Tastewise Secures $50M to Bring Predictive Intelligence to the Food & Beverage Industry
June 24, 2025
byFenoms Startup Research
Tastewise, the AI-powered food intelligence platform, has announced a major $50 million funding round led by TELUS Global Ventures, with participation from Duo Partners, PeakBridge, Disruptive AI, and PICO Venture Partners. Co-founders Alon Chen and Eyal Gaon are now poised to supercharge their mission to help food and beverage (F&B) brands innovate faster and smarter through data-driven insights.
With this new infusion of capital, Tastewise plans to scale product capabilities, deepen partnerships with global CPG leaders, and expand its predictive intelligence engine into new markets - reshaping how consumer tastes and behaviors are captured in real time.
What Tastewise Solves
F&B innovation has long been driven by gut instinct, trend reports, and outdated consumer panels. But with consumer preferences changing faster than ever, legacy tools no longer cut it. That’s where Tastewise steps in - a real-time food intelligence platform that leverages billions of data points from recipes, restaurant menus, social media, and online searches to understand what people want to eat and drink before it hits the shelf.
Key platform capabilities include:
- Predictive trend spotting across cuisines, ingredients, preparation methods, and functional benefits
- Real-time sentiment analysis for menus, recipes, and product launches
- Consumer segmentation and purchase intent modeling
- AI-powered product innovation tools for F&B R&D teams
- Competitive intelligence for marketing and growth teams
The result: faster, smarter decisions about what to develop, when to launch it, and how to position it.
Why It Matters Now
The food and beverage industry is under pressure from every angle - rising costs, shifting supply chains, evolving dietary preferences, and growing sustainability demands. The winners will be those who can move from reactive to predictive - building products based on real-time consumer behavior, not assumptions.
- 71% of food brands say they struggle to keep up with changing consumer trends
- The global F&B industry is expected to exceed $8 trillion by 2025, but innovation cycles remain sluggish
- Functional food & beverage segments are growing 2x faster than traditional categories, requiring sharper consumer targeting
In an environment where launching the wrong product can cost millions, Tastewise gives brands the clarity and speed to make smarter bets.
But here’s the real strategic edge - Tastewise didn’t just build a faster trend engine. They built a cultural interpreter.
Instead of competing on reports or dashboards, they focused on capturing the raw ingredients of behavior - from what people search, cook, and post, to how they talk about food in emerging social spaces. That shift - from reporting data to interpreting consumer intent - is where founders should take note.
If you're building in a crowded, legacy-heavy market, don’t just aggregate the noise. Build the signal layer. Create a product that doesn't just track what’s happening, but explains why - and what should happen next.
That’s how platforms like Tastewise become embedded. They stop being tools and start being decision infrastructure.
Market Outlook: Food Intelligence Is the Next Competitive Moat
Tastewise is riding a major shift in how food and beverage brands approach innovation - from reactive marketing to predictive, data-powered decision-making.
- The global food tech market is projected to reach $342.5 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 6.3%, driven by AI, personalization, and sustainability demands.
- Over 80% of food executives report that traditional market research methods are “too slow” or “too outdated” to guide real-time product decisions.
- Platforms that harness AI and real-time consumer data are expected to account for 30% of all product innovation decisions by 2026, according to Deloitte.
- Consumer-driven trends such as plant-based, functional beverages, and clean-label eating are accelerating rapidly, yet 70% of new F&B products still fail within two years due to poor timing or market misalignment.
Tastewise isn’t just serving up trend analysis - it’s arming brands with predictive culinary intelligence. In an industry where flavor fads rise and fall overnight, the ability to act early and iterate faster isn’t just helpful - it’s survival.
What’s Next for Tastewise?
With $50 million in fresh funding, Tastewise is doubling down on global expansion and product innovation:
- Scaling AI-powered insights to new verticals, including alcohol, wellness, and hospitality
- Launching next-gen R&D tools to accelerate concept-to-shelf pipelines
- Partnering with major retailers and delivery apps to integrate real-time demand sensing
- Hiring across data science, customer success, and enterprise sales
Under the leadership of CEO Alon Chen (formerly of Google) and CTO Eyal Gaon, the team continues to reimagine what intelligence looks like in one of the world’s most dynamic industries.