Jack Smith
When it comes to his music career and his well-known love of marijuana, Snoop Dogg has lived by the motto “the more medicated, the more dedicated.” Now, the affable rapper is applying that to his investing career, investing cannabis software company Green Bits.
Green Bits, headquartered in San Jose, announced it has raised a $17 million Series A funding round, led by Tiger Global, the New York-based investment firm, along with participation by Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital.
Tiger Global, run by billionaire Chase Coleman, has started to venture outside of traditional public market investing, investing in private companies such as question and answer website Quora, job searching company Glassdoor and Airbnb, among others.
In total, Tiger Global has made 234 investments, nearly half the time being the lead investor, according to data compiled by Crunchbase.
It has also exited 35 of those investments, including companies such as Spotify, which recently went public on the New York Stock Exchange in an untraditional manner, mobile game developer Zynga and real estate company Redfin.
Prior to putting money into Green Bits, Casa Verde has made 9 other investments, investing as the lead investor 4 times. The fund, which mostly acts as a seed stage investor, has raised $45 million to invest in “the ancillary cannabis industry,” according to Crunchbase. “We couldn’t be more excited to reinvest in Green Bits. This round brings tremendous validation not only to Green Bits but also to the cannabis industry,” said Casa Verde Capital’s Managing Partner, Karan Wadhera.
These investments can include a number of different areas, including agtech, health & wellness, financial services and more.
With the $17 million in new funding, Green Bits, which has similarities to the Jack Dorsey-led financial service provider Square, has raised $19.3 million in total outside funding. A source close to the matter said the new funding round demonstrates Green Bits “continued adoption and growth within the rapidly expanding legal cannabis industry.”
The source also noted that this is the first funding round in the cannabis space led by an institutional investor, noting “hedge funds and venture capitalists have been known to steer away from this market.”
Currently, Green Bits serves 11 different states, with its software available in Alaska, Arizona, California and 8 other states. On the company’s website, it says it has processed more than $2 billion in annual sales, with its software and services available at 800 retailers.
The funding announcement follows news that former Speaker of the House John Boehner has joined the board of directors of of Acreage Holdings. Boehner, who had been staunchly anti-cannabis, said on Twitter that his “thinking on cannabis has evolved.”
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