Microsoft is dipping its toe into the marijuana business

Microsoft is dipping its toe in the legal marijuana business

(Image credit: Getty Images)

last updated 17 June 2016

Hey, remember when Macs were cool and PCs were stodgy wannabes? On Thursday, Microsoft announced a partnership with Kind, a Los Angeles startup that serves the growing legal marijuana industry; Microsoft will include Kind's software to track marijuana from "seed to sale" in its Azure cloud computing offerings to state and local governments. Kind's program will be one of eight offerings in Azure Government, and the only one related to weed. This is the "boring part of the pot world," The New York Times notes, but even Microsoft's toehold into the business side breaks "the corporate taboo on pot."

A big reason Microsoft is going where no big company has (publicly) gone before is that legal marijuana sales are big and growing fast. This fall, five states — notably, California — will vote on whether to join Washington, Colorado, and Oregon in legalizing pot for recreational use. "We do think there will be significant growth," said Kimberly Nelson, Microsoft's executive director of state and local government solutions. "As the industry is regulated, there will be more transactions, and we believe there will be more sophisticated requirements and tools down the road."

Players in the marijuana business are excited with even this tangential endorsement. "Nobody has really come out of the closet, if you will," said Matthew Karnes, founder of pot consultancy Green Wave Advisors. "Every business that works in the cannabis space, we all clamor for legitimacy," adds David Dinenberg, Kind's founder and CEO. "I would like to think that this is the first of many dominoes to fall."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.