Starday Raises $11M to Advance Food Innovation and Strengthen Retail Partnerships
Starday, a trailblazing food innovation company harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to reimagine how consumer food products are created and scaled, has announced the successful close of its $11 million Series A funding round. This strategic raise will empower the company to dramatically expand its retail presence and forge groundbreaking partnerships with both retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands. The funding round was led by venture capital firms Slow Ventures and Equal Ventures and includes $8 million in equity funding, with an additional $3 million in debt financing provided through a credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank. With this latest round, Starday’s total capital raised stands at $20 million, combining both equity and debt financing.
Founded by Chaz Flexman (CEO), Lena Kwak (Product), and Lily Burtis (Data/Platform), Starday uses AI technology to identify unmet consumer needs and create new Food Innovation products tailored to those gaps. The company’s proprietary platform scans vast amounts of consumer data, market trends, and behavioral insights to predict emerging preferences and rapidly develop products in response. What traditionally takes food companies years to accomplish, Starday can do in a matter of months—delivering data-backed, consumer-focused products to shelves in record time.
This injection of capital will be pivotal in accelerating Starday’s growth trajectory. The company currently oversees four brands and a growing catalog of 14 consumer products, including its popular All Day chickpea protein crunch. Starday’s newest launch, Habeya—an allergen-free snack brand—is set to debut nationally through a major rollout. Habeya will appear in Kroger stores as well as Hannaford outlets across the Northeast, including New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. In addition, Los Angeles consumers will soon find Habeya stocked in Erewhon, a premium grocery retailer known for carrying trendsetting health food brands.
Starday is targeting an increasingly vital market: families and individuals navigating dietary restrictions and food allergies. This space has long been underserved, despite growing demand for allergen-free and inclusive food options. With Habeya, the company is offering a solution that not only meets health and safety standards but also delivers on flavor and satisfaction—two factors often missing from allergen-conscious products.
“The power of artificial intelligence gives food developers unmatched tools for analyzing data, forecasting consumer trends, and speeding up product iteration cycles,” said CEO Chaz Flexman. “Our vision in creating Starday was to build a platform where AI, human creativity, and deep industry experience converge to empower retailers and Food Innovation brands. Together, we can design and launch the next wave of consumer products faster, smarter, and with greater success in the market.”
This latest round of funding signals a significant shift in Starday’s operations—from innovation-focused R&D to scaled retail execution and strategic collaboration with industry players. One of the core initiatives made possible by this raise is the development of platform partnerships with retailers. These partnerships will allow Starday to work directly with retail chains to co-create private-label or white-label products tailored specifically to their customer bases. Informed by detailed market analytics and shelf-level data, these collaborative efforts are designed to fill whitespace in product offerings—areas where consumer demand is high but relevant products are lacking.
Under these retailer partnerships, Starday will act as a strategic innovation engine. By providing retailers with actionable insights and a robust development pipeline, the company can help them stay ahead of consumer trends and drive incremental revenue in underdeveloped or entirely new categories. This positions Starday not just as a brand builder, but as a force multiplier for retail innovation.
“The most exciting thing about Starday is how fundamentally they are reimagining the food brand ecosystem,” said Will Quist of Slow Ventures, one of the lead investors in the Series A round. “They’re not simply launching products—they’re building a scalable, intelligent platform that enables retailers to enter and grow in emerging categories far more efficiently than ever before. That kind of structural advantage is incredibly rare in the CPG space, and we believe Starday is just getting started.”
Indeed, Starday is already making waves on retail shelves across the country. Its chickpea-based All Day protein crunch snack, for instance, has significantly outperformed established legacy brands at Sprouts locations nationwide. The product’s strong velocity and high same-store sales illustrate the effectiveness of Starday’s data-driven approach to innovation and market fit.
In addition to Sprouts, Starday products are currently available in major retail outlets such as Hannaford, Target, The Fresh Market, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market. The company also maintains a strong presence online through e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Instacart. With dozens more retail partnerships slated for launch later this year, Starday is poised to become one of the most influential food tech companies in the CPG sector.
The intersection of AI and food has long been predicted as a disruptive force, but Starday’s real-world application of this technology is delivering measurable impact. By compressing development timelines, reducing launch costs, and directly addressing consumer needs, the company is proving that smart data can drive smart growth.
With its new funding, a rapidly expanding product line, and an eye on collaboration over competition, Starday is redefining what it means to be a food innovation company in the 21st century. By blending cutting-edge AI with food industry expertise and agile execution, Starday is carving out a unique space at the forefront of food tech—one that prioritizes relevance, speed, and customer satisfaction.
As consumer tastes evolve and expectations grow, companies like Starday are proving that the future of food is not just digital—it’s data-driven, personalized, and built with purpose from the ground up.
