AI @ Nestlé
Summary
- Nestlé has progressively integrated AI technologies across R&D, manufacturing, sustainability, and marketing since 2022, evolving from early experimental uses in process control to advanced generative AI and digital twin services by 2025, significantly accelerating product innovation and operational efficiencies.
- Key investments include a A$30 million AI upgrade at the KitKat factory, launching AI-powered content platforms, and collaborating with IBM on AI-driven sustainable packaging, collectively driving over $92 billion in annual revenue through AI-enhanced product development and market prediction.
- By late 2025, Nestlé's AI initiatives have yielded substantial time savings for employees, shortened product development cycles from months to weeks, enabled real-time consumer feedback processing, and supported company-wide automation efforts including a workforce reduction of approximately 16,000 jobs.
VIBE METER
5 AI Use Cases at Nestlé
Product Innovation2025Customer Facing
Sustainable Packaging2025
Operational Efficiency2025
Employee Productivity2024
Marketing Optimization2023Customer Facing
Timeline
2026 Q1: no updates
2025 Q4
Nestlé continued aggressive AI-driven digital transformation, joining the Frontier Firm AI Initiative, optimizing forecasts, recipes, sustainability efforts, accelerating growth while leveraging automation and AI to increase speed and consumer focus.
2025 Q3
Nestlé substantially scaled AI usage across procurement, R&D, sustainability, and packaging innovation, achieving faster product development cycles, over 1300 new product ideas generated within minutes, and significant workforce impacts with automation leading to 16,000 job cuts.
- Consumer Goods: Nestlé fuels growth with AI procurement and consumer feedback
- Chief AI Officer: From 3 Months to 3 Weeks: How Nestlé's AI Revolutionized Food Innovation Forever
- Hart Design: Nestlé and IBM use AI to create sustainable packaging
- HSTalks: Ethical AI/ML at Nestlé: From vision to strategy to execution
2025 Q2
Nestlé launched AI-powered digital twins and content creation platforms for brand and eCommerce support, and announced a deep tech center opening in 2026 focused on AI, robotics, and biotech.
2025 Q1
Nestlé Australia invested A$30 million to embed AI and digital technologies at the KitKat factory improving automation and production efficiency.
2024 Q4
Strategic integration of AI technology to enhance decision-making and embed intelligence across operational frameworks.
2024 Q3
Nestlé leveraged generative AI tools such as 'NesGPT' to save employees 45 minutes weekly and highlighted AI applications in product and operational enhancements.
2024 Q2
The company accelerated transformation through AI-powered predictive maintenance, sustainability initiatives, and broad AI deployment across business units.
2024 Q1
Nestlé further deployed AI and data science to address complex challenges in a changing food system.
2023 Q4
The company explored AI-driven personalized nutrition strategies using technology from January AI, advancing precision diet solutions.
2023 Q3
Nestlé expanded AI and machine learning integration into diverse operational areas, evidencing pioneering broad-scale adoption approaches.
2023 Q2: no updates
2023 Q1
Nestlé applied AI for concept research analyzing consumer data patterns and began employing AI platforms to evaluate and rank advertising content for its large marketing team.
2022 Q4
The company invested in AI and machine learning to enhance its research and development workflows aimed at improving innovation outputs.
2022 Q3: no updates
2022 Q2
Nestlé began embracing AI primarily for quality control purposes, using deep learning to verify product component accuracy during manufacturing.