We are leading the seed round of Ambio, an AI-native, end-to-end procurement platform that makes recycled plastics predictable. Here are the key factors that built our conviction in the Helsinki-based startup.

Ambio’s mission strengthens European resilience

European resilience is often discussed in the context of defense, energy, or infrastructure. But there are other, much less highlighted factors, such as critical raw materials. Plastics are one of them.

Europe produces plastics at scale – and is an even bigger consumer of the fossil feedstock behind them. The 54.6 Mt of plastics produced in 2024 are key inputs for industries such as packaging, building and construction, and automotive. The challenge lies upstream: virgin plastic production requires oil and gas as inputs, and the EU imports 96.6% of its crude oil from non-EU countries.

That dependency also exposes the European plastics market to fossil fuel price fluctuations. Price-driving factors, such as the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, ripple down the supply chain and raise production costs across the economy.

Falling back on recycled plastics means decoupling Europe from these dependencies. Producing less virgin plastic means importing less oil and gas. It is also another step towards a circular economy: using recyclates is as good for the bottom line as it is for the environment.

The company is setting a much-needed standard in an opaque, undigitized market

Everyone thinks of plastics and their input materials such as recyclates as a commodity, but that is not the case just yet. The recyclates market has no standard; Ambio is creating one. By defining how recycled materials are qualified, documented and priced, Ambio paves the way for recyclates to become a commodity.

Today, the market is far from its potential. Due to the nature of their input material, recyclates vary significantly in quality, depending on their source, batch, and processing history. Data is scattered or missing, so quality is often only confirmed on the production line. This lack of data and transparency leads to a lack of trust between buyers and sellers. Fixing this persistent trust issue in the recyclates market could well enable its rapid expansion. 

Ambio has understood that industrial buyers want recycled materials to behave like any other input: consistent quality, reliable delivery, and no surprises. To meet this demand, the team built an AI-native, end-to-end procurement solution: verified materials, structured quality data, and one accountable partner from the first sample to long-term deliveries.

Materials are qualified through samples, documentation, and defined quality protocols. The resulting test and lab data are proprietary to Ambio. With every transaction, Ambio adds structured data on materials, suppliers, pricing, and outcomes – and uses it to improve matching, quoting, and execution.

Ambio’s business model creates an AI-resilient moat

Ambio’s unique platform is only one part of what built our conviction; the other is the business model that the team around Tommi Bergström and Elmo Pakkanen is developing.

In the age of AI, marketplaces face the existential risk of being made obsolete by autonomous agents that search, list, and match on behalf of their “humans”. The marketplaces that will thrive are those that institutionalize trust at scale – and that build a moat from three things agents cannot replicate: aggregation, liability, and pricing power. Mathias Ockenfels, Partner in our fund team, has laid out this thinking in his article on the HAHO framework for marketplaces in the age of AI. Ambio’s Merchant-of-Record model contributes to all three:

• Aggregation: Ambio bundles fragmented supply from many recyclers into one reliable source for industrial buyers.
• Liability: as principal, Ambio owns the material, finances the transaction, and conducts quality assurance – it carries the risk, not the customer.
• Pricing power: owning every transaction gives Ambio the data to price a non-standardized product with confidence.

The result is a trusted third party whose incentives are financially aligned with those of its buyers and sellers.

The team combines strong execution with exceptional traction

Beyond the hard data, our conviction in Ambio’s founding team has deepened through repeated interactions and their consistent ability to translate ambition into tangible progress.

Prior to co-founding Ambio, Tommi and Elmo worked together at Slush – arguably the industry’s conference with the best “product” and the strongest product-market fit, as its attendance and rise in popularity show. Tommi then gained experience in the materials and sustainability sectors at BCG. Together with Elmo, he led Ambio’s expansion into Germany, Europe’s largest plastics market, and quickly turned the market-entry strategy into a local team, shipped product, and early commercial traction. Elmo, as Chief Product Officer at Slush, built deep expertise in creating multi-sided platform products from the ground up. He also had a personal connection to the plastics industry through his family’s business.

The team has repeatedly shown remarkable execution speed: revenue has grown very fast all the while becoming even more efficient. Order velocity is high, and customers are increasingly sticky – all of which convinced us at b2venture to become the lead investor in Ambio’s seed round. 

In addition to the great traction, what stands out most is how mission-driven Tommi, Elmo and their team are. They combine a genuine drive to make the circular economy work with an exceptional work ethic – and with complementary expertise and a personal background in the field. For us, that is a core part of the investment case.

Ambio has a vision to scale globally

Recycled plastic is becoming a strategic raw material. Demand will keep rising for decades and recycled content is increasingly being written into law. Yet no incumbent owns this market. Virgin plastics have their global majors; the recycled plastics market has thousands of small recyclers and regional brokers. In order to realize synergies and create economies of scale, it needs one standard and one platform to aggregate all the volume across this scattered European and global landscape. Only in this way can a European recyclates market flourish.

That is particularly pressing in the face of geopolitical developments. China, an important source of imported plastics for the EU, is applying a well-proven playbook to this vertical: heavily subsidizing domestic production to create price advantages, gain market share abroad and, ultimately, make other economies dependent on Chinese supply. This dynamic is now threatening to play out in plastics as well. Without a strong European alternative, supply chains risk becoming exposed once again. A thriving recyclates market – Ambio’s major vision – strengthens European resilience rather than undermining it.

Ambio’s ambition extends beyond Europe: to become a global procurement platform through which recycled materials are sourced, qualified, priced, financed and delivered. We see a substantial opportunity to bring consistency and scale to a fragmented market – and believe Tommi, Elmo, and their team can build a leading company in it.

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Read an in-depth interview with Tommi and Elmo on their recent financing round here.