Totally normal business news: the biggest blank check company in cannabis just
created a marijuana powerhouse valued at $1.2 billion with Jay Z as the Chief Visionary Officer.
âHuh?â â is what I said when I first read this headline. Hereâs whatâs happening. Subversive Capital Acquisition Corp, a SPAC company, recently acquired two huge cannabis brands â Caliva and Left Coast Ventures â to form The Parent Company.
The SPAC is already rolling in $575 million, making The Parent Company one of the best-funded weed companies in the US.
And Jay Z, ever the budding ganjapreneur, wants in on the hype. Heâs joining the company as its Chief Visionary Officer (itâs a real job), with Rihanna, Yo Gotti and Meek Mill also joining as investors.
This isnât just a biz move for Jay. As part of the transaction, Jay Z will run a venture capital fund investing $10 million into minority-owned cannabis businesses and criminal justice reform.Â
THE TAKEAWAY
High times. Using SPACs to invest in weed companies has been a major trend lately, with several cannabis SPACs ballooning to multimillion-dollar entities in the past year. Â
- But some think The Parent Company is the product of an overly bullish market. The FT was pretty blunt (last pun) in its skepticism: âthese are not the sort of deals you hear about when markets are thinking straight.â
Zoom out. Investors might feel iffy about cannabis being illegal on a federal level in the US and a class B drug in the UK. But the legal marijuana market size is
expected to reach $73.6 billion by 2027.