NEW TECH FOODS

AKA Foods has raised $17.2 million in seed funding to launch AKA Studio, a secure AI platform designed to accelerate food product development.

The round was led by AI entrepreneurs Alex and Michael Bronstein. AKA Studio consolidates a company’s internal R&D data – including sensory analysis on texture, aroma and taste – into a structured system that uses AI to support formulation and optimisation.

According to the company, the platform aims to shorten innovation cycles from years to weeks by bringing together historical research, ingredient specifications, sensory feedback and regulatory documents in one environment. It is designed to support tasks such as reformulation, clean-label development, sugar and fat reduction and supply-chain resilience.

AKA Studio operates as a SaaS platform, with an option for on-premise, air-gapped deployment. AKA Foods said client data is stored in private environments, is not shared or used to train models and remains fully owned by the customer.

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.”

Beyond food and beverage applications, the company said its sensory-AI framework could also benefit flavour, fragrance, cosmetics and pharmaceutical formulation.