporting cost savings above 70%.

That's the design side. The bigger bet now is **Humara Operate**: the same Simulation engine, but running live on the plant floor as a Digital Twin. It pulls in SCADA signals, optical sorter data and operational KPIs, and gives plant teams real-time decision support. Early numbers from the first deployments: 4% less material going to landfill, 4% more recovered, around €800k of extra annual profit per plant, and 5-7% lower OpEx.

Together, both modules create a closed-loop platform: plants are first designed and optimized using Humara Design and later monitored and improved through Humara Operate.

What the capital will fund

The new capital goes to four things: rolling out Humara Design in more European and LatAm markets, launching Humara Operate and its AI copilot Duplantis, growing the commercial team, and hiring across both products.

We're glad to keep backing this team. Waste infrastructure isn't glamorous, but it's exactly the kind of unsexy, high-leverage problem we like to invest in.