With More Plants and NotCo’s Smart Tech, Magnum Plans to Reinvent Ice Cream

The Magnum Ice Cream Company has entered into a partnership with Chile’s vegan meat and milk company NotCo to leverage its AI platform, Giuseppe AI, for fast-tracking product innovation in the US. Magnum plans to pilot the platform to develop new formats and nutritional profiles, reformulating old products and creating new ones as part of its push to adapt to evolving consumer demands.

“At The Magnum Ice Cream Company, we believe AI will be a catalyst for unlocking the next generation of food innovation,” Zbigniew Lewicki, Chief Research, Design and Innovation Officer at Magnum, said in a statement. “Partnering with NotCo allows us to explore how advanced AI tools can help us solve complex formulation challenges faster and more precisely, while keeping consumer needs at the heart of everything we do.”

Magnum

NotCo, using its Giuseppe AI full-stack platform, will assist Magnum in meeting multiple goals including finding new product formats, adapting nutritional profiles, reducing ingredients like sugar, addressing ingredient cost pressures, and exploring more sustainable or plant-based alternatives. NotCo says Giuseppe AI was built on a decade of proprietary, high-quality data about food and consumable properties, and that the AI platform has already been used by several major CPGs globally.

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“It’s extraordinary that 10 years after we first envisioned AI transforming everything, we’re now helping, among others, the world’s largest ice cream company overcome their most complex growth and innovation challenges,” said Matias Muchnick, co-founder and CEO of NotCo. “As we look ahead to our next chapter, we’re beyond excited to partner with The Magnum Ice Cream Company and supercharge its innovation roadmap with our AI technology.”

Ice cream market pressure and opportunity

Although traditional dairy ice cream remains dominant in the frozen dessert category, market shifts reflect growing consumer interest in lower-sugar, smaller portions, ethical sourcing, and especially plant-based alternatives. In North America, the overall ice cream market was valued at more than $14.2 billion in 2024, with projections putting it at $19.4 billion by 2033.

Magnum

The vegan ice cream segment in the US was worth roughly $917.7 million in 2022, and it is expected to grow to nearly $1.4 billion by 2030. Globally, the plant-based ice cream market was estimated at $732.6 million in 2024 and is forecasted to surpass $1 billion by 2034.

Key drivers include changing dietary preferences, environmental concerns, lactose intolerance, and demand for cleaner label ingredients and transparency. But despite the rising interest, plant-based frozen treats still have relatively low household penetration. Price, taste, and texture remain major barriers. This leaves room for AI-assisted innovation to potentially close the gap by improving formulations while keeping products affordable.

How AI could reshape Magnum’s future

NotCo’s Giuseppe AI is described as a vertical-specific foundational model for consumer packaged goods, not simply a recipe generator but a full research and development accelerator. Its database spans a large number of edible plants, detailed data on food properties, flavor, texture, nutrition, and cost. It has already been used to reformulate existing products under constraints such as cost or supply chain issues and to optimize nutritional trade-offs.

Magnum

Magnum plans to use Giuseppe AI to solve “complex, high-value formulation and product development challenges in record time” by combining AI’s speed with human expertise. That may mean more plant-based or hybrid ice cream options, lower-sugar formulations, or smaller-portion indulgences, aligning with what consumers increasingly seek. The company’s move also comes as it prepares for its expected spin-off from Unilever in November, with projections of organic growth at about three to five percent annually starting in 2026.

Industry observers will be watching how quickly these AI-backed innovations make it to market, how pricing compares with traditional ice cream, and whether consumer perceptions shift when the indulgence is powered by data science. “We believe that the real magic happens when AI, robotics, and human expertise come together, each exceptional on its own, but exponentially more powerful in combination,” Lewicki said.