Fleek secures funding to drive second-hand fashion supply chain

London-based start-up Fleek, which is building the AI infrastructure to digitise second-hand fashion supply chains powering Vinted, Depop and Whatnot, has secured 25 million US dollars in Series B funding.

The investment was led by Burda Principal Investments, an early Vinted backer and lead investor in its Series C round, with participation from Ebay, FJ Labs, and H14, alongside existing backers, including Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital, and Y Combinator.

In a statement, Fleek said the funding would be used to accelerate the development of its AI-native marketplace, expand its engineering teams, scale its technology platform and grow its global buyer and supplier network.

Founded in 2021 by Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal, Fleek is taking on the manual, fragmented and offline infrastructure powering the 200 billion US dollar second-hand industry with its proprietary AI-powered business-to-business marketplace and systems designed to digitise the second-hand supply chain.

Abhi Arora, co-founder and chief executive of Fleek, said: "Most people have no idea what happens to a piece of clothing after they part with it. It travels thousands of miles, gets sorted by hand in a warehouse in Karachi, and finds its way back to a vintage shop in London or New York, if it's lucky.

“We started Fleek because that system is broken, the market it serves is exploding, and nobody is building the technology and infrastructure to fix it."

Fleek: connecting the global second-hand fashion economy with AI-powered technology

At the centre of the platform is Fleek Sort, a custom vision language model trained on millions of second-hand marketplace transactions from Fleek’s global network over the past four years. The AI model, which is already used by graders in sorting hubs in Pakistan, India and Dubai, and in pilots launching in the UK, Europe and the US, identifies, categorises, grades and merchandises second-hand garments using photographs or videos from smartphones, and then turns a historically manual process into a digital workflow. As more inventory is graded, listed and sold through the platform, Fleek Sort continuously learns from real-world outcomes.

Once processed, inventory is automatically listed on Fleek's marketplace, where AI-powered pricing, search, recommendation and matching systems connect stock with relevant buyers around the world. Every transaction also generates additional data that improves the platform's understanding of second-hand inventory, creating a proprietary intelligence layer for the industry.

Julian von Eckartsberg, managing director of Europe at Burda Principal Investments, said: "We backed Vinted when second-hand fashion was still considered niche. We know what it takes to build a platform that scales in this market. From its growing supplier network to the technology behind it, Fleek is building the infrastructure the next generation of fashion will rely on."

Fleek connects vintage clothing wholesalers and retailers

With up to 24 billion second-hand clothing items moving annually through the global supply chain, Fleek states its AI-powered approach will help suppliers increase recovery rates, enable buyers to source inventory more efficiently and reduce the volume of wasted clothing.

To date, the company said it has kept more than 12 million items in circulation and has connected more than 2,000 verified wholesale suppliers and graders with over 50,000 retailers, resellers and boutiques across more than 100 countries.

Sanket Agarwal, co-founder and chief technology officer of Fleek, added: "There's more data locked inside the global second-hand supply chain than almost any other market, yet historically very little of it has been captured.

“We've built the world's first AI trained specifically to understand second-hand inventory, what it is, what it's worth, who wants it and where demand exists. Every transaction improves that understanding, creating an intelligence layer we believe will become critical infrastructure for the future of the industry."