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- Insider asked 14 of the biggest cannabis investment firms for the startups they’re watching in 2022.
- Their top picks include Dutchie, Cann, and Green Flower.
- This is Insider’s second annual list of top cannabis startups.
Last year was the year of megarounds for cannabis startups.
Dutchie, a company in Bend, Oregon, that helps connect cannabis shops to consumers in legal states, led the pack. It raised $550 million over two successive rounds last year — from investors including Tiger Global and Thrive Capital — commanding a $3.75 billion valuation, among other monster funding rounds.
In total, investors poured $2.7 billion across 272 deals into cannabis startups, up from $1.5 billion in 2020, according to the data provider PitchBook.
And while some big-name funds made their first cannabis investments in 2021, the industry is still being led by firms that focus exclusively on cannabis, given its federal illegality in the US.
These firms, such as Merida Capital Holdings, Poseidon Asset Management, and Navy Capital, tend to raise money from family offices or wealthy individuals so they can take risks that institutional firms, backed by large asset managers or pension funds, cannot.
To put together this list, Insider asked a representative from each of the firms that made this year’s list of the top investors in the cannabis industry to recommend two startups: One they’ve invested in and one they hadn’t. In total, the investors gave us 20 names. From that list, we reached out to each company, and 16 responded.
Broadly speaking, investors are focused on cannabis tech, as well as the emerging medical — and potentially recreational, if some lawmakers get their way — cannabis market in Germany and the European Union.
With names as varied as the cannabis-infused-beverage company Cann, the hemp producer BastCore, and the cannabis-focused communications firm Mattio, here are the startups expected to have a big year in 2022:
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