NANDO raises €3.3 million to revolutionize waste management with AI

Turin, Torino Feb 19, 2026 (EMWNews.com) – NANDO (Re Learn srl), an Italian startup developing AI-driven solutions for waste monitoring, announces the closing of a 3.3 million capital increase.

The round was led by MAIA Ventures (Praesidium SA), through the Maia I fund, which participates in the EIF InvestEU Fund program, and CDP Venture Capital SGR, through the Accelerators Fund, with the participation of the Piemonte Next Fund, established and managed by CDP Venture Capital and subscribed by the regional financial company FinPiemonte to maximize innovation investments in the region, as well as investors already involved in the company, including Club degli Investitori, La4G, and EMBA Capital Partners.

This investment will allow NANDO – already chosen by more than 80 companies worldwide – to strengthen its leadership in two key areas: optimizing municipal waste collection and reducing food waste. The company will expand its AI technologies and enhance its data collection and analytics systems across the entire waste management value chain.

Founded in 2021 by Riccardo Leonardi, Fabrizio Custorella, Giovanni Lucifora, Federico Fedi, and Simone Cavariani, NANDO has developed a platform that integrates Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Computer Vision. The company was accelerated by ZERO, a cleantech accelerator within CDP Venture Capital’s National Accelerator Network, delivered by Zest and ELIS, with ENI as the main corporate partner, alongside other industry players.

To date, NANDO processes over 40,000 waste images daily from around the world – from Japan to the United States, across the UAE, Europe, and the UK – and supports over 80 clients, including major waste producers such as corporate offices and industrial sites, as well as waste service providers like facility management companies and urban collection operators, in addition to cafeterias and catering services. NANDO’s clients include ISS, Narita International Tokyo Airport, Samsic Facility Italia, A2A, IREN, Bywaters ltd , IVECO Group, Deloitte, Grosvenor Property UK, Recorra, Capgemini, CBRE, The Howard de Walden Estate.

By introducing high-granularity real-time data, these organizations overcome the limitations of traditional manual and discontinuous monitoring systems, digitalizing, automating, and optimizing their waste management processes, leading to measurable reductions in time, cost, and environmental impact. NANDO’s proprietary platform consolidates the monitoring of different waste types – ranging from food waste to industrial and municipal waste – into a single solution, making data easily accessible via a unified dashboard. A dedicated business unit focuses on food waste reduction within the collective catering sector, with the aim of measurably reducing waste and delivering tangible benefits in operational cost savings and environmental impact mitigation. In this field, NANDO collaborates with international-level clients such as Dussmann.

Riccardo Leonardi, CEO and Co-founder of NANDO, comments:  

“Over the past few years, we have strengthened our position in the waste management landscape, serving around 80 clients across more than 17 countries and partnering with major global players. With this new round, we aim to seize the unique market opportunity in the waste sector. Rising labor and raw material costs, coupled with workforce shortages, have made waste measurement increasingly crucial for optimizing operations across companies and municipalities. This challenge is particularly pressing in the food service sector, where our recently launched solution has received strong market interest.   The capital raised will allow us to further develop our technology and consolidate NANDO’s position as the single point of access for waste data“.

Stefano Molino, Head of the Acceleratori Fund at CDP Venture Capital, says:  

“We are proud to reaffirm our trust in NANDO’s team, a concrete example of how technological innovation can generate measurable positive impact on society by optimizing waste management, reducing food waste, and actively contributing to a more circular and sustainable economy. The team’s ability to digitalize traditionally inefficient processes shows the transformative potential of this technology in driving systemic change toward more responsible production and consumption models“.

Andrea Galassi, Founding Partner of MAIA Ventures, adds:  

“We decided to invest in NANDO because, through its proprietary computer vision and AI platform, it addresses – with a scalable technological approach – the urgent and large-scale challenge of measuring and reducing waste production, particularly in the agri-food sector. The team’s capacity to turn an operational issue into actionable data represents enormous economic and environmental impact potential“.

Looking ahead, NANDO plans to strengthen its presence in Europe and the UK and accelerate expansion into the US and Asia. The new funding will support team growth and the development of new product lines dedicated to monitoring different types of waste, putting data at the core of strategies for reduction, operational optimization, and decision support across the entire supply chain.