Proxy Foods AI has raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Ted Leonsis, with participation from Robert G. Hisaoka and SWaN & Legend Venture Partners. The Washington, DC–based company said it will use the capital to expand operations and its product development efforts. The business is led by Chief Executive Officer Panos Kostopoulos.
Proxy Foods AI platform and enterprise customers
Proxy Foods AI offers an agentic AI platform for food and beverage product development and formulation, serving consumer packaged goods, foodservice and ingredient companies and helping move concepts to commercialization. The company reports adoption among large manufacturers, ingredient firms and restaurant brands, naming Barilla and Gefsinus as customers, and says its average platform customer exceeds $1 billion in annual revenue.
Security, operations and next steps
The platform’s architecture is built for the security demands of global R&D organizations. A recently announced partnership with Aperio Global adds a Zero Trust, quantum‑resilient security layer that enables computation on encrypted data without exposing proprietary formulations. Proxy Foods AI maintains labs and offices in San Francisco and Greece, and said the funding will strengthen capabilities across food science, regulatory and commercialization work while supporting global expansion of its enterprise customer base. The company positions the platform as a way for established food and beverage companies to shorten development cycles and defend market share as AI-driven R&D tools gain traction in the industry.
