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Cannalysis raised $22M to test cannabis products for Vitamin E, but can they close this conversation once and for all?

With billions of dollars pouring into the cannabis industry and the market positioned to grow over 3x by 2022, the emergence of new companies in the space has been ubiquitous. Though this growth has no stopping point in sight, given the ever increasing acceptance of marijuana use nationwide, mainstream media headlines about the perils of “vaping” are making some customers more cautious about their ingestion of the substance.

While many think companies like Juul Labs, creator of the nicotine salt based Juul e-cigarette, are the main problem, a deeper look into the stories of hospitalizations and vape related lung diseases shows that the main problem is the presence and inhalation of Vitamin E acetate oil — a chemical predominantly found in off-brand cannabis vape pens, not necessarily their nicotine based counterparts. This outbreak of vape related lung diseases prompts the need for better testing of products before they hit the shelves, and that is just what the Santa Ana based company Cannalysis seeks to do.

Cannalysis recently raised $22.6M to bring a new testing process for cannabis vape additives to market, their main focus being to test for Vitamin E acetate. The fundraising round was led by CanLab, the largest cannabis testing company in the United States, whose investment was predicated on Cannalysis’ use of robotics and machine learning to speed up their testing process and make it increasingly accurate. Founder and CEO Brian Lannon explains his rationale for building the company, saying: 

“The big story that’s been going out over the last week isn’t the product that’s going out in cannabis, but an additive called Vitamin E acetate. We have developed a test for that… As part of the different compliance testing that’s required, it’s not mandated to test for any of these additives… What I’m anticipating based on the phone calls we’ve been getting is that a lot of our customers want to get the test to show that they’re not using the stuff.”

As a Business to Business (B2B) company, Cannalysis tests products for other cannabis companies. They track a company’s products through their supply chains and offer data management services to them as well. In addition, Cannalysis has integrated their services with WeedMaps, a centralized database of cannabis dispensaries and products, so end buyers can verify not only the strength of the product they’re buying, but also whether or not there are any additives of which they should be aware. With public worries over vaporizing cannabis products, Cannalysis’ incorporation (and this new investment) comes at a perfect time. I’ll be interested to see what effects this company has on the broader cannabis industry landscape, as well as if they can close the curtain on this discussion of harmful vape additives.

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