And so it begins…

Who would have ever thought that the old, wrinkly company known as Microsoft might actually be on the verge of becoming the cool kid? Not us.

Someone in the C-suites at Microsoft has been doing their own personal research on cannabis and convinced the behemoth of a company to invest in the buddying industry. 

After acquiring email-spamming site LinkdIn for a record $26.2 Billion, Microsoft became the first publicly traded company to venture into the cannabis industry by announcing its partnership with KIND Financials, a company offering software to help governments in the tracking of seed to sale.

For those not in a state where marijuana headlines dominate the news, seed-to-sale is the governments means for making sure not a leaf of marijuana is unaccounted for by tracking the supply line of the product form the minute the seed is bought and planted all the way through to when the plant is harvested, packaged and sold over the counter. KIND Financials would use Microsoft’s cloud platform to build out its own services for government agencies.

Although Microsoft is the first major publicly traded company to invest in the cannabis industry, other companies have been getting a whiff of the good stuff, including Walgreens Stores which recently applauded the benefits of medical marijuana. It’s only a matter of time before you can pick up your one-hour photos and an edible for the road.

With marijuana sales expected to hit $6.7 billion this year, compared with $5.4 billion last year, don’t be surprised to see more companies joining the smoke circle and passing the dollars to the left-hand side. Hopefully, Microsoft sets a good example with its investment and doesn't roll out something shitty similar to Zune and Windows Vista. 

Photo Credit: Al Jazeera America