Social startup Atelier Riforma is among the 13 social enterprises selected from across Europe for “Grow AI – Social Tides”, one of the programmes supported by Google for Startups Accelerator.
Grow AI is an accelerator programme dedicated to social companies and impact organisations that use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to pursue positive impact. Social Tides is promoted by INCO Academy with the support of Google.org.
Over the next 6 months, the startup will receive tools, technical knowledge, mentoring and a $190,000 grant to grow its technology and business.

Atelier Riforma has designed and developed (from 2021 until now) Re4Circular, a technological tool – based on Artificial Intelligence – used to smartply classify clothes and fabrics that are no longer used. Starting from a simple photograph of a garment and of its label, Re4Circular extracts and records all the essential data to best recover that garment through circular economy processes (such as reuse, recycling, tailoring, etc.).

Connected to this classification technology there is also a digital platform, which matches supply and demand (B2B) of this material, so that the organisations that collect used garments, as well as fashion brands that have deadstocks, – by using Re4Circular – can direct them to all those professionals and companies that are able to reuse the material in their business. This serves to reduce waste in the fashion industry, saving textiles from landfill and, on the contrary, valorising them as productive resources instead of virgin material.

Only two Italian projects were selected across Europe and Atelier Riforma is also the only project focused on the fashion sector.
The other selected social enterprises come from countries such as Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Lithuania and all use AI for the common good, e.g. to improve the lives of blind people, increase pedestrian safety on the streets, diagnose heart diseases in advance, provide ongoing support to people with psychological disorders, make healthcare services accessible to all, combat fake news in information, promote women’s employment, make agriculture more sustainable, train young people in new technologies, etc.

Between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, the Piedmontese startup has been awarded funds (both national and international) amounting to around €250,000, which they will use to improve their technology and spread their service as widely as possible. A project that is the result of a lot of hard work and determination, which is beginning to receive rewards and have its important social mission recognised internationally.