Barry Callebaut, a leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa solutions, and NotCo AI ("NotCo"), the first foundational AI platform for the consumer goods industry, have entered into an agreement to explore implementing artificial intelligence in chocolate recipe development. This strategic partnership merges Barry Callebaut’s century-long chocolate expertise with NotCo’s cutting-edge AI capabilities, aiming to accelerate innovation and deliver faster, more tailored customer experiences.   

The partnership marks the first AI powered integration in the food industry and aims to merge Barry Callebaut's high-quality ingredients data, global manufacturing, supply chain, and distribution infrastructure with NotCo AI's advanced platform to create an end-to-end AI innovation hub. Together, the companies are exploring to build a new framework for chocolate innovation: one that is smarter, faster, more sustainable, and fully scalable to meet evolving customer and consumer needs. 

The project aims to explore the development of the next generation of chocolate, potentially setting a new standard for how food companies innovate. By testing AI-driven formulation processes, the collaboration seeks to shorten development cycles, improve hit rates, and digitally empower every scientist and chef to create with unprecedented speed and precision, delivering exceptional taste while advancing sustainability goals.  

The initiative forms part of Barry Callebaut’s multi-year digitalization agenda, where Barry Callebaut is pioneering the chocolate industry by entering into the AI era and reinforcing the company's commitment to deliver breakthrough innovation and its position as the trusted partner for chocolate solutions and one of the biggest chocolate suppliers worldwide in the food and beverage industry. 

Climate pressure, ingredient shortages and rising cocoa costs have forced the chocolate industry to reformulate products and deploy substantial R&D budgets to address supply chain disruptions. By combining Barry Callebaut's category expertise with NotCo AI’s technology, both companies are proactively building a resilient future for chocolate innovation that maintains taste and quality regardless of volatile agricultural conditions.

NotCo AI’s platform has already powered hundreds of successful product launches for some of the world's largest food and beverage companies. NotCo AI’s technology – trained on a unique proprietary dataset of food and consumable properties accumulated over 10 years – has been quickly evolving to become the most powerful foundational model for the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.