Protein transition platform Food System Innovations has received a $2M grant from the Bezos Earth Fund to create an open-source AI model for sustainable food products with Stanford University.
The Bezos Earth Fund is doubling down on its alternative protein bet, investing in an effort to accelerate the development of future foods with artificial intelligence (AI).
It has awarded a $2M grant to Food System Innovations (FSI), a philanthropic impact platform investing in the transition to a sustainable agrifood system, as part of its $30M AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge.
The financing will support a collaboration between FSI’s sensory analysis programme, Nectar, and computer scientists at Stanford University to develop an open-source AI model to drive alternative protein product development.
It comes amid growing calls from experts to shift away from a food system reliant on industrial livestock farming, and towards low-emission proteins that use significantly less land and water.
Algorithms will predict sensory attributes and optimise product formulations
FSI aims to fast-track food systems transformation by marrying science, markets and society to enable more sustainable food choices. It has a diversity of programmes to do so, and among these is Nectar, which has built the world’s largest publicly available database on the sensory performance of plant-based and blended meat products.
This online repository has been built on taste tests with thousands of meat-eating consumers in the US, and revealed that several alternative protein products outperform 100% animal-derived alternatives on a range of attributes.
Armed with the Bezos Earth Fund grant, FSI and Stanford researchers are now developing algorithms that predict sensory attributes and optimise ingredient formulations for sustainable proteins.
They will use a combination of Nectar’s sensory data and molecular flavour databases to build an AI model that connects molecular structure, flavour, texture, and consumer preferences. This, FSI says, will help accelerate alternative protein product development and deepen their market penetration.
“Taste is the gateway to consumer adoption. Nectar’s data helps the sustainable protein industry refine formulations and enhance flavour, making climate-friendly foods truly irresistible,” said Nectar director Caroline Cotto, who is also the co-principal investigator of the grant.
“Partnering with the Bezos Earth Fund allows us to translate AI innovation into real-world climate and conservation impact, one bite at a time,” she added.
Bezos Earth Fund looks to ‘make AI work for the environment’
Stanford PhD candidate Anna Thomas, the project’s technical lead and fellow principal investigator, outlined that developing AI tools for sustainable protein design was “a critical step for human and planetary health”.
“Our early research shows that large language models can help revise formulations based on sensory feedback. With this grant, we can deliver actionable insights that improve taste and speed the protein transition,” she said.
Thomas’s research has found that collaborating with a large language model to devise sustainable proteins reduces time spent by 45%, compared to 22% when teaming up with another human food scientist. The paper also designed an AI approach that can decrease emissions by 79% in restaurants while keeping consumer satisfaction intact.
AI has been criticised for its impact on the climate. Experts warn that skyrocketing demand is leading to a rise in energy and water use to run data centres and keep them cool. Most of that power use comes from fossil fuels, which are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
But some investors argue that advancements in alternative proteins could be the key to winning the AI race. And Bezos Earth Fund’s AI director, Amen Ra Mashariki, suggests the organisation is “focused on making AI work for the environment – not the other way around”.
FSI was one of 15 entities that won a grant under the second phase of its AI for Climate and Nature Grand Challenge, a $100M initiative launched last year to develop AI-enabled solutions that address climate change and biodiversity loss. In the first phase, nine organisations won $50,000 grants for sustainable proteins, including FSI.
“These projects show how AI, when developed responsibly and guided by science, can strengthen environmental action, support communities, and ensure its overall impact on the planet is net positive,” said Mashariki.
Aside from its AI initiatives, Bezos Earth Fund has also invested $100M to set up three Centers for Sustainable Protein at universities in North Carolina, London and Singapore, as part of its $1B commitment towards food systems transformation.
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