Halla taps AI for personalized grocery and dish recommendations

You just got home after a long commute from work, and you're starving. The pantry's empty -- you didn't get around to buying groceries -- and so you fire up a food delivery app and hop over to a list of favorites. You're in the mood for something different, but you're stuck with indecision; what if you order something you end up disliking? Los Angeles-based startup Halla aims to solve that problem once and for all with Halla I/O (which stands for "intelligent ordering"), a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate Netflix-like recommendations for grocery, restaurant, and food delivery apps and websites. "We use psychographics and data to predict your preferences and cravings at any given moment," CEO and cofounder Spencer Price told VentureBeat in an interview, "and we apply predictive analytics and AI to taste and flavor attributes to gain an understanding of the food itself."