New $102 million equity fund targets ancillary cannabis businesses

Pennsylvania-based Intrinsic Capital Partners said it raised $102 million in a fund that will invest in science and technology businesses focused on the legal marijuana and hemp industries.

“We believe this is . . . a rare opportunity to invest in a space where there’s tremendous underlying demand, a strong industrywide growth profile and scarcity of capital,” Howard Goodwin, one of Intrinsic’s three founders, said in a news release.

Intrinsic said it has committed $65 million of the equity fund, Intrinsic Health Partners, to four companies and plans to invest in two or three additional companies.

The companies the fund is investing in are:

1. ACT Laboratories, a rapidly growing Michigan-based cannabis testing company.
2. Treez, a California-based firm that provides point-of-sale software to marijuana retailers.
3. Hound Labs, a California maker of marijuana and alcohol breathalyzer technology.
4. Elemental Brand, a Pennsylvania-based provider of hemp-derived consumer health-care technologies.

The firm’s advisory board includes veteran executives from Big Pharma, consumer packaged goods companies, technology and consumer health care.