Starbucks Pumps $100million into Valor Siren Ventures

Starbucks has pumped $100 million into Valor Siren Ventures, a US-based venture capitalist. The new investment marks the first of its kind for Starbucks. The venture capitalist will support retail and food tech startups by serving them as an incubator.

Valor Siren Ventures is a unit of Valor Equity partners. The portfolio companies under Valor Equity are Wow Bao, Eatsa, and Fooda. These companies are currently into food tech space.

According to press release, Starbucks are looking for an additional investment of $300 million from other partners in the coming months. The information about the companies for the incubator and the investment plans were not revealed. By looking at Valor’s current portfolio, the investment could support these areas in the foodtech- data analytics, cryptocurrency management, and restaurant’s back-front end house systems.

Earlier, Valor invested in clean energy, the same sector Starbucks is engaged with through its Greener Stores initiative.

Starbucks has also revealed about its piloting of greener packing so that a new company related to that could turn up in the new incubator. The new investment has paved the way for Starbucks to unbolt new tech which could play an important role in improving the operations across Starbuck stores in the aspect of retail and food.

The company stated that it will explore commercial partnerships from the new incubator.

Brands such as Shake Shake, Wendy's and McDonald's are focusing on tech innovations by overhauling their stores by chipping in more consumer facing tech or by adopting more tech in the coming days.