Here's How Microsoft Is Secretly Entering The Marijuana Industry

Massive software conglomerate Microsoft has not entered the weed business, precisely, but it's moving in so close to the plant that Bill Gates could probably track it from the seed to your stash.

According to Marijuana Business Daily, Kind Financial (no relation to The KIND) has partnered with Gates's Redmond, Washington-based behemoth in a venture to win government contracts dealing with the technology necessary to track marijuana production and distribution from seed-to-sale.

The report reads,

Microsoft's foray into the legal marijuana industry marks the first time a major mainstream corporation has publicly acknowledged it intends to tap the cannabis-related market—although the Redmond, Washington, company won't touch the plant.

Kind Financial is a Los Angeles-based equity firm founded in 2013 by Philadelphian David Dinenberg. Lindy Snider, daughter of former Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider, is one of Kind's investors. The firm bought tech startup Agrisoft in 2015, placing Kind in the seed-to-sale cannabis-tracking business.

Kind's partnership with Microsoft is being fervently lauded as a massive step toward legitimizing an emerging legal-weed green rush in the United States.

Cannabis industry consultant John Conlin explains,

This is earth-shattering. It's a huge deal. Huge, huge, huge. Somebody big sooner or later was going to make a move. And here they come, and I think it'll just open the floodgates.

“Microsoft is not in the legal cannabis industry,” insisted the company's executive director of state and local government solutions, Kimberly Nelson. “Microsoft is in the cloud platform business.”

Correct. And the cloud platform business is now in the marijuana business, and that's a good thing. Because once something gets in the Cloud, it never goes away again.

This post was originally written by The Kind.

Citations: Microsoft Gets Right Up Close To The Marijuana Business (The Kind)