Round led by Ted Leonsis, with Robert G. Hisaoka and SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, to accelerate AI-native product development across global CPG, foodservice, and ingredient companies.
Washington, D.C. — August 5, 2026
Today we're announcing a $6M seed round led by Ted Leonsis, Founder, Chairman, Managing Partner, and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, with lead participation from Robert G. Hisaoka and SWaN & Legend Venture Partners. The funding will deepen the platform's capabilities across food science, regulatory, and commercialization, and expand our enterprise customer base globally.
Why now
The food industry is being pulled in every direction at once: consumers want better nutrition, cleaner labels, and more sustainable products — without paying more or sacrificing taste. Traditional R&D, built on manual benchtop iteration and knowledge trapped in disconnected files, can't keep pace. Proxy Foods AI was built to close that gap: a platform that integrates human insight with agentic AI to predict formulation performance before a single benchtop trial.
Traction that compounds
After a Demo Day win at Tyson Foods and residency in its startup program, Proxy has grown to serve leading CPG brands like Barilla and Gefsinus, industry partners like MISTA (owned by Givaudan), and restaurant chains like CAVA. Our average platform customer generates over $1B in annual revenue. Results customers have achieved include 80% fewer development iterations, 2–10% COGS reduction in reformulations, prototype timelines compressed from months to days, and full platform ROI from a single incremental successful launch.
The science behind the platform
Working with Stanford University and Food System Innovations, we developed optimization models based on Expert Guided Bayesian Optimization (EGBO), achieving near-perfect sensory matching that outperforms traditional development approaches. We're also pursuing GFI-funded research with the Federal University of Paraná and McGill University on AI-driven cell culture media for cultivated meat. And through our partnership with Aperio Global, the platform now offers Zero Trust, quantum-resilient security — enabling computation on encrypted data without ever exposing proprietary formulations.
What's next
Products with multiple simultaneous constraints — high-protein, low-cost, clean-label, allergen-free, extended shelf life, regionally sourced, compliant across multiple markets — are becoming feasible for the first time. We project that within five years, nine in ten food companies will be using AI in product development.
In addition to Ted Leonsis, Robert G. Hisaoka, and SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, Proxy Foods AI investors include: Ike Grigoropoulos, Ted Xenohristos, Dimitri Moshovitis, and the late Richard Ware, Howard Eisenberg (Mentor at the Good Food Institute, Founder & Former President, Eurosort and United Sortation Solutions, Board Member at Halcyon House), Jeff Skoll, Roger W. Ferguson Jr. (Immediate past CEO and President, TIAA), Michelle Freeman (Owner & CEO, Carl M. Freeman Companies), Yiannis Gavrielides (Co-Founder, CEO, Covve, Managing Partner, Invelopment Partners), Evee & Alexander Georgiadis (Owners of Krinos Foods Canada), Chris Goulakos (Founder & Managing Partner, Balius Partners), George P. Stamas (Senior Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Board President at THI), Grant Verstandig (Founder, Chairman & CEO, Red Cell Partners).
For the full press release, please see: Proxy Foods AI Raises $6M Seed Round to Accelerate AI-Native Food and Beverage Development Platform