companies

Afresh

San Francisco AI company whose forecasting and ordering platform helps grocers cut fresh food waste and improve in-stock rates for perishables.

Afresh was founded in San Francisco in 2017 by Matt Schwartz, Nathan Fenner, and Volodymyr Kuleshov, who set out to attack a specific, ugly number: U.S. grocery stores throw away roughly four million tons of food a year, most of it fresh product that's genuinely hard to forecast because a carton of strawberries doesn't behave like a can of soup on a shelf. The founders built deep learning models tuned specifically to perishables, factoring in shelf life, weather, promotions, and even things like the timing of food-assistance benefit deposits that shift purchasing patterns. The platform now spans store ordering, production planning for prepared foods and bakery, distribution center forecasting, and inventory estimation, and grocers use it across produce, meat, deli, and other fresh departments to generate orders and production plans that mostly execute automatically rather than requiring a manager's sign-off on every item. Afresh says its software runs in more than 12,500 departments across 40 U.S. states, with retailers including Albertsons, Meijer, and Wakefern among its customers. The company has raised roughly $233 million, including a $34 million round in April 2026 co-led by Just Climate and High Sage Ventures, and reports it has helped prevent more than 200 million pounds of food waste to date.

Founded

2017

Headquarters

San Francisco, United States

Sector

applications