- AI-based food trends prediction company Tastewise recently announced it raised $5 million in Series A funding
Tastewise — an artificial intelligence food trends prediction company founded by former Google executives Alon Chen and Eyal Gaon — announced it raised $5 million in Series A funding led by PeakBridge. Including this round and the $1.5 million seed round of funding from PICO Venture Partners last year, Tastewise has raised $6.5 million to date.
This round of funding will be used for further developing Tastewise’s artificial intelligence technology focused on understanding human interactions with food like the motivations behind why people select and prefer certain foods over others.
As Tastewise reviews the data to the specific functions that interest consumers, the company not only knows what foods are trending but also why it is. And with the platform expansion, Tastewise will further train its artificial intelligence to comprehend the deep human motivation around food trends with insights that will shape the future of the industry.
Plus Tastewise gains actionable insights into real-life interactions with food by analyzing over 1 billion food photos shared per month together with the largest restaurant menu database available today (over 180,000 restaurants in the U.S.).
Currently, the company works with Fortune 500 food and beverage brands to pinpoint market opportunities and it is primed to identify potential market gaps to fill for rising trends like virtual restaurants. And the company plans to expand the AI platform with additional image analysis tools to provide more proactive insights on emerging trends in the culinary industry.
“We’re looking forward to deepening the understanding of consumer needs and trends by using AI that comprehends human behavior around eating and drinking,” said Tastewise co-founder Alon Chen. “We are delighted to partner with PeakBridge’s team of experts and executives from Nestlé, Mars, Pepsi and Sequoia Partners, as we build toward creating a smarter, better food industry powered by AI and food intelligence.”
PeakBridge — which is a specialized food-tech venture fund — has a number of executives with experience in the agri-food industry including Erich Sieber (former Nestlé executive and partner of Nestlé’s Fund-of-One) and Nadav Berger (founder of FoodLab Capital). And Peakbridge Venture Partner Rick Borenstein (Chairman of Sequoia Partners and former President of Wells Fargo Investment Company) will join Tastewise as a board member.
“We are dedicated to supporting companies that are focused on high-impact FoodTech insights and solutions, like Tastewise, as they expand their AI platform development to gain deeper insights about trends that will change the future of the food industry,” added Sieber. “As FoodTech investors, we’ve evaluated hundreds of companies’ impact on the market. Tastewise is absolutely a company that is on the path towards revolutionizing the food industry with deep data-based consumer understanding.”
Along with the funding announcement, Tastewise published its 2019 Food for Function report thus drawing attention to some of the largest opportunities for food brands emerging in today’s era of wellness-obsessed consumers.
