Starday, an AI-based food innovation company reinventing category growth, announced it has raised $11 million in Series A funding to accelerate retail expansion and develop first-of-its-kind partnerships with retailers and CPG brands to create bespoke products. The funding round was led by Slow Ventures and Equal Ventures and it includes $8 million in equity and $3 million in a debt credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank, along with investment from large global food and beverage companies. This funding round brings Starday’s total funding to $20 million in equity and debt.
Starday utilizes AI to predict unmet consumer needs and corresponding product opportunities and then develops the products for retail distribution. Founded by Chaz Flexman (CEO), Lena Kwak (Product), and Lily Burtis (Data/Platform), Starday will utilize the funding to expand the rollouts for 14 products across four of its brands, including All Day chickpea protein crunch.
The prime notable example of this funding in action is the launch of Habeya, Starday’s allergen-free snack brand nationwide in Kroger, Hannaford stores across New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, and upcoming placement in Erewhon stores across Los Angeles County. Addressing a gap for families navigating allergen restrictions, retailers see this as a high-growth segment with untapped demand.
With the new funding round, the company is launching platform partnerships with retailers that empower them to stay ahead of trends, drive innovation, and optimize the customer experience. Under these partnerships, Starday will collaborate with retail partners to develop and launch products that capture unmet consumer needs unique to retailers’ markets. These Starday products will be informed by whitespace on their retail partners’ shelves, where they have the right to win and expand their share of the wallet.
With consumer data and leveraging machine learning to accelerate development, Starday can develop products in months, not multiple years, like the industry standard. Its products are available in Hannaford, Sprouts, Target, The Fresh Market, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market and via e-commerce platforms such as Instacart and Amazon, with dozens of additional retailers launching this year.
Starday products on retail shelves outperform well-recognized incumbent brands; All Day chickpea protein crunch at Sprouts nationwide, for example, outperforms same-store sales and category velocity.
KEY QUOTES:
“AI empowers food product developers with powerful tools for data analysis, trend prediction, and rapid iteration, bridging the gap between consumer desires and technical formulation. In founding Starday, we wanted to empower retailers and brands to leverage AI, human creativity, and industry expertise to craft and launch the next generation of food products, brought to market faster and more effectively. This infusion of capital marks the next phase of Starday’s growth in which we are accelerating the retail footprint for our brands, collaborating with retailers to build in the white space for consumers, and partnering with food companies to help them bring new products and brands to market.”
- Chaz Flexman, CEO, Starday
“What excites us about Starday is how they’re rethinking the entire system for how food brands are created and scaled. They’re not just launching products — they’re building a platform that helps retailers get into and grow new, novel categories at a fundamentally lower cost. That kind of structural advantage is rare in CPG.”
- Will Quist, Slow Ventures
