Cannabis tracking software company raises $8m Series B

Cannabis tracking software developer MJ Freeway has raised $8 million in a Series B round of funding.

Investment came from thirteen funders including San Francisco-based venture firm Tao Capital Partners, an existing backer, and Roger McNamee, the co-founder of private equity firm Elevation Partners.

“I have been fortunate to invest in many of the foundational companies in Silicon Valley, including a dozen of the most successful players in enterprise software,” McNamee said. “MJ Freeway is positioned to be the leading software platform in cannabis, empowering sound business practices in this rapidly growing legal market.”

Denver-based MJ Freeway has developed a tracking and reporting system providing seed-to-sale data which the company says enables the accounting of every gram and every dollar through the cannabis product chain.

The company says it will use the new funding to invest in product development and grow its sales team and business services.

A recent research report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch said the medical marijuana market in the US could exceed $35 billion by 2020. Companies creating technology to support this burgeoning market are attracting significant venture funding, and spawning firms focused exclusively on investing in the cannabis industry.

In October Greenfield Capital Partners, a fund focused on legal cannabis infrastructure and technology invested $5 million in BioTrackTHC, a producer of cannabis inventory tracking and reporting software. And this week Agri Investor revealed agtech start-up Grownetics, which develops automated farming, data collection and analysis platforms for cannabis growing, is expected to raise $750,000 in a seed round by April 2016 from investors including cannabis venture fund Phyto Partners.

The largest fundraising effort by a firm focused on the legal cannabis market to date is the $75 million raised last April by Seattle-based private equity firm Privateer Holdings.