Fleek Raises $25M to Build AI for Secondhand Fashion

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-08

Fleek, a London-based startup, just dropped some big news. They've raised $25 million (that's about €21.9 million) in Series B funding. This brings their total funding to $45 million. They're building the AI infrastructure that powers the global secondhand clothing industry. ### Who's Backing Them? The round was led by Burda Principal Investments. They've got some serious company too: eBay, FJ Labs, and H14 joined in. Existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital, and Y Combinator also chipped in again. ### What's the Problem They're Solving? Abhi Arora, co-founder and CEO of Fleek, put it bluntly: "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." ### How Fleek Works Founded in 2021 by Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal, Fleek is building the infrastructure powering the global secondhand clothing industry. They do this through a B2B marketplace and AI systems that digitize the supply chain behind it. The company references a study indicating that annually, as many as 24 billion items are transported from donation bins in London, Paris, and New York to textile sorting and grading centers worldwide. Despite demand for secondhand fashion growing three times faster than traditional apparel, the infrastructure powering this $200+ billion industry is manual, fragmented, and offline. Garments are still assessed by hand, graded using inconsistent standards, and traded through disconnected networks with little pricing transparency. Without digitalization, the industry simply can't scale to meet the demand already in front of it. ### The AI Behind It All Fleek combines a B2B marketplace with proprietary AI systems that help suppliers, graders, retailers, and resellers source, process, and trade secondhand inventory at scale. Sanket Agarwal, co-founder and CTO of Fleek, explained: "There's more data locked inside the global secondhand 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 secondhand 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." Fleek is evolving into a fully AI-native platform for the global secondhand industry. The company has expanded AI across inventory processing, merchandising, marketplace operations, and buyer discovery. Their proprietary models are continuously trained on marketplace activity to improve inventory discovery and transform how secondhand goods are bought and sold at scale. ### What's Next for Fleek? Julian von Eckartsberg, Managing Director Europe at Burda Principal Investments, said: "We backed Vinted when secondhand 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." The company plans to use this fresh capital to accelerate development of its AI-native marketplace, expand its engineering teams, scale its technology platform, and grow its global buyer and supplier network. Today, Fleek connects 2,000+ wholesale suppliers and graders with 50,000+ buyers across the world. ### Key Takeaways - Fleek raised $25 million in Series B funding, bringing total to $45 million - The round was led by Burda Principal Investments with participation from eBay - They're building AI infrastructure for the $200+ billion secondhand fashion industry - The platform connects 2,000+ suppliers with 50,000+ buyers globally - Funds will be used to expand AI development and grow their network