TrashLab raises $12M to automate waste hauling back offices

By Amara Osei

TrashLab raised a $12 million Series A to expand an AI platform that automates waste haulers’ back offices, the company said Thursday. Nearly 80%—roughly four in five—of the waste haulers using its software now rely on Haul-E, an AI agent that answers inbound calls and captures after-hours orders.

The money will fund agents for dispatch, billing and collections, moving more office work onto software. The pitch is unglamorous but measurable: add trucks without expanding the back office in step. For waste carriers, that could loosen administrative bottlenecks around routes, service exceptions and payment collection.

What does this change for waste haulers?

“Since going live TrashLab has allowed us to grow our fleet 3x all while keeping the same lean backoffice team,” said Mike Smith, president of First State Waste. The company runs roll-off, front-load and portable-toilet services.

That threefold expansion matters because First State reports that its office team stayed lean while its fleet grew. CEO Neil Chaudhary said customers see returns from fuel savings, leaner back offices and faster collections within weeks of going live.

TrashLab says its platform replaces the spreadsheets, paper routes and older software many haulers still use. It brings together several connected functions:

• call center and customer records;
• dispatch and routing;
• an in-cab driver app and truck cameras;
• billing, payments and reporting.

Chaudhary said that choice had left haulers with antiquated tools or platforms unable to handle more than one line of business. First State’s three service lines give that complaint a practical edge.

At Uribe Refuse, truck-camera alerts feed directly into billing. “When the camera flags a can not out, a blocked dumpster, or an overflowed container, it moves from the field to a customer text to the invoice automatically,” said company owner Brad Uribe.

Uribe said the system now catches, bills and resolves issues that previously fell through the cracks. A blocked dumpster has become a billing event, which is about as tangible as software gets. Customers get a field exception tied to a text and invoice; haulers gain a shorter path from service exception to payment.

Haul-E already answers calls and takes orders for most customers, and Chaudhary described it as the first of many agents planned for the platform. The dispatch, billing and collections agents remain under construction, with rollout scheduled through 2027. So the $12 million buys both automation and a timetable.

Funding meets operating scale

Ventana, an early-growth equity firm, led the Series A. Existing investors Bienville Capital, Harlem Capital and CreativeCo also participated. Ventana co-founder and partner Vinay Kumar will join TrashLab’s board.

Ershad Jamil, a former chief growth officer at ServiceTitan and BuildOps, joins as an independent director. He and Kumar will sit on the board as TrashLab moves beyond Haul-E and builds dispatch, billing and collections agents.

TrashLab said annual contract value, or ACV, has grown more than sevenfold since 2024 as customers added modules. The company did not disclose revenue or its 2024 starting ACV, so the rate cannot be converted into absolute sales. The contract-value base has expanded more than seven times without a published dollar benchmark.

TrashLab says it serves hundreds of haulers across more than 40 states in the United States and Canada. Those customers have managed more than 5 million tons of material on the platform since launch. The tonnage is cumulative rather than a disclosed annual throughput rate, but it shows substantial operating use instead of a small pilot fleet.

Waste Business Journal estimates U.S. waste and recycling revenue reached $104.63 billion in 2024, the first year above $100 billion. That put the market $4.63 billion over the threshold. The revenue pool is large; the harder task is proving that software can standardize fragmented routes, billing and customer service at fleet scale.

Kumar described TrashLab as the fastest-growing platform his firm had encountered in an industry underserved by software for decades. The Series A gives it capital to extend beyond call handling while its customer base has already handled millions of tons.

TrashLab was founded in 2022 by Chaudhary, a former BCG and EY-Parthenon consultant, and CTO John Tan, a former senior engineer at Stripe and Google. The company plans to expand its engineering and customer-success teams in the coming months.

Through 2027, TrashLab’s rollout will show whether it can turn a consolidated record system into labor-saving automation at fleet scale. If it does, the sevenfold ACV rise can become a durable commercial model. If not, the company will have raised $12 million for a tidier dashboard.