Afresh, the AI platform for grocery, has received $34 million in new funding, accelerating the company’s expansion across the industry.
The round was co-led by Just Climate and High Sage Ventures. All major investors also participated. Just Climate is the climate-led investment strategy of Generation Investment Management. High Sage Ventures is a Boston-based investment firm.
Afresh’s AI platform is now live in more than 12,500 departments across 40 states. The company partners with leading grocery retailers including Albertsons Companies, Meijer and Wakefern. Afresh reported 70 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2025.
The platform supports merchandising, store operations and supply chain teams. It helps retailers improve in-stock rates, reduce waste and strengthen margins. Retailers using the platform have achieved up to a 25 percent reduction in shrink. They have also seen a 3 percent sales lift and a 7 percent improvement in inventory turns.
AI built for fresh food challenges
Every day, billions of decisions determine how food moves through the grocery supply chain. Those decisions include what to order, how much to stock and what to produce. The global grocery industry is worth $10 trillion. It is built on perishable inventory and razor-thin margins.
Technology helped with shelf-stable goods. It could not help with broccoli or salmon fillets.
Fresh food operates differently. Shelf life is measured in days and demand shifts with weather and seasons. Inventory data is incomplete and constantly changing. Traditional retail systems were not built for this challenge.
Afresh’s AI platform brings real-time intelligence to these decisions. It works from store-level ordering to distribution center buying. The company built its AI first for fresh food. That foundation now extends across the full grocery enterprise. That includes center store, frozen and general merchandise.
“We’ve spent nearly a decade building AI to solve the complexity of grocery, and we’re now seeing that approach scale across the industry,” said Matt Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Afresh. “The decisions AI makes in grocery aren’t about optimizing pixels on a screen — they’re about physical products with shelf lives measured in days, moving through a supply chain that feeds billions of people. Our platform orchestrates those decisions at scale, so buyers, store teams, and merchandisers can spend less time on routine execution and more time on the strategy and judgment that drive outcomes.”
Industry moves from pilots to scaled deployment
The funding comes at a moment of accelerating adoption. Grocery retailers are moving from isolated pilots to scaled AI deployment. That deployment spans stores, categories and supply chains. Afresh is leading that shift.
More than 60 percent of the company’s entire lifetime order volume has occurred in the last 12 months. Retailers are expanding adoption across stores, categories and workflows. Over the same period, Afresh sustained 70 percent year-over-year revenue growth. The company expanded from fresh replenishment into a platform spanning six enterprise-grade solutions. Those solutions cover full-store ordering, production planning, distribution center buying and supply chain optimization.
“HighSage has been invested in Afresh for many years, and our conviction has only grown,” said Owen Wurzbacher, chief investment officer at High Sage Ventures. “Afresh has an exceptional team, a happy and rapidly growing list of customers, and a differentiated platform. Their best days lie ahead. This was an easy moment to grow our investment.”
Food waste is a business problem
In grocery, food waste is a business problem before anything else. An estimated 30 to 40 percent of food is wasted across the broader food system. That waste drives lost sales, margin erosion and excess inventory.
The decisions retailers make about what to order and stock ripple upstream. Those decisions determine what gets grown, processed and transported across the entire food system. Getting those decisions right is one of the highest-leverage interventions available to reduce waste and emissions at scale.
“Food waste is one of the most critical and overlooked drivers of emissions in the food system,” said Libby Spalding, director at Generation Investment Management. “Afresh’s AI platform strengthens the demand signal at the retail and distribution center levels, which have outsized upstream consequences. The results mean stronger margins for retailers and lower emissions for the system.”
To date, Afresh has helped prevent more than 200 million pounds of food waste. The company continues to advance a clear premise: better decisions drive better outcomes for retailers, consumers and the global food system.