Users can ask Alma questions about their health goals and can see their daily food intake.
Alma
Alma, a nutrition startup, launched on Apple’s app store Wednesday.The company uses AI to track and analyze eating habits as well as suggest new foods.Alma received pre-seed funding from Menlo Ventures with participation from Menlo’s partnership fund with Anthropic.
Alma, a nutrition startup that uses artificial intelligence to track users’ eating habits, debuted its mobile app on Wednesday funded by Menlo Ventures and the Anthropic Anthology Fund.
Alma founder and CEO Rami Alhamad began working on Alma in early 2024 and was part of the VC firm’s fellowship program, which offers early-stage founders mentorship and guidance as they build companies. Currently, Menlo has about 100 fellows, Menlo Ventures partner Shawn Carolan told Business Insider.
Through participating in Menlo Labs, the firm’s incubator program, Alma received $2.9 million in pre-seed funding led by Menlo. The firm’s Anthology Fund, a $100 million partnership fund with Anthropic, also participated in the round.
Alma uses artificial intelligence to analyze eating patterns. Users can text, talk, or upload pictures of nutrition labels or recipes to the app to log meals and snacks. As Alma gathers data on dietary preferences, it sends food intake reports and recipe suggestions that match users’ health goals.
Alma currently exclusively references Harvard University’s nutrition source because the company wanted to use trusted sources for nutrition advice, Alhamad said. The startup also has a nutrition science advisory board, which includes Harvard nutrition scientist Dr. Eric Rimm.
Previously, Alhamad worked on product at Whoop after his workout device, Push, was acquired by the fitness tracker company in 2021.
At Menlo, Alhamad and Carolan bonded over their use of health and wellness apps. While they both find it easy to log exercise with wearables and applications, the process of doing the same for eating seemed manual and outdated, Alhamad said.
The nutrition app space is crowded. MyFitnessPal, which was founded in 2005, lets users manually input calories and macros. Noom gives users eating recommendations as well as tracks fitness and meals. Cal AI, a calorie-counting app started by an 18-year-old entrepreneur, is seeing $12 million in annual recurring revenue, Forbes reported in November 2024. And Hexis, another AI nutrition app, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding in May 2024, Sports Business Journal reported.
“We both tracked our nutrition for so long,” Alhamad told Business Insider. “When it comes to nutrition, you have to put so much effort in, but so little out.”
“It’s just tons of work to eat well,” Carolan said. “The dream of this company is that it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Alma is available on Apple’s app store for a subscription of $19 a month or $199 a year.
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