Most startups are still trying to figure out how to recycle the hype from last year’s pitch decks, Novoloop is out here recycling polyethylene, the actual kind clogging your oceans, not your VC inbox. And they just locked in a $21 million Series B round to prove that doing the hard thing is, in fact, the smart thing. The round was led by Taranis, Perenco Group’s circularity and decarbonization powerhouse, and backed by returning believers at Valo Ventures and new momentum from SHOP Limited (aka the Bata Shoe Company family office). The game here isn’t greenwashing. It’s green engineering, scaled with industrial teeth.
Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao started this journey back in high school, real story, not myth-making, after a class trip to Vancouver’s South Waste Transfer Station made one thing painfully clear: if no one was going to solve plastic waste, they would. Fast forward to 2025 and Novoloop, headquartered in Menlo Park with a global footprint from California to India, is no longer just a science project with purpose. It’s a chemical upcycling force with serious intellectual property (50+ patents), a product in-market (Lifecycled™ TPU), and enough inbound demand that they’re literally sold out of production.
The core tech? Lifecycling™, not a branding gimmick. It’s a proprietary platform built on ATOD (Accelerated Thermal Oxidative Decomposition), a mouthful that translates to: “we break down LDPE and HDPE waste and rebuild it into virgin-quality thermoplastic polyurethane.” In short, they’re turning plastic bags into high-performance materials that land in sneakers, car seats, and electronics, without the fossil guilt trip.
The pilot plant in Surat, India, built with Aether Industries, is already live and running commercially-representative feedstock with 70 metric tons per year of capacity. That’s not theory. That’s thermodynamics doing work. And this isn’t niche. It’s aimed straight at the global polyurethane market, with demand from brands like On Running, whose Cloudprime sneaker was the first to launch using Novoloop’s material. No surprise they were named one of TIME’s Top Greentech Companies of 2025.
Dr. Jennifer Le Roy, CTO, is leading the tech roadmap like a chemical conductor, expanding Lifecycling™ beyond TPU into adhesives, coatings, and nylon intermediates. Meanwhile, Wang and Yao are scaling operations and partnerships across Asia, Europe, and North America, laying the groundwork for their first full-scale commercial facility.
This isn’t a sustainability story with an asterisk. It’s a masterclass in how to take the dirtiest problem on the planet and build a business that cleans up, literally and commercially. Circular economy, industrial grade.
