Donut Chains and Tractor Makers Are Running Venture Capital Funds
KazuYour postDunkin' Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Inspire Brands, quietly backs technology startups in loyalty software, supply chain tooling, and customer experience platforms. Walmart Inc. ran a Silicon Valley incubator for six years. Tyson Foods Inc. manages a $150 million corporate fund with 42 portfolio investments, several of which are building technology that competes directly with Tyson's core processing business. Kraft Heinz Co. launched a $100 million fund in January 2025.
Corporate venture capital has expanded well beyond the semiconductor and pharmaceutical sectors that pioneered the model. Incumbent food manufacturers, consumer brands, and industrial equipment companies are deploying capital at a pace that is reshaping how large companies manage competitive risk -- and in some cases, funding the startups most positioned to erode their own market share.
Walmart's Eight-Year Experiment
The most studied example of this model applied outside technology is Walmart's Store No. 8, launched in March 2017 at the Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas and headquartered in Silicon Valley with explicit insulation from the company's core planning structure. Marc Lore, then head of Walmart's U.S. e-commerce unit, described its mandate plainly: to build the kind of company that Walmart's existing bureaucracy could not.
Store No. 8's portfolio included:
- Code Eight, a text-based personal shopping concierge service piloted for Walmart customers
- Spatial, a virtual reality platform allowing users to visualize furniture and home goods in their own spaces before purchasing
- Drone delivery logistics companies backed at a stage when the technology had no near-term commercial application inside a conventional retail operation
The Food Industry's Hedge Book
Tyson Foods launched a $150 million venture arm in 2016. Its portfolio includes investments across conventional and alternative protein, with some positions directly at odds with the company's existing processing operations:
- Future Meat Technologies -- developing cell-cultured chicken production designed to eliminate conventional livestock processing
- Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) -- one of the most well-funded cultivated meat startups in the United States
- Beyond Meat -- an early position ahead of the company's 2019 IPO, later exited at a gain
Kraft Heinz's Evolv Ventures, managed by Bill Pescatello, made GrubMarket its first disclosed investment -- a direct-to-consumer grocery platform that routes around the conventional food distribution network Kraft Heinz depends on. Subsequent investments have focused on ingredient innovation, sustainable packaging, and supply chain traceability.
Anheuser-Busch InBev's ZX Ventures has backed 47 companies across two portfolio exits. Key positions include:
- Drizly -- the alcohol delivery platform Uber acquired for $1.1 billion in 2021
- Wicked Weed Brewing and Devils Backbone -- craft brewery acquisitions
- Canvas -- an in-house direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform for beer brands built to reduce dependence on the three-tier distribution system
- Bar-i -- a bar inventory management platform
Dunkin' Ventures backs startups in digital loyalty architecture and restaurant operations software deployable across the Dunkin' and Baskin-Robbins network of more than 12,000 locations globally.
Industrial Capital
Caterpillar Ventures has generated some of the cleaner acquisition outcomes in the corporate venture category:
- Yard Club -- a peer-to-peer equipment rental marketplace Caterpillar invested in and subsequently acquired to build its own rental infrastructure
- BuildingConnected -- a construction bidding and risk management platform Autodesk acquired for $275 million, embedding a Caterpillar-affiliated data standard into a platform now processing billions in annual construction bids
John Deere's acquisition of Blue River Technology in 2017 for $305 million converted a computer vision startup into a precision herbicide application system that sprays only where plant-level sensors detect weeds, reducing chemical application by as much as 90% in field trials. Combined with investments in soil health analytics and autonomous tractor guidance, Deere has built a precision agriculture revenue line that reached nearly $2 billion in fiscal year 2023.
Home Depot announced a $150 million venture fund in May 2022, following earlier activity including the acquisition of Black Locus, a pricing analytics platform used to build dynamic pricing capability across its product catalog, and partnerships with Locus Robotics to automate fulfillment for same-day delivery expansion. The company reported $35.8 billion in digital and interconnected retail sales in fiscal year 2023.
What the Returns Reveal
Large incumbents generate sufficient free cash flow to fund serious innovation investment, but internal R&D budgets are subject to the same short-term performance pressures as the rest of the business. A separately capitalized venture unit insulates investment decisions from quarterly accountability cycles and allows the parent to establish positions before valuations reflect broader competitive awareness. Tyson's entry into Beyond Meat ahead of the IPO, Caterpillar's position in BuildingConnected before the Autodesk acquisition, and Walmart's drone delivery investments before any domestic regulatory framework existed all reflect that timing advantage.
The funds with the clearest track records share a governance structure: investment decisions made by dedicated fund leadership rather than business unit committees. Funds that route decisions through existing business units consistently invest later, at higher valuations, and with less differentiated deal flow. The ones operating independently have generated the acquisition outcomes -- Yard Club, BuildingConnected, Blue River Technology -- that justify the structural cost.
Corporate venture capital assets under management globally exceeded $300 billion in 2023, with consumer and industrial companies accounting for a growing share. The fastest-growing investment categories include food technology, construction software, and agricultural automation -- sectors where the incumbents running the funds have demonstrated more strategic urgency than the traditional venture community operating at arm's length from the underlying industries.