Participated · Series A · Feb 2022

Willow Industries develops WillowPure, a patented, organic ozone-based post-harvest microbial decontamination technology for cannabis. The technology is scientifically proven to reduce or eliminate contaminants such as yeast, mold and bacteria while protecting the plant's medicinal properties. Willow focuses on providing cultivators with a kill-step solution to deliver clean, high-quality products to patients and consumers. Its WillowPure system is currently deployed in 26 U.S. states. The company has begun international expansion into Canada and Australia. Willow intends to use the new funds to accelerate its international growth. Willow Industries builds the patent-pending WillowPure ozone systems to remove microbial contaminants from harvested cannabis while preserving terpenes, potency, color and taste. The technology uses industry-recognized USDA/EPA approved ozone gas and is described as environmentally friendly, non-toxic, and scalable. Willow has deployed WillowPure in three volume-scaled, mobile units to serve boutique cultivators through large multi-state operators and currently operates in nine states. The company says its solution has saved cultivators over $50M in flower failure. Willow positions its product around consumer safety and helping cultivators sell clean, high-quality cannabis, and expects to scale and expand alongside the legal cannabis industry domestically and internationally.

Participated · Equity · May 2021

Lucid Green’s platform—anchored by LucidSource, LucidID, and Lucid Connect—gives cannabis brands and retailers real-time, item-level visibility that streamlines label compliance, inventory intake, and consumer transparency. Its LucidID codes now appear on more than 160 million products, with 800,000 new IDs generated each day, cementing the company as a market standard across five key U.S. states. The company reports double-digit monthly revenue growth throughout 2025 and a 4.8-star rating for its LucidID consumer app in Apple’s App Store. Adoption of Lucid Connect, the firm’s direct-to-consumer module, more than doubled this year, and consumers have redeemed over 1.25 million BudPoints for 60,000 reward items. Management says these metrics are driving profitability improvements for partners, positioning the business for continued growth into 2026. Based in New York, Lucid Green focuses on supply-chain transparency, inventory efficiency, and consumer trust within the regulated cannabis sector.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2021

Ricovr Healthcare is developing XALIVA®, an automated point-of-care platform designed to provide accurate THC quantification in saliva. The company positions XALIVA® as a solution to improve on-site drug screening and public safety. Ricovr’s technology leverages advanced optical detection and aims to deliver precise, immediate results. The NIH SBIR grant will support development toward an effective, scalable, and accurate device. Ricovr’s product pipeline also includes rapid point-of-care tests for drug screening, reproductive health, and infectious diseases. The company highlights a management team of scientists and engineers, a distinguished advisory board, and academic and industry partners supporting its efforts. RICOVR Healthcare builds the XALIVA rapid diagnostics platform, a saliva-based biosensor that uses a small amount of saliva to deliver lab-quality, quantified, low-cost diagnostics in about five minutes. Its product pipeline includes rapid point-of-care tests for COVID-19, THC and other drugs-of-abuse, and infectious diseases. Pre-validation testing results have shown the platform can successfully identify various biomarkers, and the company has received multiple awards for XALIVA. Management includes CEO and Founder Dr. Himanshu Bhatia and COO and Co-Founder Piyush Sadana, and the company reports partnerships with research institutions and medical device manufacturers globally. RICOVR plans to use new funding to complete platform development, scale up production capabilities, and drive commercialization and go-to-market efforts. Target customers cited include large employers in construction, transportation, retail and manufacturing, as well as law enforcement for roadside pre-screening. The company has raised capital to support commercialization and execution.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2020

springbig provides CRM programs and a custom cannabis loyalty platform that capture key customer data, integrate with dispensary POS systems, and deliver targeted, personalized SMS and MMS marketing. The platform is embedded with advanced marketing tools to retain customers and enable compliant communications with cannabis consumers. Launched in June 2020, the company’s new marketing platform allows brands to reach consumers directly through targeted MMS and SMS messages while remaining compliant. springbig is used by more than 1,400 retailers across the U.S. and Canada, and twelve national and local brands including Pax Labs and Coda Signature have signed up for the new service. The company intends to use recent funding to accelerate platform growth and expand throughout the U.S. and Canada. springbig was founded in 2017 by CEO Jeffrey Harris and is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. springbig provides customer-loyalty and communications solutions for dispensaries and cannabis retailers, featuring SMS, loyalty marketing, and tools to track ROI in real time. Led by Jeff Harris, the company serves customers across the United States. It closed a $3.2M funding round that brings total capital raised to $6.3M. The company intends to use the proceeds to add staff in technology development, product management, sales and support, finance and analytics. springbig plans to accelerate platform enhancements and expand its offering to additional channels of distribution within the cannabis industry.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2019

Front Range Biosciences specializes in next-generation plant breeding, plant tissue culture, and cannabis seed development to improve the reliability and quality of industrial hemp and medical cannabis genetics. The company runs a Clean Stock program that supplies disease- and pathogen-free plants and seeds backed by data-driven breeding solutions. FRB operates facilities in Colorado, California and Wisconsin and maintains a partnership with the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics in Barcelona, Spain, giving it global reach. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Lafayette, Colorado, the company positions itself as a market-leading R&D program in hemp and cannabis genetics. FRB is currently raising a $30M Series B financing round and has attracted investment from KEY Investment Partners, which will act as a strategic partner. KEY founding partner Pete Karabas is joining Front Range Biosciences' board as a board observer. Front Range Biosciences is a Lafayette, Colorado–based agricultural biotech that provides technology for breeding and producing new plant varieties and seeds in hemp, coffee and regulated cannabis. The company raised $8.5M in funding to support continued expansion of its hemp and cannabis portfolio. FRB plans to expand hemp seed production both nationally and globally and scale its young plant program, with production capabilities expected to multiply in 2020. Led by CEO and Co‑Founder Jon Vaught, the company has operated for a little more than three years. During that time FRB built over 160,000 square feet of facilities across Colorado, California and Wisconsin, acquired a cannabis genomics team and shipped millions of plants to farmers and growers nationwide. The new funds are intended to accelerate those production and portfolio expansion efforts. Front Range Biosciences develops Clean Stock® plant material using tissue culture, a sterile propagation technique, to address disease, inefficiency, inconsistency and scale for high-value crops. Its core product is sterile, duplicated baby plants on a defined nutrient medium for crops such as hemp, cannabis and coffee. The company supplies Clean Stock to growers and has partnerships to expand production, including with Frinj Coffee for coffee cuttings and Faith and Family Farms for cannabis in California. Led by CEO and co-founder Dr. Jonathan Vaught, Front Range is expanding Clean Stock production into California and taking orders for late 2018. It plans to use new funding to accelerate its Clean Stock program across Colorado, California and Canada, pursue IP development, and resource its varietal development program for hemp and cannabis. Front Range Biosciences specializes in tissue culture propagation of high-value crops, aiming to resolve cultivators' operational problems such as disease, inefficiency, inconsistency and limited scale. The company runs a varietal improvement program that leverages sequencing technology to map cannabis genetics and develop commercially relevant traits, including disease resistance, oil and resin yield, and desirable cannabinoid profiles. Front Range is led by CEO and co-founder Dr. Jon Vaught and COO and co-founder Nick Hofmeister. The company intends to use recent funding to scale its processes and expand into California and other legal cannabis states in the U.S. Its core product and R&D focus combine propagation services with genetic improvement to deliver more reliable, higher-yielding plant varieties for cultivators. Front Range Biosciences offers industrial-scale tissue culture propagation and an advanced breeding platform aimed at improving cannabis clone consistency and commercial traits. Its flagship product is tissue culture propagation for scalable, consistent clone production. The company also develops breeding tools to identify and enhance commercially relevant traits. Front Range will use new funding to build out its team and expand its tissue culture offering to improve efficiency and consistency for clone production. The company participated in the CanopyBoulder accelerator program for cannabis startups last year. It recently closed a $1.5 million seed round to support these efforts.