By Eric Hamborg, Chief Commercial Officer, PIPA
The future of food innovation gets built when the right minds are in the same room, asking hard questions and generating solutions together.
Two weeks ago, I joined a remarkable group of food industry pioneers at Future Food-Tech’s AI Innovation Lab in San Francisco. Colleagues from Schrödinger, IFT, Trace One, BIOVIA, FoodNavigator, and Uncountable came together for something genuinely different — a working session, not a lecture.
Small groups tackled real food challenges: product ideation, ingredient optimization, consumer personalization, supply chain efficiency. AI served as the lens, but the real value came from the people around the table. Honest reflections. Hard-won lessons. The kind of candor you only get when everyone has skin in the game.
What stood out most — the industry has moved past the hype. The conversations happening now are sharper, more grounded. How do we make AI actionable at the team level? How do we measure what’s actually working? How do we move fast without losing sight of what matters?
These are questions we wrestle with daily at PIPA. FIOS™ connects the science, data, and decision-making behind how food gets made — so companies can develop better products, faster, and at lower cost. Contact us to learn more or explore current and previous partnerships.