Our Story

How two friends built an AI-native recipe app over a decade in the making.

Aioli was born from a simple frustration.

Recipes are everywhere: scattered across Instagram saves, YouTube likes, browser bookmarks, and scribbled notes. But when you're hungry, busy, or planning for others, that inspiration often becomes noise. We felt that every day, so we set out to build something better: the first AI-native recipe app designed not just to store ideas, but to help bring them to life.

But Aioli didn't really start with technology. It started with us, Pete and Dave.

We met in London in 2014, when food often had to fit around everything else. Work came first. Social plans filled the gaps. Meals were convenient, quick, sometimes great, but rarely intentional. Like many people, we loved food, but we weren't truly connected to it.

Even then, we could see the problem. Getting from idea to table was too difficult. But the solution we imagined felt too ambitious for the tools available at the time, so we parked it.

As the years passed, life changed. We grew older, hopefully a little wiser, and began to understand the importance of eating well. Not just for health, but for how it shapes your day, your energy, and your relationships.

Then came partners, children, busier routines, and fuller households. The problem didn't go away. It became harder to ignore.

Meals were no longer just about us. They meant balancing tastes, preferences, budgets, routines, and time. The simple question of "what's for dinner?" became a daily puzzle: cook something everyone enjoys, shop responsibly, reduce waste, and avoid making multiple meals.

And as life expanded, so did food. Dinner parties. Birthdays. Hosting. Celebrating. Sharing. The joy increased, but so did the complexity.

Despite aiming to be modern, collaborative partners, we saw how much of the planning, preparing, and mental load still fell disproportionately on the women in our lives, including in our own homes. That didn't sit right with us. We needed a modern solution for the modern household, one that supports how people actually share the work of cooking and planning.

Through all of this, the original idea never left us.

It sat quietly in the background, evolving as life moved on. Then AI changed what felt possible. The technology had finally caught up with the problem.

Aioli isn't exactly what we imagined back then, but its DNA is the same. In many ways, it has been over a decade in the making: a slow build of experience, perspective, and belief.

With AI, we believed we could build something that understands real life. Something that adapts to your preferences, your time, your family, and your chaos. Something that makes cooking feel simple again.

As we built Aioli, it became clear this could be much bigger than us.

Because everyone eats. Across cultures, languages, and lifestyles, we all face some version of the same challenge: turning the idea of food into something real, practical, and enjoyable in everyday life.

Food is also one of the most powerful ways we connect. It is comfort, celebration, and care. We believe solving this is not just about building a better app. It is about creating a system that supports how people actually live, makes cooking feel lighter and more shared, and frees people to be more present for the moments that matter.

That is our ambition. We want Aioli to live on every mobile phone in the world.

It is a big goal, and we hold it humbly. But we have built the foundations for it: technology that works across languages, cultures, and kitchens of all kinds. We dream of hearing stories from every corner of the earth. Different people, different meals, one shared experience made simpler.

Building something like this is deeply rewarding, but it comes with trade-offs.

There have been long nights, missed moments, and a constant pull back to the problem we are trying to solve. Not because we have to, but because we believe it matters. Making everyday life around food simpler, lighter, and more shared is worth getting right.

Through all of it, our families have supported us, encouraged us, and patiently indulged us. Aioli would not exist without them.

Because at its heart, this is not really about recipes. It is about people.

It is about making life a little easier. Evenings a little calmer. Gatherings you can actually be present for.

We believe cooking should be effortless, not because it lacks meaning, but because it deserves to feel natural, intuitive, and human.

And we're just getting started.