Revealed: The food companies leading the way in artificial intelligence

Unilever and Lindt & Sprungli are among the companies in the food industry best positioned to take advantage of developments in artificial intelligence, our analysis shows. The assessment comes from GlobalData's Thematic Research, which ranks companies on a scale of one to five based on their likelihood to tackle challenges like artificial intelligence and emerge as long-term winners of the food sector. According to our analysis, Unilever, Lindt and Japan-based snacks group Calbee feature in the list of companies best positioned to benefit from investments in artificial intelligence, all of them recording scores of five out of five. Unilever indicated good levels of investment in AI, with the company looking for 323 new jobs in the field since October 2020, for example. The table below shows how GlobalData analysts scored the biggest companies among packaged food and food ingredients manufacturers on their AI performance, as well as the number of new artificial intelligence-related jobs, deals, patents and mentions in company reports since October 2020.