Two San Francisco engineers quietly turned a roommate side hustle into one of California’s biggest cannabis distribution machines in less than a decade. What began as hand-delivered boxes from a Bay Area apartment has grown into a tech-driven wholesale marketplace, a fleet of delivery vans, and massive warehouses serving retailers across the state. Founders now say the company processes roughly $1 billion in product a year and brings in roughly $100 million in revenue, a rare profitable model in a market where many operators are still struggling to stay afloat.
From a San Francisco Apartment to Statewide Distribution Muscle
Vince Ning and Jun S. Lee launched Nabis in 2018 out of a San Francisco apartment, landing early brand partners and personally driving product to dispensaries before they built a software enabled marketplace. The founders, and subsequent reporting, sketch a quick jump from bedroom hustle to statewide infrastructure, with Nabis now touching a large share of California’s regulated cannabis market. As reported by SFGATE, the company now operates warehouses that resemble a Costco for cannabis and runs a marketplace used by hundreds of brands and retailers.
The Big Bet: $23 Million Raise and an 87,000 Square Foot Supercenter
To keep up with demand, the company raised a roughly $23 million Series B in 2021, capital it used to bulk up both its fulfillment network and its marketplace technology, according to a company release. That money also helped bankroll the purchase and buildout of an 87,000 square foot distribution center in the Central Valley, which opened for operations in 2023 and was built to significantly expand the company’s storage and shipping capacity. Details of the funding round are laid out in the announcement on PR Newswire, while local coverage of the Woodlake facility is available from The Business Journal.
Filling the Gap After a Rival’s Collapse
When rival distributor Herbl suddenly went into receivership in mid 2023, brands and retailers across California were left hanging, with industry reports describing widespread unpaid invoices and scrambled supply chain relationships. Nabis moved quickly to absorb stranded product and accounts, and it picked up assets in several markets as weakened competitors looked to unload operations. To ease cash flow pressure on brands and producers caught in the fallout, the company introduced a financing product called Nabis Capital, which offers payment solutions tailored to cannabis operators. Background on Herbl’s collapse and the related asset sales is detailed by MJBizDaily, while Nabis’ financing initiative is explained in its Nabis Capital announcement on BusinessWire.
Expansion Beyond California
Nabis has not kept its ambitions fenced inside the Golden State. The company began operations in New York and held a ribbon-cutting for a Rochester hub in June 2025 as part of a broader East Coast push. Local reporting on the Rochester opening notes that the facility is expected to support deliveries across upstate New York, create new logistics jobs and extend Nabis’ marketplace reach well beyond California.
Why Scale Hasn’t Fixed the Sector’s Valuation Problem
Even with all that size, the structural headaches of legal cannabis have not gone away. Thin margins, heavy state taxes and ongoing federal restrictions have left many businesses on shaky ground and kept valuations in check. A string of receiverships and distressed asset sales has underscored just how fragile working capital can be in a sector where standard bankruptcy protections and traditional banking access are severely limited. Nabis has said it surpassed $1 billion in completed transactions since its founding and points to its profitability as proof that its model can work, but analysts caution that distribution companies rarely command high valuation multiples. The company’s growth milestones are outlined in a release on BusinessWire, while broader industry context and market stress tests appear in reporting from MJBizDaily.
