1.2 billion $ investment in the cannabis industry in January 2018

The global cannabis industry recorded more than $1.2 billion in investment in January, according to a report by Viridian Cannabis Deal Tracker, a company that tracks capital increases and mergers & acquisitions in the legal cannabis industry.

These amounts are equivalent to 7 times those recorded in the first month of 2017, or almost all the investments over 2016, which amounted to 1.29 billion dollars.

Viridian explains this increase in investment in part by the development of the cultural and retail sectors, particularly in Canada.

The 5 biggest capital increases in January 2018 were those of Hydropothécaire, Medreleaf, Privateer Holdings (the American in the ranking), Organigram Holdings and Aphria, totaling almost $500 million.

«We're seeing a steady maturation of the capital markets around the cannabis industry,» Viridian's vice president explained to the site Benzinga. «At first, it was almost exclusively high-net-worth individuals - and maybe a few management offices - investing in cannabis. Now we're seeing more management offices getting involved, and even more high-net-worth individuals and professional investors.»

Numerous institutional funds and venture capital groups are also looking to enter the cannabis space, as are certain large financial groups.

Just as cannabis entrepreneurship today attracts outsiders, the investment sector is becoming increasingly open.

Over the first 5 weeks of 2018 :

• the cannabis industry saw 65 capital increases, more than double the number in 2017
• 9 of these increases exceeded $50 million
• the average increase was 19 million $, compared with 5.9 million in the first 5 weeks of 2017
• 75% of these sums went to public companies
• private companies, however, received over 300 million $, 6 times what they had received in the first 5 weeks of last year
• most investments went to cannabis cultivation and distribution companies