Overview
- Reporting from an internal presentation reviewed by news outlets says Starbucks is building AI-assisted replacements for a Microsoft inventory system and an IBM maintenance platform rather than continuing to license those products.
- Starbucks spends about $400 million a year on software, and Chief Technology Officer Anand Varadarajan told employees there are clear opportunities to reduce that spend.
- Markets moved on the reports with Microsoft and IBM shares falling and Starbucks and restaurant-tech firms such as Toast seeing share gains as investors priced in lower vendor demand.
- Company insiders and analysts warn that homegrown enterprise systems create ongoing costs for security, integration, updates, and dedicated engineering staff, and Starbucks recently scrapped an AI inventory trial and returned to manual counts.
- Starbucks is treating the effort as a staged program that ties AI use to engineering targets, seeks near-term tech savings this fiscal year, and has internal goals to test and potentially deploy systems by the end of 2027 if trials succeed.