May 22, 2025 0 comment

Thomas Hayes, Co-founder & Head of business development, Building AI for Food Scientists | That’s a Food Job! Podcast #108

Thomas Hayes is the co-founder of Agilitas, a company building AI-powered tools to help food scientists formulate faster, smarter, and with more confidence. By transforming messy spreadsheets into an intelligent platform, Agilitas is tackling the “cold start” problem in food R&D and making it easier for teams to benchmark products, create base formulas, and retain critical institutional knowledge.

In this episode of That’s a Food Job!, Tommy shares his unconventional path from chemical engineering to food tech founder. He talks about building a customer-first platform, the power of feedback loops in product development, and how AI is being used to reduce trial-and-error in formulation—without replacing the scientist behind the bench. We also dive into his global experiences working in Singapore and Saudi Arabia, and what those perspectives taught him about innovation, communication, and risk-taking.

If you’re curious about the future of food science, the role of AI in product development, or how to build something new in a traditional industry, this conversation is a must-listen.

In this episode:

00:00 Introduction
00:46 What Agilitas Does and Why It Matters
05:49 What It’s Like to Build a Food Tech Startup
08:52 Working Abroad: Lessons from Singapore and Saudi Arabia
12:04 How AI Is Being Used in Food Product Development
14:58 What Agilitas Can Actually Do for Food Scientists
26:22 Why Food Tech Is Changing Right Now
30:05 Making Product Development Faster and Smarter
35:00 The Real Problems AI Can Solve in Food Science
39:59 How Agilitas Handles AI Errors and Hallucinations
42:43 Advice for Students: Learning and Using AI Tools
48:09 Where AI in Food R&D Is Headed Next

Recommended next episode

#81–Harjeet Bajaj, President and CEO of Savourmetrics

Thomas Hayes: LinkedIn
Agilitas: Website/LinkedIn/