Meet Smartex: The AI Startup Funded By Amazon And iPod Inventor Tony Fadell That's Stopping 1M Kilograms Of Textile Waste Before It Happens

Paula Tudoran

Wed, Jul 2, 2025, 12:30 PM 4 min read

Smartex, a Portuguese startup founded in 2018, is using artificial intelligence to eliminate textile waste before it happens, capturing the attention of major investors including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), H&M Group, and Tony Fadell, inventor of the iPod and Nest thermostat, CNBC reports.

Co-founder Gilberto Loureiro began working in textile factories as a teenager and quickly noticed how slow, manual inspection processes allowed production flaws to continue for hours, leading to massive amounts of discarded material, according to CNBC. After earning a master's degree in physics, Loureiro launched Smartex with the goal of digitizing defect detection using real-time vision systems and AI.

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According to Smartex, it integrates cameras and computer vision software into textile machines to detect flaws the instant they appear. When an error is found, the system pauses production immediately, triggering what Smartex calls a "Golden Stop."

According to the company, over 110,000 Golden Stops have saved more than 1 million kilograms of fabric since the system launched. That number translates to roughly 5.8 million garments saved from the landfill.

Beyond sustainability, Smartex says that the system improves factory yields by 0.37% per kilogram of fabric, a meaningful margin boost in an industry that operates on thin profitability, CNBC reports.

"If this is the largest industry that is still untouched by the internet and is one of the largest pollutants in the world, and nobody is working on this in terms of technology, then there is a massive gap here," Loureiro told CNBC.

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Smartex's solution has drawn the support of major industry figures. In 2022, the company announced it raised $24.7 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Fadell's Build Collective. That same round, H&M Group made a strategic investment, becoming one of the first global retailers to endorse the startup.