Food & beverage players are turning to tech like AI and robotics to streamline operations, cut costs, and reduce food waste. This Market Map looks at the solutions helping companies like PepsiCo and McDonald's run everything from production to the point-of-sale more profitably.
Food & beverage companies are fighting an uphill battle as food costs reach all-time highs and labor shortages weigh on their ability to operate efficiently.
This is pushing players across the food value chain — like grocery retailers, restaurants, and CPG brands — to increasingly rely on tech solutions to automate processes, improve traceability, and reduce food waste. In doing so, they can mitigate the risk of shortages and recalls, which negatively impact profitability.
In particular, AI is delivering impact across every stage of the value chain. AI-powered solutions are helping accelerate product development, reduce manufacturing downtime, better predict demand for products, monitor food freshness, and more.
Using CB Insights data, we identified 156 companies digitizing and automating the food & beverage value chain.
To dig deeper into this market landscape and connect directly with companies, check out the Food & Beverage Value Chain sheet in the Food & Beverage Expert Collection.
This market map shows private technology vendors that have raised equity funding organized by primary application. It is not intended to be exhaustive of companies in the space and categories are not mutually exclusive.
MARKET BREAKDOWN
Production
Ingredient discovery & formulation: These companies use molecular-level analysis to develop new ingredients for food & beverage companies to meet consumer demand for more nutritious and sustainable products.
For example, Brightseed — the most well-funded company in this category with nearly $120M in funding — uses AI to discover and develop IP-protected bioactive compounds for partners like Danone.
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