AI and the Future of Circularity: What Will Unlock Scale?
At the Lifestyle & Design Cluster seminar in Copenhagen, NORNORM’s CEO Anders Jepsen joined a panel exploring how artificial intelligence can accelerate circular business models. His message was clear: AI is the technology that will make large-scale circularity achievable.
A turning point for circularity
For years, circular business models have carried enormous potential - yet struggled to scale. The reason was not lack of ambition. It was complexity: tracking thousands of products across multiple lifecycles, forecasting demand, and coordinating movement in real time. These processes have been too manual and too fragmented for circularity to reach its full promise.
How AI changes the equation
Artificial intelligence introduces a level of precision and predictability that circular systems have never had before. It can anticipate where items will be needed, optimise refurbishment routes, and manage continuous furniture flows with far greater accuracy.
For NORNORM, this means guiding tens of thousands of articles through reuse, refurbishment, and recirculation - simply, reliably, and at scale.
A shift beyond operations
AI does not just streamline circular logistics. It challenges long-standing norms in a largely linear furniture industry.
Design roles, production models, and value creation will evolve as intelligent systems shape how products move, adapt, and extend their lifecycles.
Circularity becomes not only possible at scale, but more competitive than traditional make-use-discard models.
A new chapter for the industry
Circularity is now entering a phase where complexity becomes opportunity. The question is no longer if circular models can scale, but how quickly organisations will adapt.
At NORNORM, we see AI as a natural partner to circularity - helping us build a future where furniture flows intelligently, waste falls sharply, and circularity becomes the new norm.