Front Range Biosciences (“FRB” or the “Company”) a leading agricultural biotech company that specializes in tissue culture propagation of high value crops, is pleased to announce it has raised $3 million in bridge round funding. This funding will go towards scaling FRB’s processes, as well as expansion into California and other legal cannabis states in the United States. Investor participation in the round includes Phyto Partners, Salveo Capital, Sand Hill Angels, HBS Angels of NYC, NY Angels, Halley Venture Partners, Anthill Ventures, and Canopy Boulder.
“Canopy is excited to make a follow-on investment in the exceptionally strong FRB team. The company has successfully executed on its plan from day one under the outstanding leadership of Jon Vaught and Nick Hofmeister,” said Micah Tapman, Managing Director at Canopy Boulder. “The cannabis industry raises a number of challenges for all businesses so the quality of the leadership team is of paramount importance when evaluating investment opportunities. We have reviewed well over a thousand deals and FRB stands out as the single most promising company because it combines intellectual property development, strong cash flows, executive vision, and operational expertise. Simply put, this is a great opportunity and we are proud to be a part of the team.”
FRB is dedicated to providing the best technology to grow high value cannabis crops. Through the process of tissue culture cloning, FRB solves the various operational problems that cultivators currently face, such as disease, inefficiency, inconsistency and scale. Tissue culture is sterile propagation of baby plants through cloning on a nutrient culture medium of known composition. Plant tissue culture is widely used to produce clones of a plant in a method known as micropropagation.
Additionally, FRB’s varietal improvement program, using Next Generation Sequencing technology to create a map of cannabis genetics, helps develop commercially relevant traits in cannabis plants. These traits include disease resistance, oil and resin yield, and production of highly desirable cannabinoid profiles. With this round of funding, FRB will have the ability to further its presence in the cannabis agriculture space, and bring further awareness to the impact that biotech can have on the industry.
“With the rapid growth of the commercial cannabis industry, there is increasing demand for improved cultivation practices for large-scale grow operations,” said Dr. Jon Vaught, CEO and co-founder of FRB. “We plan to use our recent funding to scale our processes and keep up with this demand, while expanding into new cannabis markets.”
“As with our last round, investor demand exceeded our expectations,” said Nick Hofmeister, COO and co-founder of FRB. “We are very thankful to all of our investors for their continued support and advocacy of FRB.”
“FRB has all of the right pieces for a successful business – a stellar team, clear differentiated offering, early customer validation, and a rapidly growing pipeline. However, what attracts us the most to FRB is the management team,” said Brett Finkelstein, managing director at Phyto Partners.