Project Wing
A Project Wing aircraft lowering a package to the ground during recent testing. (Via Project Wing)

If you wanted a Starbucks latte with your drone-delivered Chipotle burrito, it appears you’re going to have to wait a while as a new report says that the Seattle-based coffee giant and Google parent Alphabet have shelved a partnership.

Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the “brakes are being tapped” on Project Wing, part of Alphabet’s X research lab, due to a tightening of budgets across the company.

Project Wing won FAA approval in September to begin test deliveries of Chipotle Mexican Grill items on the campus of Virginia Tech. The company said at the time that it was looking to test operational scenarios in real-world conditions.

According to Bloomberg, Alphabet was in advanced talks with Starbucks and had tested delivery with the coffee chain. A former X employee said disagreements about access to customer data that Alphabet wanted led to a nixing of the joint effort.

The report further states that hiring was frozen at Wing following the departure of project head Dave Vos in October.

“Project Wing has the potential to remove a big chunk of the friction in how physical things are moved around in the world,” a spokeswoman for X told Bloomberg. “What we’re doing now is developing the next phase of our technology, and as always are thinking in a very broad way about all the potential use cases for delivery by unmanned aerial systems.”

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