Jay-Z’s venture capital firm was the lead investor in a Los Angeles-area startup that’s building pizza-making robot trucks.
(Bloomberg) — Jay-Z’s venture capital firm was the lead investor in a Los Angeles-area startup that’s building pizza-making robot trucks.
Stellar Pizza said Monday that it raised $16.5 million in a round led by the hip-hop icon’s Marcy Venture Partners. The pizza startup joins a portfolio for the VC firm that includes Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty clothing brand.
The pitch from Stellar Pizza is to make ordering a pie quicker and more affordable using automation. A customer would place their order on a mobile app, which signals a robot inside of a truck to assemble and bake pizzas from scratch. A worker removes the pie from the oven to cut and box before serving. Once the service is fully operating, a Stellar truck will take less than five minutes to make a pizza, while cutting down on real estate and labor costs, according to the company.
Stellar Pizza was founded in 2019 by three former Space Exploration Technologies Corp. engineers. The startup, led by Chief Executive Officer Benson Tsai, had over 30 employees from the spacecraft manufacturer on their original team. They’ve bolstered their culinary credentials with the addition of the former SpaceX Executive Chef Ted Cizma and guidance from artisan pizzaiolo Noel Brohner.
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