The seed funding round led by AI entrepreneurs Alex and Michael Bronstein is to fund what it claims is “the world’s first” secure AI system for food innovation.
The funding is to support the official launch of AKA Studio, a secure AI system and proprietary platform, which consolidates the company’s own knowledge and ongoing R&D.
According to the company it enables food companies to “create, optimise, and launch products much faster, smarter, and more affordably than ever before”.
The AKA Studio incorporates experimental and analytical measurements related to texture, aroma and taste from dedicated sensory research facilities, before applying AI assistants to guide formulation and optimisation.
The integration is designed to shorten the innovation cycle from years to weeks by combining historical and ongoing R&D data, ingredient specifications, sensory feedback and regulatory documentation into a framework. Formulation remains a hands-on scientific process.
AKA Studio is able to link structured digital information with sensory evidence, which it said will enable companies to optimise formulations scientifically and bring healthier, more sustainable products to market with greater precision and security.
The platform also supports reformulation for clean labels, reduced sugar and fat content, and more resilient supply chains.
AKA Studio operates as a secure SaaS (software as a service) platform managed by AKA Foods, giving clients private environments for their data.
Professor Alex Bronstein, chief scientist at AKA Foods, said: “AKA Foods is essentially bringing to market a new type of a grammar; a language for food, creating AI agents that are capable of connecting to different external data sources and then making recommendations on how to improve the recipe. This is something that a generic AI model like ChatGPT will never be able to achieve.”
David Sack, founder and CEO of AKA Foods, added: “The global food industry holds enormous amounts of valuable knowledge but struggles to use it effectively. AKA Studio gives companies the ability to capture, organise and apply that knowledge securely. This investment allows us to expand deployment to enterprise clients worldwide and continue advancing the science behind how food is created.”
