Berlin-based cannabis and digital health start-up Sanity Group has closed a $44.2M Series A financing round led by Swiss VC Redalpine along with US-based Navy Capital and SOJE Capital. GMPVC also participated in the round. This appears to be the largest round of cannabis funding in Europe to date and brings total investment in Sanity Group to $73M.
The new capital will be used to expand the Group’s medical division in Europe as well as a EU-GMP-compliant research and production facility near Frankfurt.
Previous investors include HV Capital, TQ Ventures, Atlantic Food Labs, Cherry Ventures, Bitburger Ventures, and SevenVentures. In addition, Sanity Group has attracted celebrity angels including music producers will.i.am, Scooter Braun, and actress Alyssa Milano.
Sanity’s cannabis-based platform is for mental health and chronic pain management, allowing the tracking of cannabis-based therapy digitally with a medical device. This tells customers how much of the active ingredient (THC, CBD or other cannabinoids) is being administered. This is then registered in a therapy diary.
Finn Age Hänsel, founder and managing director of Sanity Group said: “A round of this magnitude shows that cannabis is increasingly moving into the mainstream of investor awareness, and represents an important milestone in our business expansion on our way to becoming Europe’s leading cannabis company.”
Over an interview, he added: “So we are fully legal and operated in Germany. We are just about to enter the Czech Republic and Poland. The UK is one of the biggest markets we want to enter going forward because, as you might know, the whole area of medical cannabis is slowly but surely opening all over Europe, with Germany being the largest market, about 80% of all the cannabis cannabinoid-based therapies today. But actually, the UK being the number two, which is a super attractive market for us but we look further into the Czech Republic and Poland, because those are the markets that have opened up from a regulatory perspective, at the most, over the last two years, and then France will open up next year, but that’s basically one after the other.”
Sean Stiefel, CEO at Navy Capital said: “The European cannabis market faces exciting developments in the coming months. Compared to the North American market, Europe is now where we were in the U.S. about four years ago. We want to bring our expertise and experience to the table. For our first investment in Europe, it was important for us to find a team that understands the market and has real industry experts in its ranks.”
