AI as infrastructure: How Cargill is rewiring food innovation

Cargill has picked up a 2026 BIG Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award, presented by the Business Intelligence Group. The award recognizes the food corporation’s integration of AI across its value chain, from on-farm decision tools to supply chain optimization and customer co-creation. 

The award points to a structural shift in food and agriculture. Industry leaders like Cargill are no longer testing AI at the margins, but integrating it into their core workflows, from product development through to commercialization, in a sector defined by complexity, regulation, and tight margins.

“From on-farm tools supporting producers, to optimizing global supply chains, through to accelerating customer innovation with generative AI,” the company notes, these solutions are already “delivering measurable impact across operations, yield, and product development timelines.”

AI across the value chain, not in silos

What distinguishes Cargill’s approach is scope. Rather than treating AI as a standalone capability, it is embedding it across the full innovation lifecycle.

Abhishek Roy, senior director of AI R&D at Cargill, tells Food Ingredients First: “We are embedding AI across the full innovation journey, from early consumer insight and concept development through formulation, scale-up, and execution.” The goal is to “move faster and make more informed decisions at every stage, rather than treating AI as a standalone tool.”

The scope matters because inefficiencies in food innovation rarely sit in one place, but span the value chain. By combining consumer data, sensory science, and predictive modeling, Cargill can “anticipate how products are likely to perform before they reach the market,” narrowing development pathways and reducing the number of physical trials required.

Generative AI: Powerful, but not autonomous

While generative AI is playing an increasingly visible role, Cargill is notably pragmatic about its limits.

Today, AI is already helping to “accelerate ideation, surface insights from complex datasets, and support formulation pathways.” But, as Roy cautions, commercially viable ingredient formulations “must meet strict standards for safety, regulatory compliance, sensory performance, and scalability.”

These are not trivial constraints — and as Roy makes clear, they continue to rely on scientific expertise and real-world validation.AI helps Cargill narrow product development pathways early, reducing physical trials while improving the likelihood of successful launches.

Instead, Cargill is explicit about the role AI should play. “We do see increasing automation in specific parts of the development process,” Roy tells us, “but we expect a human-in-the-loop approach to remain essential.”

In practice, that means “AI delivers the most value when it augments expert judgement, ensuring solutions are practical, safe, and aligned with customer needs.”

The food scientist’s evolving role

As AI takes on more of the analytical workload, the role of R&D teams is shifting — but not diminishing.

“AI is reshaping how our R&D teams work, but it is elevating their role rather than replacing it,” Roy explains. Scientists remain central to the innovation process at Cargill, bringing “the expertise required to interpret data, validate outputs, and translate insights into solutions that work in real-world conditions.”

With AI accelerating early-stage work, teams can focus more on “high-value activities, such as defining customer challenges, refining solutions, and ensuring successful application.”

At the same time, the need for human oversight is increasing. “These tools require context, validation, and oversight,” Roy adds. As a result, R&D teams are becoming “orchestrators, ensuring outputs are scientifically sound, scalable, and aligned with regulatory and safety requirements.”

Co-creation moves closer to real time

One of the clearest commercial impacts of AI is in how Cargill collaborates with its customers.

“Co-creation is central to how we innovate with customers, and AI is strengthening that model,” Roy says. By embedding AI across the innovation journey, Cargill can “bring insights, concepts, and formulation options forward much earlier,” enabling more dynamic collaboration.

AI-driven tools integrate consumer insights, sensory science, and formulation models to “predict product performance and guide development decisions in real time.” These tools allow Cargill and its customers to “explore options, refine concepts, and align on targets, such as taste, texture, and functionality more efficiently.”

“While fully real-time co-creation at scale is still evolving, AI is already enabling faster feedback loops and more transparent collaboration across the value chain,” Roy says.Rather than replacing scientists, AI is reshaping their role — turning R&D teams into “orchestrators” of data, models, and real-world validation.

From faster development to better outcomes

Speed is often positioned as the primary benefit of AI in product development. At Cargill, however, the more meaningful impact is precision.

“AI is improving not just speed, but precision across the development process,” Roy explains. By combining predictive modeling with sensory science and consumer data, teams can “better anticipate how products will perform before they are launched,” helping to “narrow development pathways earlier and reduce reformulation cycles.”

This precision is particularly critical in food, where “sensory performance remains a key driver of repeat purchase.” In formulation, predictive models help teams “understand how ingredients behave across applications and markets,” says Roy, adding that they enable more accurate targeting of taste, texture, and consumer preference.

The result is a shift in the economics of innovation — fewer failed launches, more efficient development, and a higher likelihood of commercial success.

AI as infrastructure, not a tool

What emerges from Cargill’s approach is a broader lesson for the industry. The value of AI does not come from isolated pilots, but from embedding it deeply into core processes.

As Roy puts it, “speed comes not just from automation, but from better data, stronger selection, and expert interpretation.”

In a sector where variability is high and margins are tight, that combination can be critical. By integrating AI across the value chain — and maintaining a strong human-in-the-loop model — Cargill is positioning it as a foundational capability rather than a discrete technology.

Cargill’s policy on AI signals a broader industry shift — competitive advantage in food innovation will depend less on simply adopting the technology and more on how deeply it is embedded into decision-making systems.

In recent news, Ingredion and AI firm Shiru have announced a global R&D collaboration aimed at accelerating the discovery and commercialization of novel functional proteins.