Orbisk’s Sama-Powered Food Waste Solution Named to Fast Company’s First-Ever List of the Next Big Things in Tech

Our team at Sama is committed to building the technology solutions required to address our society’s pressing needs. From our social-impact business model and training programs that help individuals lift themselves out of poverty to partnerships with the organizations creating change across industries, we’ve always believed in accurate AI’s ability to change our world for the better.

That’s why we’re honored to announce today that we’ve been recognized in Fast Company’s first-ever list of the Next Big Things in Tech for our work with our partners at Orbisk.Highlighting the new technological breakthroughs that promise to help define the future of the industries they serve, Next Big Things In Tech finds the products, services, features, research, and other technology efforts having a positive impact on consumers, businesses, or society at large in the next five years.“The climate crisis is growing increasingly dire each day. Right now, between 8-10% of all greenhouse gas emissions are the direct result of food waste,” said Wendy Gonzalez, CEO at Sama. “As we work to find ways to be more environmentally conscious, we were inspired by the team at Orbisk’s vision for the future of food service. Together, we’re incredibly proud of the solution we’ve built and its impact in minimizing waste production.”Each year, 931 million tonnes of food end up in landfills, and of that, nearly 362 million tonnes come from the foodservice and retail industries. With Sama’s high-quality training data powering its algorithm, Orbisk’s fully automated food waste monitor allows hotels, restaurants, and cafés to reduce food waste by up to 70%. Orbisk’s solution works by scanning plates of food to detect and record what items are being thrown away automatically and their quantities. With this data, businesses can make smarter choices that help save money while reducing food waste. To ensure accuracy, Sama successfully labeled hundreds of thousands of images of food, rapidly iterating to reach consistent attribute tagging. This allows Orbisk to improve accuracy and build a robust product capable of accurately recognizing food of all kinds in all steps of the cooking process.To date, our partnership has enabled businesses to reduce an average of 8,000lbs of food waste per year. In total, prototyping projects alone have saved over 220,400lbs to date, and we’re aiming to reach over 220,000,000lbs saved annually by 2025.

“Fast Company is thrilled to highlight cutting-edge technologies that are solving real-world problems in unexpected ways. From climate change and public health crises to machine learning and security, these technologies will certainly have a profound impact on the future, and we’re honored to bring attention to them today,” says Stephanie Mehta, editor-in-chief of Fast Company.

Together, we look forward to helping reduce the rate of climate warming by mitigating food waste.Learn more about our partnership and its success here, or check out the full list of Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech here.