JAY-Z and his venture capital firm, Marcy Venture Partners, have put major money behind a startup company creating robot-powered pizza trucks.
According to Bloomberg, Stellar Pizza has raised $16.5 million for its trucks as part of a financing round led by Marcy Venture Partners. The Los Angeles-based company aims to revolutionize the pizza industry by fulfilling orders faster and more affordably using automation.
The soon-to-be-launched pizza truck will allow customers to place their order on a mobile app, which tells a robot inside the truck to make the pizzas from scratch. Workers then remove the pizza from the oven to cut and box it before serving to customers — a process that takes no longer than five minutes.
Stellar Pizza was founded in 2019 by three former SpaceX engineers. Today, the team has boosted its culinary credibility with the inclusion of former SpaceX Executive Chef Ted Cizma and guidance from renowned pizza chef Noel Brohner.
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Marcy Venture Partners, meanwhile, was co-founded in 2018 by JAY-Z, Jay Brown and Larry Marcus. They’ve had a busy few years, investing in projects such as NBA star Chris Paul’s vegan cheese brand and Wyze, a company that specializes in smart-home devices.
Last year, the company entered the cryptocurrency space after investing in Bitski, an NFT marketplace based in San Francisco, California. It also put money behind Spatial LABS (sLABS), a tech incubator founded by Ghana-born Iddris Sandu.
JAY-Z is not only generous with his venture capital firm, but his Bitcoin Academy that he runs alongside Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Last month, Dorsey took to Twitter to announce that he and Hov gifted each graduate $1,000 in the digital currency at the school’s graduation ceremony.
“At tonight’s graduation class, @sc and I offered each student a grant of $1,000 in bitcoin,” Dorsey tweeted at the time. “Students can save, spend, or send their bitcoin however they choose to keep investing in themselves.”
JAY-Z announced the launch of The Bitcoin Academy in June. The program aims to bring modern-day financial literacy to the hood, teaching courses on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
“Shout out to @Jack,” the Roc Nation boss tweeted after the initial announcement. “#Bitcoin Academy, starting in Marcy, a place that taught me so much, is hopefully the first of many. The simple goal is to provide people tools to build independence for themselves and then the community around them.”
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