Vale is a Seattle matcha startup. We care deeply about our employees and the communities we're part of, and what we're building is simple: exceptional matcha, made accessible to more people.
Recent online discussion has created confusion about Vale, its ownership, its funding, and our founder's previous career. Some of what is circulating is simply false, and we want to correct it clearly. Other questions are about what we're doing and how we're doing it, and we're happy to answer those in more detail.
The Facts
- Vale is an independent, privately held matcha company founded by Luke Larson in Seattle, Washington, in 2023.
- Vale is not owned by, affiliated with, or operated by Axon.
- Vale has no contracts, partnerships, or data-sharing relationships with ICE, CBP, or DHS.
- Vale has not taken institutional venture capital or private equity funding.
- Vale is founder-funded, and every full-time Vale employee is an equity owner in the company.
- Vale imports tea from Japan and works directly with Japanese farmers, producers, advisors, and equipment manufacturers.
The rest of this page explains each of these in more detail.
Is Vale connected to Axon?
No. Vale and Axon are separate companies.
Vale has no business relationship with Axon. Axon has no ownership stake in Vale, has not invested in Vale, and does not control or operate Vale.
Luke Larson worked for nearly fifteen years at Axon, a publicly traded company that makes technology for police and public safety agencies, best known for the Taser and for body-worn cameras. He started there as a product manager on the body camera team and ultimately served as president. He left in 2022 and founded Vale in 2023.
In the mid-2010s, body cameras drew support across the political spectrum as a tool for transparency and accountability, and the Obama administration launched a federal effort to expand their use. Luke presented research on body cameras to President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a White House science advisory body, including findings that cameras were associated with reductions in use of force.
A founder's prior employer does not make his next company a subsidiary of it.
Does Vale have contracts with ICE, CBP, DHS or law enforcement?
No.
Vale has no contracts with ICE, CBP, DHS, law-enforcement agencies, or any other government agency.
Vale is a matcha company. We operate cafes and Matcha Bars, sell matcha and beverages, develop matcha-making technology, and are investing in tea agriculture in Washington State.
Does Vale share employee information with immigration or law enforcement agencies?
No. We do not share employee information with immigration enforcement or law enforcement agencies.
Vale is a workplace built by people from many different backgrounds, and we intend for it to stay that way.
Who owns Vale?
Vale is a privately held, founder-funded company.
Vale has not taken institutional venture capital or private-equity investment. The company has been funded primarily by founder Luke Larson and several other founding members.
Every full-time Vale employee is also an equity owner in the company.
When someone buys a drink from Vale, there isn't a private-equity or venture-capital fund on the other side of the counter, it's a team of passionate employees who want to build a great company.
Who is Luke Larson?
Luke Larson is the founder of Vale.
Larson grew up on a farm outside Forks, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. After serving as a Marine infantry officer following September 11, he joined the company that became Axon, where he spent nearly fifteen years and eventually served as president.
He left Axon in 2022 following a serious health scare that caused him to reconsider what he wanted to build next. That eventually became Vale.
Why did Luke Larson start a matcha company?
Luke's wife introduced him to matcha during his recovery, and his interest deepened after Chef Jeffrey Hayden introduced him to high-quality matcha. He drinks it every day.
What started as a personal interest quickly became a much deeper passion. He became an avid student of matcha, studying the science behind its potential health benefits, the agriculture and craftsmanship required to produce exceptional tea, and its deep cultural importance in Japan. He continues to learn directly from Japanese farmers, producers, tea experts, and craftspeople whose knowledge has been built over generations.
In 2023, while Vale was getting started, Luke traveled through Asia with Valentina Lyau, Vale's founding engineer. Japan has largely solved something the rest of the world hasn't, which is making something good genuinely convenient. That became the idea behind Vale's technology: exceptional ingredients and real quality standards, in far more places.
As global matcha demand accelerated, Vale ran into a harder problem: securing enough exceptional matcha for its first cafe in South Lake Union. Luke returned to Japan to understand the supply chain and began building relationships with Japanese farmers, producers, tea experts, and equipment manufacturers. That work ultimately led to Vale Farms.
Is Vale trying to replace Japanese matcha?
No.
Japan is the birthplace and the standard-bearer of matcha. The knowledge developed by Japanese farmers, producers, and tea masters over centuries is foundational to the category, and it is not something Vale claims, recreates, or replaces.
Our goal is to learn from that tradition while helping expand the world's capacity to produce exceptional matcha. We plan to keep sourcing from Japan.
Who does Vale actually work with in Japan?
One of our most important suppliers is Maruhori Tea in Shizuoka, a Japanese tea producer founded in 1907. We work with tea expert Kenya Horiuchi of Maruhori and import both finished matcha and tencha from Japan. Our processing systems are being developed with the Japanese tea machinery manufacturer Terada Seisakusho.
Our first American-grown tea plants came from Eva Lee and Chiu Leong of Tea Hawaii, who have spent decades growing Japanese tea cultivars in the United States and who advise Vale Farms.
If Japanese matcha is the standard, why grow tea here at all?
Because global demand for matcha is now outpacing the supply of high-quality Japanese matcha. That is a real constraint on the category, and it's the problem Vale Farms exists to help with.
All of the matcha we serve today comes from Japan, from farmers and producers committed to quality and craft. Vale Farms is a long-term effort to add to the world's supply of exceptional tea, and our Japanese advisors are helping us understand the cultivation and production standards that make matcha worth drinking.
More matcha shouldn't mean worse matcha.
Does Vale practice traditional Japanese tea ceremony?
No, and we don't present ourselves as doing so.
Traditional whisking and tea ceremony belong to a practice with real meaning behind it, and we're careful not to imitate it. Vale has developed its own preparation method for the drinks we serve, built for consistency and quality in a busy cafe.
What is Vale Farms?
Vale Farms is a 365-acre property on Whidbey Island, Washington, and our investment in the long-term future of tea and matcha production in the Pacific Northwest.
We planted our first 12,000 tea plants in 2026. Over the coming years we plan to cultivate roughly 200 acres of tea, which is approximately one million plants. We're also building a 30,000-square-foot tea processing facility in nearby Oak Harbor, developed with the Japanese tea machinery manufacturer Terada Seisakusho.
The ambition is to find out whether this region can eventually become a serious tea-growing region, in the way that regions outside Europe developed their own respected wine traditions. Respect where a craft came from, learn from generations of expertise, then explore what different soil and climate can create.
Tea takes years to establish. We're at the beginning of a project measured in decades.
Can tea even grow here?
That's the question the farm is built to answer, and we aren't the first to ask it.
Researchers at Washington State University have been studying tea cultivation in the Pacific Northwest, and their field trials have found that multiple tea varieties grow well in this region. Our own first plants came from Eva Lee and Chiu Leong at Tea Hawaii, who have spent 25 years growing Japanese tea cultivars in the United States and now advise Vale Farms.
Whidbey Island's maritime climate, acidic soils, and agricultural history are what drew us there. We're ambitious about what the farm could become and clear-eyed about how much we still have to learn.
What is happening to the land?
315 of the farm's 365 acres are under a conservation easement held with the Whidbey Camano Land Trust, covering 170 acres of farmland and 145 acres of forest.
The easement is a legal instrument, not a policy of ours. Farmland stays farmland permanently. Forest stays forest permanently. You can read about how these easements work at the Whidbey Camano Land Trust.
Will the walking trail stay open?
Yes. The 1.5 mile trail connecting to Swan Lake and the public beach is written into the conservation easement.
Everything that has been open to the public will stay open to the public.
What farming practices is Vale using?
We're farming with soil health in mind, using established practices rather than novel ones:
- Cover cropping for field preparation
- Mulching for weed suppression, which reduces the need for herbicides
- Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) to improve how the plants take up nutrients, which lowers fertilizer use and improves drought resilience
- Organic fertilizer delivered through drip irrigation, which feeds the tea while supporting the soil biology it depends on
Tea is a long-lived perennial crop. It stays in the ground for decades, so the condition of the soil in year twenty matters more to us than the yield in year three.
What does Vale stand for?
Five principles guide how we want to build Vale:
People
Vale takes care of their people. People come first. We want employees, customers, partners, and neighbors to feel welcomed, respected, and valued.
Community
We want to contribute positively to the places where we live, work, and grow.
Craft
We respect the people, knowledge, and traditions behind matcha. Innovation and craft can exist together.
Quality
We care deeply about what goes into every glass from the tea and ingredients we source to how each drink is prepared and served.
Learning
We are building something new, and we will not always have every answer. We want to listen, stay curious, acknowledge mistakes, and improve.