SHENZHEN, CHINA – 2020/10/05: Chinese coffee shop chain Luckin Coffee logo seen at a store. (Photo by Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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Chinese coffee giant Luckin Coffee hit 10,000 stores in China in June, surpassing Starbucks as the largest coffee chain brand in the country following rapid nationwide expansion this year.
Founded in 2017, Luckin Coffee burst onto the Chinese coffee scene to challenge Starbucks through affordable coffee options and mobile ordering. China is Starbucks’ second-largest market after the U.S.
“They are very aggressive in store expansion and in China, it is very common to buy a drink from Luckin for $2 or less after heavy discounts,” said Jianggan Li, founder and CEO of tech research company Momentum Works.
Luckin stores are also of a smaller format compared to Starbucks, which has much larger stores.
Rahul Maheshwari
Early-stage investor
China is traditionally a tea-drinking market, but over the last few years, coffee sales have been increasing steadily, especially in urban areas and among younger professionals.
China’s overall coffee sales will rise at an 8.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022–2027, according to analytics firm GlobalData. CAGR is a measure of investment returns, which takes into account what an investment yields at an annual rate over a specified period.
Aggressive expansion
In the quarter ended June 30, Luckin Coffee opened 1,485 new stores, averaging 16.5 new stores daily. Of the 10,829 stores in China, 7,181 are self-operated and 3,648 are partnership stores, according to the company’s earnings transcript.
The Chinese coffee chain expanded to Singapore in March in its first international foray and has opened 14 stores in the city-state so far, according to a CNBC check.
Cumulative transacting customers surpassed 170 million, while average monthly transacting customers reached 43.07 million in the second quarter, according to the company.
“Luckin was able to expand so fast because of its operating model — which includes self-operated stores and franchises,” said Li of Momentum Works.
Meanwhile, Starbucks’ stores worldwide are company-owned and the American coffee chain does not franchise operations, according to its website. Instead, it sells licenses to operate. In the quarter ended July 2, the company opened 588 new stores — about 40% of Luckin’s count.
Vivian Leung, an office worker residing in Guangzhou, said that there are at least two Luckin Coffee outlets within 50 meters from her apartment.
TIANJIN, CHINA – 2023/07/24: Customers are waiting in front of the counter.
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“Franchising unlocks very fast growth because you don’t have to put that amount of capital. Otherwise you will always be limited from growth. The density of Luckin stores is so high where there’s a store in almost every neighborhood,” said Rahul Maheshwari, an early-stage investor in Asia. He previously worked in Beijing at a Chinese venture capital firm and as a general manager with a Chinese app.
Luckin found mass market appeal. Price wise, it is already differentiated from Starbucks. Quantity wise, it’s still better, compared to many of the low end brands, said Li of Momentum Works.
“Luckin stores are also of a smaller format compared to Starbucks, which has much larger stores,” said Maheshwari.
Luckin found mass market appeal. Price wise, it is already differentiated from Starbucks. Quantity wise, it’s still better, compared to many of the low end brands.
Jianggan Li
Founder and CEO at Momentum Works
“As you can imagine, the asset-heavy model is expensive to operate and slow to scale,” said Momentum Works in a report.
Luckin operates a grab-and-go model, where customers order from the app and pick up their orders at the store, unlike Starbucks which offers a cozy environment for people to work and socialize.
As a result, Luckin has lower operating costs and can “break even within a year,” said Maheshwari.
Mass market appeal
Luckin and Starbucks have different pricing strategies.
A cup of coffee from Luckin costs 10 to 20 yuan, or about $1.40 to $2.75. That’s because Luckin offers heavy discounts and offers. Meanwhile, a cup of coffee from Starbucks is priced at 30 yuan or more — that’s at least $4.10.
“Luckin found mass market appeal. Price wise, it is already differentiated from Starbucks. Quality wise, it’s still better, compared to many of the low end brands,” said Li.
According to Guangzhou resident Leung, said that Luckin Coffee is “delicious and affordable.”
Luckin is also looking to collaboration and partnerships to raise the profile of its brand.
Last Tuesday, the company launched a new drink with Kweichow Moutai, a Chinese liquor maker famed for its “baijiu,” or white liquor made from rice grains.
Moutai, sometimes called maotai, is a premium distilled Chinese liquor and has been dubbed the “national liquor of China.”
Moutai topped the list of spirits brands with a value of $42.9 billion, according to a 2022 study by valuation consultancy Brand Finance.
Shawn Yang, managing director at Blue Lotus Research Institute, said it was a strategic move to “offer premium products to offset the sense of cheapness from 9.9 yuan per cup.”
“Luckin [extended its] customer base by leveraging the influence of legacy Chinese brands, including Moutai and Coconut Palm,” said Yang in a report.
Other localized hits with the Chinese market include brown sugar boba latte, as well as cheese latte and coconut latte.
“Luckin Coffee has played an important role in deepening the coffee market in China by introducing products which would suit the Chinese customer,” said Maheshwari in a recent blog post.
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Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.