Pax Labs, the folks responsible for the Pax botanical vaporizer, have today announced a massive round of funding. The company is receiving $46.7 million in Series C financing led by existing investors Tao Capital and Sand Hill Angels, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Silvia Capital, and many more.
The company plans to use the funding to expand internationally — right now Pax only sells products in the United States and Canada — and to deliver even more products in more verticals and categories.
Just last week, Pax Labs unveiled the Juul tobacco-based vaporizer, meant to deliver a far more satisfactory experience than the e-cig products you find on the market today.
But, that isn’t necessarily the company’s first tobacco-based product that Pax has ever unveiled. Back in 2013, the company unveiled the Ploom ModelTwo tobacco vaporizer. But in February of this year, JTI (a massive tobacco company) acquired the rights to the ModelTwo and its pods in exchange for the equity it had in Pax Labs (then called Ploom). At the time, more than 500,000 Pax units had been sold.
Now, the focus is on the Pax 2 (the latest generation of the company’s botanical vaporizer) and the newly released Juul, but CEO James Monsees sees opportunities for vaporization technology that stretch beyond what you’d typically expect out of Pax. Of course, that doesn’t mean he is ready to share those plans just yet.
“The real success of this financing round isn’t reflected solely in the financials,” said Monsees. “We brought on investors from finance, pharma, entertainment and Silicon Valley so that, as we start tackling expansion and new product lines, we have all the expertise we need right at our fingertips.”
Monsees added that the biggest challenge to the company is simply time.
“The breadth of opportunities in front of us is massive,” said Monsees. “We want to continue growing at the pace we’ve been growing while addressing new opportunities simultaneously, and that takes a lot of management overhead. But we’ve been preparing for this for some time.”
Interestingly enough, Pax Labs is one of very few Silicon Valley-based tech companies to have grown almost entirely organically. The last time the company received funding was in 2011, choosing to grow organically off of generated revenue rather than taking cash infusions to scale.
This financing is meant to accelerate growth of both the product line and the customer base as the vape industry as a whole begins to truly take off.
You can learn more about Pax Labs here.
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