Ted Leonsis Leads $6M Seed Round for Proxy Foods AI

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Proxy Foods AI has raised a $6 million seed round led by Ted Leonsis. Robert G. Hisaoka and SWaN & Legend Venture Partners joined, along with a long list of individual backers including Ike Grigoropoulos, Ted Xenohristos, Dimitri Moshovitis, Howard Eisenberg, Jeff Skoll, Roger W. Ferguson Jr., Michelle Freeman, Yiannis Gavrielides, Evee Georgiadis, Alexander Georgiadis, Chris Goulakos, George P. Stamas and Grant Verstandig.

The company is based in Washington, District of Columbia, and sells an agentic AI platform for food and beverage product development and formulation. Its customers are CPG brands, foodservice operators and ingredient companies, among them Barilla and Gefsinus. The average customer on the platform brings in more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Product formulation is a slow, iterative discipline, which is what makes it an interesting target for predictive tooling. Getting a reformulated recipe right on paper before it reaches a test kitchen removes weeks from a development cycle.

The new capital funds stronger support for food science, regulatory and commercialization work, and an expansion of the enterprise customer base internationally.