AKA Foods raises $17.2M to launch AI-driven studio for faster food development
Amsterdam-based AKA Foods has secured $17.2 million in seed funding to launch AKA Studio, a platform that compresses food product development from years to weeks. It centralizes sensory data and institutional knowledge, giving product teams a single system to plan, test, and iterate with evidence-not guesswork.
Founded in 2021 by CEO David Sack and Chief Scientist Professor Alex Bronstein, the company started by chasing the perfect vegan pizza cheese. That goal exposed a bigger issue: food R&D was fragmented, slow, and siloed. Seed funding led by AI specialists Alex and Michael Bronstein has now pushed the platform to market.
What AKA Studio actually does
The platform runs on a sensory-AI framework that links formulation work with lab-generated sensory data like texture, aroma, and taste. It uses a specialized "language for food" to connect data sources and produce actionable guidance-not generic outputs.
- Centralizes formulations, experiments, results, and reports into one structured data model.
- Includes a digital workbench with statistical modeling and Design of Experiments (DOE) to run faster, smarter trials.
- Combines human feedback with machine learning to refine products against consumer targets.
- Balances cost, compliance, sustainability, and nutrition with recommendation logic.
- Links formulation through sensory validation via a Food-Specific AI Assistant in one secure environment.
Delivery options include secure SaaS with private client environments or on-premises installation for teams with stricter data requirements.
Claims that matter to your roadmap
- Up to 15% ingredient cost reduction through optimization.
- 50% fewer reformulation cycles.
- 3x faster development with consistent, data-backed decisions.
High-value use cases to test first
- Clean-label reformulation with minimal impact on sensory profile.
- Reduced sugar and fat while meeting specific texture and taste targets.
- Supply chain resilience: modeling ingredient swaps and processing trade-offs.
- Turning consumer preference data into measurable product specs your team can build to.
Why this matters for product development teams
If your formulations, sensory notes, and consumer insights live in different systems, you're leaving cycle time and margin on the table. AKA Studio pushes everything into a single source of truth so each iteration compounds learning instead of restarting from scratch.
It shifts the process from reactive troubleshooting to continuous improvement. You get faster decisions with traceability for QA, regulatory, and leadership.
Security and deployment
AKA Studio is delivered as a secure SaaS with private environments per client. For organizations with strict policies, an on-premises option keeps data in your walls while maintaining the same workflow.
Beyond food
The company plans to expand into flavor, fragrance, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals-any domain where sensory precision and formulation speed matter. The same sensory-data-plus-AI approach applies.
Practical checklist before a pilot
- Inventory where your formulations, batch records, and sensory data live today. Are they linkable?
- Confirm your DOE maturity. If you're not running structured experiments, the lift (and payoff) will be bigger.
- Define measurable targets: cost per batch, time to spec, consumer acceptance thresholds.
- Decide early on SaaS vs on-prem based on data confidentiality requirements.
- Pick one flagship product or reformulation goal to prove ROI in 90 days.
Context
As of November 18, 2025, AKA Foods has officially launched AKA Studio with $17.2M in seed funding. The founders are betting that standardizing sensory data and linking it directly to formulation decisions is the shortest path to better products and better margins.
Related reading: what counts as structured sensory data? See sensory analysis for the common methods and scales used in R&D.
If your team is building AI capability across product, R&D, and operations, explore job-specific training here: AI courses by job.
Your membership also unlocks:
