Top 10 Innovative Food AI Startups to Watch in 2026

Executive Summary: Which are the Top 10 Food AI Startups to Watch?

1. Jabu (France) – uses AI to manage catering, forecast meals, and reduce food waste in commercial kitchens.
2. AiHACCP (Portugal) – automates HACCP compliance with AI for real-time food safety monitoring and digital records.
3. FOBOH (Australia) – builds AI agents to handle orders, billing, and inventory for F&B distribution and wholesale.
4. Inspectral AI (Denmark) – offers AI-based, non-intrusive food analysis using hyperspectral imaging for quality and safety.
5. Order Echo (Canada) – provides an AI copilot that automates order entry and speeds fulfillment for food distributors.
6. Aioly (US) – runs an AI-powered food app using live video to recognize dishes and recommend dining experiences.
7. Tedaarik (Turkey) – delivers an AI assistant that automates procurement and supplier decisions in F&B operations.
8. OpenInfo (UK) – offers AI-driven workflow automation for F&B wholesalers to streamline orders and reduce errors.
9. ZOLO (Singapore) – converts messages into purchase orders with an AI B2B assistant for seamless F&B ordering.
10. Raccoon Eyes (Georgia) – uses AI and sensors to track food waste and optimize recipes in commercial kitchens.

Global Startup Heat Map highlights Emerging Food AI Startups to Watch

Through the Big Data & Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering over 7M+ startups, 20K+ technology trends plus 150M+ patents, news articles & market reports, we identified 10 food AI atartups.

The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights emerging food companies using AI in 2026 as well as the geo-distribution of 320+ startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research.

According to our data, we observe high startup activity in the US and India, followed by the UK. The top 5 startup hubs for AI automation solutions in the food and beverage industry are London, San Francisco, New York City, Bangalore, and Toronto.

Discover Emerging Food AI Startups to Watch in 2026

We hand-picked startups to showcase in this report by filtering for their technology, founding year, location, funding, and other metrics. These emerging food AI startups work on solutions ranging from AI-powered catering management and AI copilot for food distributors to digital food procurement assistants and AI-based food waste management.

1. Jabu

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Paris, France
• Use For: AI-powered Catering Management

Jabu uses an AI-powered catering management system to engage customers, forecast meal consumption, and reduce food waste in commercial kitchens and canteens.

The startup incorporates forecasting tools that provide chefs with accurate consumption estimations. This allows for real-time modifications to preparation amounts and also improves inventory control.

Credit: Jabu

Jabu connects diners through a mobile app that displays menus, nutritional information, and reservation options. The app gathers user feedback to encourage healthier and more sustainable eating practices.

Moreover, its dashboards support informed governance and a strong CSR policy by aggregating key performance, cost, and environmental data for administrators.

Additionally, the startup’s integrated anti-waste system recycles surplus food on-site and supports an environmentally conscious catering business strategy.

2. AiHACCP

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Rio de Mouro, Portugal
• Use For: AI-driven HACCP Compliance

AiHACCP streamlines documentation workflows, hazard analysis, critical control point (CCP) monitoring, and verification processes with its AI-powered HACCP compliance platform. It assesses physical, chemical, and biological risks at every stage of food production by combining computer vision, sensor data, and workflow automation.

Credit: AiHACCP

Additionally, the startup offers digital logging for regulatory audits, blockchain-backed traceability, and real-time alerts for abnormalities at critical control points. This involves temperature or hygiene breaches.

Moreover, the technology eliminates paper records and supports cloud storage, app-based access, and even inspections by autonomous robots. The technology ensures ongoing compliance with supplier controls, employee training records, and hygiene regulations through continuous monitoring and structured decision support.

AiHACCP further streamlines HACCP adoption in food and beverage operations by delivering consistent regulatory compliance, operational transparency, and resource efficiency through applied AI.

3. FOBOH

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Sydney, Australia
• Use For: AI Agent for F&B Wholesale and Distribution

FOBOH creates an AI agent suite, Employee, for food and beverage distribution and wholesale. Its AI agents like Alan handle order intake, Shaz handles billing and payments, Daz gathers sales information, and Sal optimizes inventories.

The agents use computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) to extract orders from emails, messages, voicemails, and attachments. This reduces the amount of manual labor required. These orders are then routed straight into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

They also identify inventory shortfalls, advise replacements, and automate invoices. The agents start payment follow-ups and make targeted upsell recommendations based on consumer behavior and industry trends using real-time analytics.

4. Inspectral AI

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
• Use For: Non-intrusive Chemometric and Nutritional Analysis

Inspectral AI provides a non-intrusive chemometric and nutritional analysis platform that improves food quality and safety management using machine learning. It extracts compositional and safety information without damaging the food product by combining cloud-based AI algorithms with spatial and spectral optical data.

Credit: Inspectral AI

The platform processes high-resolution hyperspectral imagery and advanced chemometric models to identify pollutants, verify nutritional content, and ensure adherence to food regulations.

Additionally, the platform provides automatic reporting and real-time monitoring. This allows producers to reduce manual inspections and maintain consistent quality.

5. Order Echo

• Founding Year: 2024
• Location: Montreal, Canada
• Use For: AI Copilot for Food Distributors

Order Echo offers food distributors an AI copilot that advances order entry. The AI-agent platform maps consumer menus from voicemails, SMS, email, or uploads. It then automatically matches products to the distributor’s stock and prices.

The platform then instantly routes confirmed orders into pre-existing ERPs with high accuracy, cutting down on error-prone data transcription and manual entry.

Additionally, its interface features include mobile-optimized quoting tools and branded price-list creation that assist sales representatives in producing customer proposals instantly.

The platform also reduces food waste through quicker fulfillment times and speeds up order-to-cash cycles by removing most of the administrative effort.

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6. Aioly

• Founding Year: 2024
• Location: Santa Clara, California, US
• Use For: AI-led Food Companion App

Aioly offers an AI-powered food companion app, Aioly, that lets businesses find meals by using live-streaming and brief videos. It recognizes foods, products, and vendors in real time using computer vision and AI-tagging. It then suggests restaurants and friends that fit based on social context, location, and personal preferences.

Additionally, the app provides monetization features, such as an 80/20 split on live-streaming presents and a commission on tagged goods. This enables video creators to make money from streams and clips that are centered around food.

The app also offers a branded seller experience that uses dynamic suggestions and carefully chosen menus to encourage user interaction.

Thus, this solution improves ecosystems for discovery, community development, and income sharing by converting dining experiences into social, media-rich events.

7. Tedaarik

• Founding Year: 2024
• Location: Ankara, Turkey
• Use For: AI-based Digital Procurement Assistant

Tedaarik offers an AI procurement assistant that streamlines purchasing processes for food and beverage companies. It automates invoice processing and pricing comparisons by combining NLP and optical character recognition (OCR) to extract data from invoices, emails, and other documents. These transactions are then integrated into ERP systems.

Credit: Tedaarik

Additionally, its technology optimizes sourcing choices and lowers procurement costs by utilizing real-time inventory information and AI-based supplier recommendations.

8. OpenInfo

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: London, UK
• Use For: Workflow Automation for F&B Wholesalers

OpenInfo offers an AI-driven workflow automation platform for food and beverage wholesalers. It automates important processes in operations, sales, and finance by integrating AI-driven solutions into current systems.

The platform processes orders, customer inquiries, and documents, including emails, attachments, and invoices, and routes them into ERPs. The platform also reduces manual tasks and errors using NLP and OCR.

Moreover, the platform has mobile-optimized tools and branded quoting interfaces that benefit sales representatives in generating proposals in real time. It enables teams to increase processing output without adding more employees due to its people-first design, which prioritizes easy adoption.

The startup improves operational efficiency and customer experience by reducing transcribing errors, expediting order-to-cash cycles, and freeing up employees for higher-value tasks.

9. ZOLO

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Singapore
• Use For: AI-powered Food Ordering Assistant
• Notable News: Tenity invests in ZOLO to advance Southeast Asia’s food sector

ZOLO offers an AI-powered ordering assistant that converts unstructured orders from WeChat, WhatsApp, email, and other messaging apps into structured purchase orders. It uses NLP and computer vision to extract order details and customer information, then sends accurate orders directly to ERP systems.

Additionally, the platform’s AI sales intelligence, CRM catalog features, and WhatsApp broadcast capabilities assist sales representatives in saving time and generating automated revenue increases.

It speeds up order-to-cash workflows, improves operational efficiency, and lowers errors by integrating easily without the need for customers to alter ordering behavior.

10. Raccoon Eyes

• Founding Year: 2023
• Location: Georgia
• Use For: Food Waste Management Platform

Raccoon Eyes creates an AI platform for food waste management that gathers detailed waste analytics. This enables food service operators to optimize recipes, portion control, and expenses. It uses computer vision and smart sensors to analyze the types and quantities of food that are thrown out in real time.

The platform reduces disposal volumes and procurement costs by converting waste data into actionable information. This allows managers and chefs to modify menu planning and serving sizes through its user-friendly interface.

Additionally, the AI continues to learn from fresh data, refining its suggestions to suit consumer preferences and seasonal trends. Raccoon Eyes further supports sustainability objectives and encourages more effective kitchen practices by fusing trash tracking with operational decision-making.

Discover All Emerging FoodTech Startups

The FoodTech startups showcased in this report are only a small sample of all startups we identified through our data-driven startup scouting approach. Download our free FoodTech Innovation Report for a broad overview of the industry or get in touch for quick & exhaustive research on the latest technologies & emerging solutions that will impact your company in 2026!