zucca.ai

Zucca.ai is a Seattle-based startup that provides a generative AI platform to streamline the new product development (NPD) process for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, with an initial focus on the food and beverage sector. The company was spun out of the startup studio Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) and emerged from stealth in mid-2025 with a $5 million seed funding round. The round was led by Acre Venture Partners and included investors such as PSL Ventures, AIStudio Fund, and Sugar Mountain Capital.

The company is led by co-founders Karen Huh, the CEO, and Jesse Guzman, the COO. Huh brings two decades of experience launching consumer products for major brands like Starbucks and Bulletproof Coffee, and was previously the CEO of Joywell Foods. Guzman was a principal at PSL and has a background that includes roles at Rain, NerdWallet, and Prophet. Their combined experience in CPG and venture building underpins the company's strategic direction.

Zucca.ai operates on a tiered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, charging clients on a per-seat basis. The platform is designed to transform the traditionally linear and siloed product development lifecycle into a parallel and integrated process. It offers an end-to-end commercialization platform where stages like ideation, R&D, formulation, sourcing, and business planning can occur simultaneously within a centralized digital workspace. This approach aims to reduce product launch times, de-risk development by allowing for parallel exploration of multiple concepts, and improve collaboration across teams.

The platform integrates a company's internal data—such as supplier specifications, formulas, and costs from spreadsheets and documents—with external data sources. Using generative AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, Zucca.ai can generate new product concepts, create starting formulas, build bills of materials (BOMs), generate nutrition fact panels, and assess compliance risks. Its architecture is specifically tailored to the workflows of food and beverage development, helping teams quickly model economic scenarios and make adjustments while adhering to predefined constraints like regulatory requirements, sensory profiles, and brand guidelines. Zucca.ai targets mid-market CPG brands and R&D firms that are looking to leverage AI without building in-house capabilities.

Keywords: CPG product development, generative AI, food and beverage innovation, new product development, product commercialization, SaaS, R&D automation, formulation software, CPG technology, Seattle startup, food tech, beverage development, product lifecycle management, AI for CPG, concept to launch, ingredient sourcing, nutrition labeling, compliance management, cost optimization, parallel workflow