Location: New York
Deal count: 40
New York City-based Merida Capital has made 40 investments in 22 cannabis companies, Mitch Baruchowitz, a managing partner, told Business Insider.
Baruchowitz, a former corporate lawyer, founded Merida in 2016 after being involved in the cannabis industry since 2010. Unlike other firms on this list, Merida mostly invests in later-stage companies, rather than in seed rounds.
Baruchowitz believes two of the hottest areas to invest in the cannabis sector are agricultural technology and data analytics.
To that end, Merida has teamed up with private-equity fund Pegasus Capital to invest in Vividgro, a state-of-the-art lighting and growing system for indoor greenhouses.
Baruchowitz said data is going to be the "most disruptive" evolution of the cannabis market.
"When data becomes actionable, when the data sets become big enough, it's going to be like whiplash for the market," Baruchowitz said. "When data moves into the space, all of that historical or even instinctual behavior goes away."
Merida has made multiple investments in New Frontier Data, a cannabis-industry analytics firm, along with compliance platform Simplifya, among other investments.