Staff
Executive Spotlight: Niccolo Aieta, Founder and CTO, Spherex
Full birth name: Niccolo Aieta
Title: Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Company: Spherex
Years at current company: Five — Spherex is celebrating its five-year anniversary!
Education profile: I received my Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, researching hydrogen fuel cell technology. Before that, I got my Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies and Planning, and Energy Management and Design, from Sonoma State University.
Most successful professional accomplishment before cannabis: The culmination of my Ph.D. and post-doctoral work. My thesis, and associated patent, and seeing this work come to use in the real world through the 3M fuel cell program.
Company Mission: Using innovative extraction and refinement techniques, Spherex produces the industry’s leading distillates to deliver an ideal cannabis consumption experience.
Company’s most successful achievement: Building a better extraction process…in just one year.
At the time of Spherex’s founding in 2015, the industry’s highest efficiency using supercritical CO2 was roughly 50%. I saw that the cannabis industry needed more efficient refinement in the extraction process, so I founded Spherex to address this need.
Spherex uses science. That’s how we get it done. My scientific team’s technical prowess is second to none, and within one year we engineered an industrial-scale CO2 cannabis refinement operator with extraction efficiencies of over 95%. We can refine up to 120 pounds of raw cannabis per day.
Beyond that, we’re proud to have achieved profitability. Spherex is a profitable cannabis company in a time when there are still many barriers to growth, and we have done it by keeping our focus on the two founding principles we do best: Efficiency and scale.
Has the company raised any capital (yes or no): Yes.
if so, how much?: We have raised over $6 million in outside capital.
Any plans on raising capital in the future? We would be open to it. As a profitable company, we are able to self-fund, but we may entertain the right strategic or capital partner.
Most important company 5-year goal: To grow existing markets while leading the charge for new markets. From cannabis beverages (and the launch of our infused sparkling water PHYX) to multi-state expansion, Spherex is looking ahead to where we can innovate next
