Ambercycle: a spark that scaled

Ambercycle wasn’t born out of a business plan. It was born out of curiosity. Shay and Moby were scientists drawn to a problem that felt personal, solvable – and then, suddenly, massive.

In a recent conversation, Ambercycle’s CEO and co-founder Shay Sethi reflected on how it all began. “We weren’t even targeting the textile industry. We were just scientists doing an experiment.”
As they dug deeper, the scale became clear. Post-consumer textiles, particularly those made from polyester blends, were being discarded at an alarming rate. What felt like a manageable, closet-sized issue quickly became a global wake-up call.

The beginning of something bigger

Just months after founding the company, Ambercycle was selected as one of the first winners of the Global Change Award. Back then, textile-to-textile recycling was still on the margins. Most of the innovations were stuck in labs or small-scale pilots, especially when it came to recycling blended materials at the molecular level.

“Literally one of the first things we did as a company was winning the Global Change Award. It opened our eyes to the scale of the problem we were contemplating solving.” Looking back, Shay recalls just how pivotal that moment was. “We were only weeks away from running out of money when someone told us about the Global Change Award. We applied, we won – and without that win, Ambercycle might not exist today.”

But the Global Change Award offered far more than funding.
“The Changemaker Programme was even more catalytic than the actual prize. Exposure to the industry, talking to people that have been in the industry for 30+ years, and trying to understand what it was going to take to transform this entire industry was really remarkable.”

The hardest part? Time.

For Ambercycle, one of the biggest early challenges was coming to terms with the slow pace of systemic change. The urgency was there. The need was clear. But the process? Slow.

“The journey of starting something new is a winding path. It can be exhilarating and excruciating. Things take time. And you have to go step by step. Initially, this was incredibly frustrating to us.” In a world that often celebrates speed and scale, embracing patience became one of their most important tools. The lesson stuck. “As we’ve gone through the past 10 years, we’ve realised and learned that things that really impact people take time.”

A decade of change – and what’s next

As the Global Change Award celebrates its 10th anniversary, Ambercycle is proof that big change starts small. That sometimes, the right kind of support, at the right time, can create ripple effects that last for decades.

We just had an idea. We had no idea what the journey was going to look like.

Shay Sethi

Today, Ambercycle is proving it can be done. Their material solution is scaling. They’ve partnered with brands like Arc’teryx and Athleta, raised more than $50 million in capital, and built a team of nearly 60 people. In 2022 alone, they diverted more than 1,100 metric tonnes of textiles from landfills. Their target for 2025? Over 4,500 tonnes.

Looking ahead, Ambercycle is developing a commercial-scale facility that will eventually process up to 250,000 units of textiles each day, a major step towards closing the loop on polyester waste.
“We’ve been able to grow the company in ways I couldn’t have even imagined. I can’t be more excited for what’s going to happen in the next 10,” says Shay.

Ten years with Ambercycle

Watch the video: Ambercycle’s CEO and co-founder Shay Sethi reflects on the early days, the highs and lows of building a company, and what it takes to reimagine the fashion industry from the ground up.