Cannabis Musings - January 14, 2026

Is M&A back?

Friends – last week, we offered up some doggerel that included a verse on cannabis M&A:

   Once again, the siren doth call:
   “M&A will rise from its fall!”
       But there’s still too much debt
       For a buyer to forget.
   Taxes and a/p cast a pall.

Welp, Wyld announced a deal to acquire fellow edibles maker, the umlauted Grön, immediately challenged my prediction. Interestingly, there’s very little information about the deal – probably because there were apparently no investment bankers on the deal. Dai Truong’s Highly Objective did a nice job of aggregating sales data on the companies, which suggest that, no matter how you slice it, it’ll create a very large edibles company. It would be really interesting to know more about valuations, transaction multiples, economic strength of each of the companies, consideration (stock, cash, or both), but alas, they’re private companies, so we have no way of knowing the details.

There’s one small exception to that (short of someone leaking the information) – antitrust clearance. We’ve talked before about how acquisitions of a certain size (currently about $126 million and above) have to be cleared by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to make sure that the combined company won’t dominate a market. The filings are confidential, but if the deal is cleared (which happens in the negative – the DOJ and FTC decline to review), there’s public notice of “early termination” of the review period. If the Wyld x Grön deal was large enough, they would (most likely) have filed HSR (the press release says that the deal is “subject to regulatory approvals,” which definitely includes state cannabis regulatory authorities, but could also refer to HSR), and, assuming there’s no second review by the DOJ or FTC, it’ll get posted on the FTC’s website. All that would tell us is that, generally, the consideration was probably valued at more than about $126 million, but that’s something.

This comes on the heels of two December-announced deals – Vireo Growth, the rollup vehicle backed by Chicago Atlantic, entered into an all-stock deal to acquire storied delivery company Eaze Inc., for a price that appears to be less than what its lender paid for it about 16 months earlier, and Millstreet Credit Fund outbid Curaleaf to acquire The Cannabist Company’s Virginia assets. Millstreet has been an large investor in MSOs in the past, playing the debt of Acreage Holdings, and the stock and debt of Ayr Wellness, so this seems to be another move towards also accumulating passels of assets for the fund.

Seth Yakatan asked me to analyze the Millstreet deal, but there doesn’t appear to be much to say about this, other than the fact that they vastly outbid Curaleaf’s original $110 million bid. As Seth points out, it’s unclear why Millstreet would be willing to pay so much more for these assets, similarly highlighting the challenge of understanding the motivations of private investors and companies – they don’t have to explain themselves.

And just this past Tuesday, Sunderstorm, a California-based edibles and vape company, announced its acquisition of Lime. Again, the press release provides no detail about the terms of the deal, but fellow pundit and CEO of Wolf Meyer, AnnaRae Grabstein, noted on LinkedIn that Lime “is solely in CA and in 2025 clocked $14.5M at retail (0.1% market share) but is showing steep YoY [year-over-year] declines (-30%).” Although this kind of data just shows sales of Lime’s products at the retail level based on point-of-sale information, while Lime itself is selling wholesale to those dispensaries, it’s strongly suggestive of some level of financial difficulty on the part of Lime.

So, is M&A “back”, as everyone but Cannabis Musings seems to have predicted for 2026? Maybe, although it still seems too early to tell whether this is real, or just an opportunistic moment in time. We’ve always been skeptical of the breathless pronouncements over the past few years by industry observers that M&A has returned, mainly because too many companies are overburdened with unpaid trade payables and taxes, rendering them untouchable, and asset values remain low, making sale generally unattractive outside of distress. Cannabist has been shedding assets to raise cash, Eaze has been in decline since its $700 million valuation a few years ago, and Lime is probably not financially strong (although, to be totally fair, that’s an assumption). If this is a trend of “tuck-in acquisitions” (a bigger company buying a small one, where the business is easily integrated – use that with your private equity friends to sound cool), it’s not a healthy one. And that’s what makes Wyld x Grön so mysterious – we just don’t know enough to judge whether it’s a sign of hope in the wilderness, or whether Wyld just did it to rebrand themselves Wÿld.

We focus a lot in these Cannabis Musings on public deals because that’s what’s reported (even when those press releases leave a lot to be desired). With private deals, it’s a lot harder, and you have to rely upon insiders sharing information and a lot of educated guessing. It’s part of the challenge and fun of understanding markets, and what (real or imagined) trends are trying to tell us.

One last thing – if you read one other thing this week, I strongly recommend Adam Smith’s (Executive Director of the Marijuana Policy Project) most recent clarion call to the industry, just posted in Marijuana Moment.

Be seeing you.

© 2026 Marc Hauser. None of the foregoing is legal, investment, or any other sort of advice, and it may not be relied upon in any manner, shape, or form. The foregoing represents my own views and not those of Jardín, B&Y Ventures, or anyone else who employs/hires me.

Watch me schmooze almost every Friday at Noon ET on This Week in Cannabis LIVE with Jeremy Berke and Jay Rosenthal of Cultivated Media and AnnaRae Grabstein and Ben Larson of the High Spirits Podcast. Access the livestream and recordings here.