Winnow, a tech firm using AI to cut food waste, has secured a total of $20m in the last month.
The funding comes in the form of a $12m Series B funding round led by Ingka Group and Mustard Seed and an $8m loan from The European Investment Bank (EIB).
The London firm offers Winnow Vision, AI powered technology to help chefs automate waste tracking
The tech works by taking photos of wasted food as it’s thrown away and uses the images to recognise what has been discarded.
The systems have reportedly surpassed human levels of accuracy in identifying wasted foods allowing kitchens to automatically register food waste without any human interaction.
Food is thrown in the bin and the data is captured automatically.
Users of the tech include the Armani Hotel in Dubai and IKEA stores.
The firm said restaurants using Winnow’s AI could see a 40-70 per cent reduction in food waste within 6-12 months, which translates to up to an 8 per cent saving in total.
Winnow co-founder and CEO Marc Zornes said, “We are very excited about driving the business forward in our global fight against food waste and we are grateful for the continuous support of our investors.
“This year, we launched our ground-breaking AI product Winnow Vision, and chefs using Winnow around the world are saving $33m worth of food from going to waste annually.
“We have set a target to save our customers $1bn of food waste by 2025, and this investment will accelerate our technology development and business development approach to help achieve this ambition.”
Leading the round, Henry Wigan, Director at Mustard Seed stated, “We are privileged to be leading another Winnow round. Right from the very start, we have been deeply committed to Winnow’s impact mission, which is intricately aligned with the Mustard Seed Lock-Step thesis that solving big social and environmental problems drives commercial success in the long run. We look forward to seeing Winnow grow at pace.”