Curaleaf

Curaleaf Holdings is now the world's largest cannabis company by sales. Born in 2010 in New Jersey as PalliaTech, it has gone through fifteen years of aggressive growth to become a global player operating in the US, Europe and beyond.

PalliaTech: medical origins

Founded in 2010 by Mitchell Kahn, PalliaTech began as a medical cannabis operator in New Jersey, with a research center in Colorado. From the outset, the company focused on therapeutic cannabis, in an American context where only a few states had legalized medical use at the time.

In 2013, the Sputnik investment group, headed by financier Boris Jordan, acquired a 35% stake in the company. Jordan became Executive Chairman in 2014, then took majority control in 2015. It is he who will steer PalliaTech's transformation into a global giant.

Name change and IPO

In 2018, ahead of its IPO, the company adopted the name Curaleaf and became the first US cannabis company to be listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE), under the symbol CURA. Access to Canadian capital markets, which are more open to cannabis than U.S. markets, enables the company to raise massive funds to finance its expansion.

The acquisition strategy: becoming the biggest

Curaleaf built its domination through successive acquisitions:

In 2019, it acquired Select, the best-selling cannabis oil brand in the U.S., in a $1 billion deal, making it the largest U.S. cannabis operator at the time.

In 2020, it acquires Grassroots Cannabis, a Chicago-based cultivator and retailer, for $830 million. The deal takes the company to 23 states and enables it to overtake Green Thumb to become the world's leading cannabis company by sales, with anticipated annual revenues of $1 billion.

European expansion

In April 2021, Curaleaf completes the acquisition of EMMAC Life Sciences, Europe's largest independent medical cannabis company. This operation gives it a presence in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, with EU GMP-certified facilities.

Curaleaf International, its European division based in London, is developing a model focused on prescribed medical cannabis, with an online pharmacy, partnerships with Imperial College London and the University of Pennsylvania, and production facilities in Canada and Portugal covering over 30,000 m².

Boris Jordan: the first cannabis billionaire

Boris Jordan, Executive Chairman of Curaleaf, is, according to Forbes, the first person in the world to have generated a billion-dollar fortune from legal cannabis. With a 31% stake in Curaleaf, he is the financial face of the company and the architect of its global expansion strategy.

Prior to cannabis, Jordan was known for privatizing Russian state assets as head of Credit Suisse First Boston's investment bank after the fall of the USSR in the 1990s.

Curaleaf today

Listed on the CSE (CURA) and the OTCQX (CURLF), Curaleaf operates hundreds of dispensaries and dozens of cultivation and processing sites in the United States, and is continuing its European expansion against a backdrop of gradual legalization of medical cannabis on the continent.