It is widely recognized that our current food production is insufficient to keep up with the expected population growth in the next 3 decades, which is why alternative meat products are being developed.
But at a time when some food industry startups are trying to get animals out of the food chain, a company that tackles the traditional meat industry is rare.
Lumachain aims to be the industry standard for how beef, chicken and pork products are produced globally.
Jamila Gordon, founder and CEO of Lumachain Image Credits: Lumachain
“The global industry is worth $1.5 trillion a year and helps feed the world,” the company’s founder and CEO Jamila Gordon told TechCrunch. “Each plant is a big business in itself. It can have anywhere from 500 workers to thousands of workers per shift. What we haven’t been able to do is build computer vision technology and AI to help transform the industry.”
That’s Lumchain’s goal: to help the global meat industry innovate and solve some of the key challenges they face: labor shortages, inflation and high operating costs, supply chain disruptions, and still meat plants operating the way they have for 50 years. in the past.
Supply chain disruptions were exacerbated during the outbreak, and because meat is a perishable product, it has a short shelf life, and if it gets stuck somewhere and there’s no visibility, that means hundreds of thousands of kilograms of meat are wasted, Gordon explained.
A Somali-born refugee who moved to Australia during Somalia’s civil war, Gordon’s first job out of college was cooking in a Japanese restaurant, where the chef took her under his wing to learn the trade. Although she graduated in computer science and later worked at companies such as IBM and as the chief information officer of Qantas Airways, her passion remained with the food industry.
Gordon sees innovation in the food industry as “incremental rather than transformative.” That’s why she believes AI should help employees be the best they can be. She even did a TED Talk about it.
Lumachain was founded in 2018 to use computer vision-based artificial intelligence to transform meat plant operations. It has five products in the categories of safety, yield, quality, efficiency and traceability.
The company installs cameras around the plant to monitor potential safety hazards and plant supervisors, who often have 50 employees under them, for training and coaching opportunities. AI sends real-time alerts to supervisors so they can focus on those who need more help, rather than managing each employee individually.
Additionally, during Covid, customers knew where their containers were at all times, and if there was a chance of spoilage, they could divert the products to other endpoints to avoid losses.
“While we’re talking about adequate staffing, you want your staff to be the best they can be and provide real-time coaching and training,” Gordon said. “Traceability is creating that transparency that helps our customers track food from farm to fork and know where their product is at any given time.”
Since its inception four years ago, Lumachain’s operation has captured meat processing companies. Currently operating in eight countries, the technology is taking up less than 50% of the meat supply in the US, Gordon said.
Today, the company announced $19.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate its AI platform globally and grow its team in the United States, with locations in Sydney and now Denver. Next year, the company expects to increase its team here to 30 people. The international team is now over 100.
The funding was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, along with a lead from an existing investor. Lumachain raised seed in July 2019 for a total of $22 million.
“We’re not going after new customers, we’re expanding with our existing customers,” Gordon said. “The next steps are expansion and global industry standards.”
