Lithuania-based tech startup Sort A Brick has launched what it says is “the world’s first automated industrial-grade system for recognizing and sorting pre-owned LEGO bricks”, setting a new standard for the reuse and upcycling of one of the world’s most popular toys.
This launch comes as the company aims to raise €3 million in its next seed round to scale up its operations.
The company’s inaugural system combines custom-built hardware, software and proprietary artificial intelligence to tackle a long-standing challenge in the toy reuse sector: processing mixed piles of LEGO bricks quickly, reliably, and at scale.
The new system can accurately identify and sort more than 25,000 unique bricks across over 4,000 shapes and the 40 most popular colors, achieving greater than 99 percent precision.
It can also match recognized bricks to over 10,000 unique LEGO sets, organizing mixed bricks into selected, build-ready sets in a fraction of the time required by manual sorting.
With its new system in operation and more than 420 orders totaling over 5,000 kilograms of bricks from 16 countries, Sort A Brick is leveraging advanced engineering to improve families’ access to sustainable play.
Unlocking precision and speed in automated sorting
At the heart of the new patent-pending system is a custom-engineered conveyor that recognizes and sorts LEGO bricks automatically using computer vision trained on data from tens of thousands of bricks. Loose bricks are poured into a feeder that separates them one by one.
Each brick then moves into a recognition chamber where AI identifies its specific shape, color and other distinctive parameters thus building a precise inventory for each customer’s collection. The system can pick out even lookalike pieces with subtle differences while keeping the process moving quickly.
Once the full inventory of a customer’s brick collection is created, it is matched against part-lists of already existing LEGO sets to find which sets can be rebuilt completely from the available bricks. If some bricks are missing, they will be added to make a set assembly-ready.
Ilya Malkin, Sort A Brick’s co-founder, says: “The conveyor we’ve built is the first of its kind—an industrial-grade machine with exceptionally high accuracy that can process around 1,000 parts per hour.”
Previously, the sorting process required careful manual handling and multiple scans per brick to achieve accurate results. According to Malkin, the new conveyor can process up to three times the volume per hour while requiring less than a tenth of the human labor.
Rising demand for sustainable and affordable play
The global market for secondhand goods has grown rapidly in recent years, in sectors ranging from clothing to electronics and furniture. Amid this market growth is a persistent demand for affordable toys, especially in the face of rising costs and changing consumption habits.
Malkin says: “We are seeing faster growth in the market for used toys, as families want options that balance affordability, quality, and a personal connection to what they already own.
“We estimate that the secondary LEGO market has outpaced retail for the past five years, reaching around €1 billion in 2024.
“Still, only a small fraction of LEGO bricks re-enter the resale market, with the majority confined to fan communities. With the right technology and services, we can unlock massive untapped demand for quality used sets in the mainstream market.”
The recent rise of collection schemes, like LEGO’s own Replay and Brick Take-Back programs, Magic Brix and Fairy Bricks in the UK, and BrickRecycler.com in the US, points to broader support for circular options.
These approaches focus on cleaning and redistributing loose bricks in partly pre-sorted arrangements. In contrast, Sort A Brick’s automated system make it possible to return customer’s own bricks sorted into 100 percent complete sets that are ready for rebuilding, thereby moving the industry closer to closed-loop use.
Malkin says: “We are now working on a next-generation conveyor that will operate at 20 times the speed of the current, to deliver unparalleled accuracy and throughput.
“With every iteration of AI training, we are moving closer to our ultimate goal – recognizing all LEGO parts in all colors ever produced.”
Plans are also under way to launch two pilot sorting centers in Western Europe to serve as a foundation for further expansion.
Malkin says: “Enhancing capacity means serving more families and meeting the growing interest in sustainable brick play across Europe and beyond.”
