MINNEAPOLIS, MN - As competition in the retail sector continues to mount, Target has been quietly working in the background to cultivate new technological innovations that would put itself ahead of the game. This summer, Target has begun hosting a tech-focused incubator in its Minneapolis headquarters, fostering ten teams of startups in the 8,000-square-foot space. This comes in the same year that the company announced it plans to spend more than $2 billion starting in 2017 on tech and supply-chain improvements.

According to a report from Engadget, Target has been pursuing both the aforementioned incubator it founded in partnership with Techstars, as well as a food innovation-focused "Food + Future coLab” in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and Ideo. Target has already begun testing a concept from the labs at one of its Boston stores, which allows people to scan fruits and vegetables to identify their nutritional value and to pay for the item based on its freshness.

The teams will go through 14 weeks of both programming and mentorship from executives like Brian Cornell himself, Target’s Chairman and CEO. The company says 50 percent of these startup teams have female Co-Founders and two are international, from Canada and Hong Kong respectively.

Teams participating in Target's accelerator include DIY craft company MakersKit, educational interactive game company MakerBloks, and DIY wedding flower arrangement startup ItsByU.

The company is also currently hiring staffers for a tech project codenamed “Goldfish,” Engadget says, that will be located in Target's Sunnyvale, California, online and mobile data analytics office. The job posting for the project merely reads, "We're a brand new team, intent on changing the way people shop." The source names Amazon and Paypal alum West Stringfellow, also Target’s newly hired VP of Innovation, as Goldfish’s Founder.

"We're looking first and foremost to help these startups," Stringfellow explained to Engadget. "If there's a symbiotic opportunity, great. If not, that's OK, too. We'll be learning from their discipline, focus, excitement and passion, and a second-order effect will be us taking some of that and applying it to our products and teams and practices."

Walmart, who earlier this month bought e-commerce startup Jet.com for $3 million, has more tech startups in its crosshairs as well. The company has a San Francisco Bay Area outpost called WalmartLabs, which focuses on digital products and services like Walmart Pay.

"We've got several new things in the works I can't announce," Walmart's Chief Technology Officer Jeremy King told Engadget. "But let's just say you'll see us make it even more compelling to use your phone in the store."

Bottom line—a wave innovation is on its way. By partnering with startups, these retailers are digging to previously untapped tech ideas, which could potentially change the face of grocery shopping in even the next for years. I, for one, couldn’t be more excited to see what comes next.

Target