New AI model aims to drive innovation and strategy across dietary supplements

After seven-plus months in stealth mode, CPG Radar​ was officially launched last week. Ghannoum describes it as an AI model trained on one of the largest proprietary datasets of nutrition products and clinical science.

Speaking with NutraIngredients-USA via video, Ghannoum said that he has observed that a lot of innovation and competitor research was done using institutional knowledge in the dietary supplements space, “like someone had seen an ingredient at a show, or they had talked to this company, or they previously worked with this CRO and so it kind of surprised me that it really wasn't more data-driven. So, I thought, I bet this is something we could solve with big data."

CPG Radar is a combination of two things, he said: One is a data set of product and ingredient companies, including all the ingredients in the products, all the claims, the formats of those products, the channels they were selling, in the health categories, and so on. The data set is around the science side, he added, and this focuses on the clinical trials that have been done in the space (published on databases like PubMed) to make the insights “really actionable."

Ghannoum is already working with some very large companies in the supplements space, companies that had “very sophisticated internal R&D teams, very sophisticated business development teams and science teams, but what they have is a bandwidth issue.

“Companies expect you to come and say, ‘Listen, if you add this ingredient, it's going to optimize this formula, or you can create this innovative SKU with these claims,'" he said. "What happens for business development teams is they then turn to the innovation teams and say, ‘Give me some ideas that I could take back to the customer.’ So that is increasingly just a bandwidth issue.

"So what we're doing is we're augmenting that bandwidth, right? So being able to give business development teams what we call like client intelligence briefs, you know, in a day or two, that shows, not only, hey, here's a summary of what the company does and how they're already using branded ingredients, but here's specifically how your branded ingredient could optimize these four formulas [...] that's very valuable, especially to be able to do quickly."

Sports & Active Nutrition Summit​

Ghannoum is confirmed to present CPG Radar at NutraIngredients-USA’s Sports & Active Nutrition Summit​ in February in San Diego.

“[Sports nutrition] is an area that is so innovation driven that, you know, really one of the challenges is it's also a little bit of a wild west category, where there's so many companies making so many different claims. So how do you really stand out, you know?” he said.

“What we're seeing is there's a lot of interest in looking for those gaps, and formulation gaps, in the science, and looking for ways that you can really bring an offering that's unique but on a rapid innovation pace.”

Watch the video above for the full interview.