Microsoft Helps Track Legalized Marijuana

Microsoft is a bold company, to say the least. The tech giant recently struck a deal with Kind Financial that allows the California-based technology start-up to use its cloud services in order to track the sale of legalized marijuana.

Microsoft’s decision to support a company operating in such a controversial field is surprising since marijuana consumption is not legal in all US states. While marijuana is legal in Washington, in California you can get a fine or even be sent to jail for possession.

Kind Financial is a Californian company that has been selling its marijuana tracking software to businesses and governments for three years now. In order to improve its service, the company struck a deal with Microsoft to obtain access to the tech giant’s government cloud. From Microsoft’s point of view, this partnership could be a very useful for all the parties involved, especially for the US government:

Speaking of weed, rumors suggest that Bill Gate has a record for smoking marijuana, so we can assume the decision to support Kind Financial wasn’t difficult to make. Those same rumors claim that he used marijuana in college. Gates has never admitted openly that he smoked marijuana, although he did back up marijuana legalization in Washington.

KIND’s strategic industry positioning, experienced team and top-notch-technology running in the Microsoft Azure Government cloud, made for an easy decision to align efforts. KIND agreed that Azure Government is the only cloud platform designed to meet government standards for the closely regulated cannabis compliance programs and we look forward to working together to help our government customers launch successful regulatory programs.

The Microsoft-Kind partnership could also be the result of the latest strategy adopted by the tech giant to invests cash in start-ups focusing on cloud and security.