As of November 30, 2025, Brian Niccol has been Starbucks CEO since September 9, 2024, so we are only a bit over one year into his tenure, within a loosely defined "first couple of years" window. (about.starbucks.com) Under Niccol, Starbucks has expanded use of AI tools like Green Dot Assist in about 35 pilot stores, plus "Smart Queue" and an AI-driven inventory-counting system, but these are software assistants layered on top of normal barista work, not robot-heavy or visibly highly automated drink-prep stores. (businessinsider.com) Starbucks’ main in-store automation platform, the Siren Craft System, was developed and rolled out broadly before Niccol arrived, and since he took over the company has publicly said it is scaling back reliance on automation, slowing or limiting Siren’s deployment and instead hiring thousands of additional baristas and reversing prior labor-cutting moves. (about.starbucks.com) Niccol and company representatives have repeatedly emphasized that Starbucks is “not near” any fully robotic staff model and that the goal is to bring more human partners back into stores, while the announced "coffeehouse of the future" prototypes scheduled to open in fiscal 2026 are described in terms of ambiance, seating, and lower build cost rather than as heavily automated or robotic cafes. (people.com) I could not find evidence that Starbucks has opened any experimental stores under Niccol that are noticeably more automated than typical locations in the sense of using robots or heavy automation for drink/food preparation; however, because the predicted time window extends roughly through the first two years of his tenure (into late 2026) and those future prototypes have not yet opened, it is still too early to say definitively that such stores will not appear. Therefore, the prediction is currently inconclusive (too early to judge).