How Bazooka’s CIO is bringing AI to the gum game and navigating candy industry headwinds

When Sankar Karuppasamy served as chief information officer at trading card manufacturer Topps, he reported to the chief financial officer. But after moving into the role of CIO at gum maker Bazooka, which was separated from Topps through a $700 million sale to buyout firm Apax Partners in 2023, the technologist began to report to the CEO, Tony Jacobs. “There’s a lot of transformation going on, with the new owners supporting the investment,” says Karuppasamy of the role that technology plays in Bazooka’s future. The reporting structure shift reflects a broader trend across corporate America, as 65% of CIOs report to the corner office, up from 41% a decade ago, according to consulting giant Deloitte. Karuppasamy has been deploying AI and machine learning quite broadly across Bazooka’s operations, helping sharpen demand forecasting, speed up marketing and packaging materials, piloting agentic AI in the company’s supply chain, and working on a project that transitions employees away from OpenAI’s ChatGPT in favor of Anthropic’s Claude. OpenAI and Anthropic are in the midst of an intense race that encompasses everything from who is developing the most advanced AI models to who can go public first. Bazooka has seen its share of technological and economic change over its more than three-quarter-century history. After introducing its Bazooka chewing gum in 1947, the then-Brooklyn, New York-based company debuted Bazooka Joe Comics in 1953 and launched its “wearable” Ring Pop candy in 1977. The advent of AI comes at a time when the food and beverage industry faces a number of challenges, with inflation-pressured consumers gravitating to private-label brands and overall consumption slipping as more Americans use GLP-1 drugs, which suppress appetites and lower calorie consumption. U.S. retail sales of confectionaries grew 1.5% in 2025, with unit sales down year over year in all categories (chocolate, non-chocolate candy, gum and mints) according t