Fuzhou, China – November 16, 2025 – Luckin Coffee’s new container-themed store opened on November 16, 2025 in Gushan Scenic Area, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China.
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SINGAPORE — Luckin Coffee is looking to enter the Persian Gulf market again after securing support from Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.
Luckin’s senior management is considering expanding into the Gulf, Chairman David Lee told CNBC in an exclusive interview on Monday. Mr. Li is the co-founder and CEO of private equity firm Centurium Capital, which is the controlling shareholder of China-based Luckin.
“There are also other markets that we are currently looking at (and) potentially entering regions like the Gulf states,” Lee said.
Mubadala became a direct investor in Luckin after making a $1 billion co-investment with Centurium in early September, but neither party disclosed the size of their respective stakes. The $385 billion sovereign wealth fund has invested more than $20 billion in China, including in e-commerce giant Shine and real estate developer Dalian Wanda’s shopping mall operations.
Luckin had plans to open stores in the Middle East and India in 2019, but those plans never materialized. Six years ago, the company was embroiled in an accounting scandal in which former executives were found to have fabricated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales figures, leading to a U.S. bankruptcy filing, delisting from the Nasdaq, and spurring increased U.S. scrutiny of Chinese companies’ stock listings.
Luckin CEO Jingyi Guo separately told CNBC on Monday that the appeal of expanding into the Gulf lies in stable and frequent demand for coffee and a growing preference for low-sugar, health-conscious beverages.
With Centurium’s support, Luckin made a rapid turnaround and surpassed Starbucks as China’s largest coffee chain in terms of sales. The Beijing-based private equity firm is also focusing more on its coffee business after acquiring premium coffee brand Blue Bottle Coffee in April. nestle Reportedly less than $400 million.
Luckin’s The company’s shares are still traded over-the-counter on less regulated exchanges, and the company is now valued at about $9.6 billion. Last November, Starbucks valued its China operations at more than $13 billion in a deal to sell control to Beijing-based private equity firm Boyu Capital.
Luckin is “actively pursuing the process of relisting on the U.S. main board,” Guo said last year at a government-sponsored event in the southeastern city of Xiamen, where Luckin is headquartered. The company still needs approval from Chinese regulators to relist, after which it has indicated there is no clear timeline.
Luckin Coffee Co., Ltd.
The coffee chain’s turnaround has an increasingly long list of financial backers. Temasek disclosed a 6.4% stake in Luckin in a regulatory filing in May and expressed confidence in the management team’s ability to deliver growth. The chain continues to grow its presence in two other Asian markets: Singapore and Malaysia.
Still, the company’s overseas growth remains modest compared to Luckin’s size in China. About a year after its U.S. debut, the chain operates 23 stores in New York City, 150 in Malaysia, and 100 in Singapore, with more than 36,000 stores in mainland China and Hong Kong combined.
Luckin’s revenue rose 28.5% to 15.9 billion yuan ($2.34 billion) in the second quarter, and average monthly customer traffic rose 23% to 112.7 million as the chain opened 2,714 net new stores in the period.
