RoadRunner (RoadRunner Modern Waste + Recycling) is a Pittsburgh-based, technology-driven waste and recycling company that helps commercial and enterprise businesses cut costs, divert more material from landfills and report on their environmental impact. Founded in 2014 by Graham Rihn, it pairs a managed-services model with proprietary software and AI-powered smart cameras (via its 2022 acquisition of Compology) to meter, monitor and optimize waste streams. The company serves 14,000+ customers across all 50 states and has raised roughly $150M in venture funding.
Graham Rihn is the founder and CEO of RoadRunner, a Pittsburgh-based company that uses data and AI to modernize commercial waste and recycling. A Cornell economics grad and former college linebacker who grew up in Allison Park, Pennsylvania, Rihn started RoadRunner in New York City in 2014 after watching garbage pile up on Manhattan streets and asking why an $85 billion industry had skipped the technology revolution. He moved the company to his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2017 and grew it from roughly 30 people in three cities to more than 500 employees serving over 12,000 customers nationwide, raising more than $150 million along the way, including a $70 million Series D led by General Atlantic.
Philip Stanger is the co-founder and CEO of Olyns, a Silicon Valley startup turning recycling into a self-funding business by pairing AI-powered reverse vending 'Cubes' with retail media advertising. A classically trained musician with degrees from Johns Hopkins and Yale, he scored films before founding indoor-positioning startup Wifarer, then led Apple Maps' indoor mapping team for five years. He started Olyns in 2019 after watching wildfires and floods hit the Santa Cruz Mountains where he lives, betting that recycling fails not for lack of technology but because its business model is broken.
Hauler Hero is a New York-based software company building a cloud and AI-powered operating system for waste and recycling haulers. Its all-in-one platform unifies CRM, dispatching, routing, billing, reporting, and a driver mobile app, replacing the decades-old tools that most trash and recycling companies still run on. Founded in 2020, the company processes millions of pickups a month and is now layering AI agents - Hero Vision, Hero Chat, and Hero Routing - on top of its core platform.
Glacier builds AI-powered robots that sort recyclables inside Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs). Their compact, conveyor-mounted robots use computer vision trained on billions of recycling images to identify and pick more than 70 material categories, while also generating real-time data on what flows through the waste stream - data that brands and recyclers use to prove and improve circularity.
Rebecca Hu-Thrams is the co-founder and CEO of Glacier, a San Francisco-based company building AI-powered robotic arms that sort recyclables in material recovery facilities. Raised by Chinese immigrant parents who instilled a 'reduce, reuse, recycle' ethos, she channeled her Bain consulting background and Thumbtack operating experience into tackling what she calls 'the most demented form of manufacturing on the planet.' Glacier's robots, trained on 3.8 billion images of waste, sort 70+ material categories at 60 picks per minute - preventing roughly 10 million items per robot from reaching landfill annually. Named Fast Company's #1 Most Innovative Company in Robotics & Engineering for 2026, Glacier has raised $33.2 million including a $16M Series A extension in April 2025 backed by Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund and New Enterprise Associates.
Dimension is a San Francisco-based B2B waste management platform (formerly Trash Warrior) that uses software and an AI price quoter, Mirror Mirror, to coordinate hauling, recycling, and hazardous waste removal for enterprise customers like Amazon, Instacart, Home Depot, and the DEA - with the long-term aim of pulling the U.S. recycling rate from 35% to 75%.
Lily Shen is the Founder and CEO of Dimension, a San Francisco-based technology platform transforming waste management with data-driven, full-service solutions. A Princeton and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, she previously held roles at Niantic (Pokemon Go), Opendoor, Deloitte, and the Federal Reserve. Dimension, formerly Trash Warrior, has raised $19.5M in funding and operates in ~300 US cities with a mission to raise the national recycling rate from 35% to 75%.