NuCicer Launches Nuchi, a Higher-Protein Chickpea Bred With AI
As whey prices spike and manufacturers scramble for alternatives, a Davis, California crop-design startup is betting that a re-engineered chickpea — not a new processing trick — can compete at the center of the plate.
What Was Announced
NuCicer, a crop-design company spun out of the University of California, Davis, introduced Nuchi™ on July 8, 2026, showcasing the ingredient at the IFT FIRST conference in Chicago the same week. Nuchi is the company's first commercial chickpea brand: a non-GMO variety bred to carry 50% more protein and 25% less fat than a standard chickpea, using an AI-driven genomic modeling and speed-breeding platform built on a chickpea genetics library the company says holds roughly 40 times the genetic diversity of commercial varieties.
The improved protein-to-fat ratio removes the costly defatting step that conventional chickpea protein processing requires, and the ingredient is designed to run on existing pea-protein processing lines, lowering the capital cost of adoption. Nuchi is being sold as flour, protein concentrate, and protein isolate — aimed at bakery, snack, and pasta manufacturers rather than the canned or dry retail chickpea aisle.
Key Takeaways
- NuCicer's Nuchi is the company's first commercial product after six years of genomics research spun out of a UC Davis chickpea-breeding program.
- The variety delivers 50% more protein and 25% less fat, eliminating a processing step that has kept chickpea protein costly relative to soy and pea.
- The launch lands amid a whey protein supply squeeze — whey protein concentrate prices have risen more than 50% since January 2026 on tight dairy supply and rising GLP-1-linked demand.
- NuCicer has raised close to $16 million since 2021, led by Leaps by Bayer and Lever VC, and has roughly 10,000 acres of Nuchi planted across California, Idaho and Montana in 2026.
- Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are among the world's largest chickpea importers, giving the region a direct, if still early-stage, stake in how chickpea-protein innovation develops.
Why the Timing Matters
The global protein ingredients market is projected to grow from roughly $55 billion in 2025 to $84.3 billion by 2033, according to Grand View Research, driven by rising protein-forward diets and GLP-1 medication use, which has pushed consumers and clinicians alike to prioritize protein intake. That demand has collided with a supply-side shock in the ingredient most manufacturers have historically relied on: whey. Whey protein concentrate prices have climbed more than 50% since the start of 2026, forcing formulators toward soy, pea, and now chickpea as substitutes.
Plant proteins already compete on cost and sustainability; NuCicer's argument is that chickpea has been held back less by demand and more by processing economics and flavor, and that fixing those constraints at the crop level — rather than through downstream formulation — is the more durable fix.
"-This is not your average chickpea."
Cook has said the company set out to build a better starting ingredient by drawing on the chickpea's largely untapped wild genetic diversity, rather than continuing to process around the limitations of standard commercial varieties.
From Research Lab to Field
NuCicer was founded in 2019 by Kathryn Cook — previously a technical program manager at Meta and Boeing — alongside her father Douglas Cook, a UC Davis plant pathology professor who has studied chickpea genetics for more than fifteen years. The company's breeding platform draws on wild chickpea relatives to reintroduce genetic diversity lost during domestication, compressing what would traditionally be a decade of breeding into roughly four years. An earlier variety, introduced in 2021, already carried up to 75% more protein than commodity chickpeas; Nuchi is the company's first version built specifically for commercial-scale food manufacturing.
The company has raised close to $16 million to date: a $4.5 million seed round in 2022 led by Lever VC, followed by an $11.5 million Series A in 2025 led by Leaps by Bayer, the venture arm of Bayer AG, with participation from Blue Horizon and Trellis Road. NuCicer now employs roughly 23 people and reports around 10,000 acres of Nuchi under cultivation across California, Idaho, and Montana for the 2026 season.
Relevance for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
Chickpeas sit at the center of the Saudi diet — in hummus, falafel, and regional stews — yet the Kingdom's climate leaves it reliant on imports, making it one of the region's largest chickpea buyers. That import dependence is precisely the kind of exposure that Vision 2030's food-security agenda has targeted, and it has already pushed local manufacturers toward imported protein feedstocks for pea- and chickpea-based condiments, snacks, and bakery applications, since domestic processing capacity for high-protein ingredients remains limited.
Regional market data still put chickpea protein at an early stage in the Gulf — the category is forecast to reach roughly $100 million across the Middle East and Africa by 2030 — but Saudi Arabia is expected to post the fastest growth in that market through the decade, and chickpea-based hummus and snack formats are already gaining shelf space in Riyadh and Jeddah. A higher-yield, easier-to-process chickpea protein would be relevant to that pipeline, though NuCicer has not announced distribution plans outside North America.
Editorial View
Nuchi is one entrant in a broader push to secure protein supply chains that no longer behave predictably — whether the volatility is in dairy, in freight, or in import policy. For a region like Saudi Arabia, where chickpeas are both a dietary staple and an import dependency, better-performing crop genetics are worth tracking less as a single product launch and more as a signal of where ingredient innovation is heading next.
