Artificial intelligence is here to stay, and for those who love to cook, one company is putting a personalized AI co-pilot at your fingertips to help you cook smarter and eat healthier.
It’s all thanks to VersaWare Technologies, a Southfield business that has developed an intuitive voice-based digital kitchen assistant.
The company was co-founded by Californian Jacob Lindberg and Australian Creed McKinnon. The two met while playing Division One soccer in college and were inspired by what they learned about nutrition for optimal performance on the field.
“If you’ve ever tried to track what you eat, whether it’s for weight loss or other pursuits, it’s an extremely difficult and cumbersome process,” says Lindberg. “Every time you eat something, you have to take out your phone, log it, measure it — all these things that no one really wants to do.”
Lindberg and McKinnon put their entrepreneurial brains together to devise a way to make the process more efficient. “We wanted to build something that allows people a way to access nutrition information as easily as you could get information from, say, an Apple Watch regarding caloric expenditure,” says Lindberg.
The two went from brainstorming in their dorm room to pitching their idea to accelerators around the country. Lawrence Technology University’s Centropolis Accelerator stepped up with an offer to fund the initial source of capital to move to the next level of prototyping.
“We packed up the car and drove from San Diego to Michigan, not really knowing what we were doing, where we were going or who we were going to meet,” Lindberg recalls.
Today, three years later, VersaWare Technologies is marketing the VersaBoard, “a technology our consumers describe as Alexa for nutrition,” says Lindberg.
The cutting board has a built-in weight scale with a screen and voice-activated technology. For example, Lindberg explains, “Say you’re eating an apple and a banana in the morning. As you run out the door, you just say, ‘Hey, Versa, can you add a banana and an apple to my day?’ And without you having even deviate from what you’re doing, it’ll synthesize the nutrition to your day and respond with its impact to you.”
This is just one function, he says. “The system will walk you through any recipe based on ingredients you have. You can use the scale to measure ingredients with your voice. For example, you can say, ‘Hey, Versa, build a breakfast meal with oats, 2% milk and blueberries,’ and it’ll process all this, while considering the nutritional profile that’s respective to your goals.
Versa Technologies is in conversations with kitchen appliance manufacturers to license its underlying technology to be integrated into their own appliances. “There’s a lot of interest for these appliances to compete in the voice-assistance space that is currently only occupied right now by Amazon and Google.”
The company is also in discussions with distributors interested in buying bulk quantities of the VersaBoard and selling them through retail distribution chains.
Lindberg sums it all up this way: “We’re tailoring our product to solve the conventional pain points and inconveniences that tens of millions of Americans face daily regarding nutrition comprehension.”
For more information: www.versaware.io
