Furniture waste is a growing concern as consumers and companies seek to reduce carbon emissions. In the U.S. alone, we throw out roughly 12 million tons of furniture every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, leaving it to rot in landfills. Most of it is less than fifteen years old. Recycling furniture can be difficult, mostly because selling and moving it is such a pain.

Apparel companies like Poshmark, Dpop and Thredup are thriving in online thrifting, but furniture thrifting is a lot more complicated, simply due to the size of the items. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace list furniture, but it’s up to the consumers to figure out how to pick up and deliver the items. That can be costly and potentially dangerous, with strangers inviting strangers into their homes.

AptDeco is offering a new business model. The New York-based startup is an online marketplace for buying and selling used furniture that provides pick-up and delivery for items. It also works with major retailers, like West Elm and Pottery Barn, to sell floor models or resell items that have been returned.

“By extending the lifecycle of furniture, overall it’s just better for the environment, whether it be less wood being chopped out of forests to just the supply chain associated with producing that furniture,” said Reham Fagiri, founder and CEO of AptDeco.

For big furniture retailers, there is big waste in returns and the reverse logistics involved — from the costs to the transportation emissions. Instead, partner brands are now selling their returned items on AptDeco as soon as a customer requests a return, directly from the customer’s home. AptDeco uses its own resale data to price items to sell quickly, often within a week. They can then retrieve the item from the returner’s home and deliver it directly to a resale buyer, bypassing the need to take these returned items to a distribution center first. 

Kathleen O’Brien bought her dining room table, TV console and headboard from AptDeco.

“The world is kind of on fire, literally, and so anything that I can do to reduce my own footprint in the world is what I’m trying to do, like in all aspects of my life and furniture specifically,” said O’Brien.

While the furniture sells at as much as a 50% discount to new, the service comes at a price.

“We earn a percentage that ranges from 15% to as high as 60% depending on the product, the brand, the condition, and a lot of different variations that go into it,” said Fagiri.

The company operates everywhere in the U.S. except Alaska and Hawaii. The company’s carrier network across so many markets makes its expansion potential very attractive to investors like Initialized Capital. 

“Contributing to the circular economy through their logistics business is a great example of the types of climate adaptation companies that we see as having longevity in the next phase of climate tech,” said Zoe Perret, a partner at Initialized Capital,

AptDeco is also backed by Comcast Ventures, Y Combinator, Hearst Lab, Great Oaks Venture Capital and Soma Capital. It has raised $14.5 million in total funding so far.

In the 10 years since its launch, Fagiri says the company has offset over 19 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the environment. That’s equivalent to roughly 6.5 million cars taken off the road.

CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.

One of the world’s most valuable private tech companies is raising billions more in cash and is in no rush to go public, sources told CNBC. 

San Francisco-based Databricks is raising at least another $5 billion in its latest funding round, though it could raise up to $8 billion given the round is ongoing, according to several people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. The latest raise would value the company at $55 billion and could top the largest round of the year, by OpenAI.

The latest funding is designed to help Databricks employees sell shares, one of the people said. Reducing pressure from employees to cash out also reduces the need for a liquidity event such as an IPO. One source said the funding round makes Databricks’ highly anticipated public debut less urgent. But it could still happen in the back half of next year.

Databricks was founded in 2013 and sells software that helps enterprises organize data and build their own generative AI products. It uses machine learning to help clients from AT&T to Walgreens parse and make sense of massive troves of data. 

This equity round could be the largest in a banner year for artificial intelligence funding, when 1 in 3 venture dollars has gone to an AI startup, according to CB Insights. OpenAI holds the record in 2024, raising $6.6 billion in October at a $157 billion valuation.

Databricks last raised $500 million at a $43 billion valuation. It’s backed by Nvidia, Capital One, Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Insight Partners, Tiger Global and others. 

The Information first reported that Databricks was raising money.

The firm has capitalized on the momentum in artificial intelligence. This summer, it acquired MosaicML, a $1.3 billion software startup that focuses on large language models that can churn out natural-sounding text. Databricks told investors earlier this year that annualized revenue would hit $2.4 billion by the midpoint of 2024.

Its decision to stay private comes as software stocks have struggled to get out of a rut brought on by higher interest rates. Shares of rival Snowflake are down 13% this year. While its fellow software IPO candidates such as Stripe have taken significant haircuts on valuations, Databricks has grown its value while expanding its employee base. 

CEO Ali Ghodsi said at a conference Nov. 20 that he’s optimizing for the success of Databricks over the next decade or two, not optimizing for an IPO.

“If we were going to go, the earliest would be, let’s say, mid-next year, or something like that,” Ghodsi said at Newcomer’s Cerebral Valley AI Conference. “So, you know, could happen next year.”

A Databricks spokesperson declined to comment.

Correction: OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October at a $157 billion valuation. A previous version of this article misstated the valuation amount.