Hypha Labs Inc. (OTC: DIGP), formerly known as Digipath, announced that it is transitioning from the cannabis lab business to focus on psilocybin and other functional mushrooms.
“We decided to get out of the cannabis lab business when someone offered us, you know, an amount of money that we thought was the right number to sell essentially all of our assets,” CEO Stone Douglass told Green Market Report.
Douglass believes microdosing psychedelics will be the next big trend, similar to the cannabis industry boom.
The company developed a patent-pending bioreactor machine that allows users to grow mushrooms, including psilocybin, at home in about a week. The countertop machine uses mycelium and produces mushroom-derived “pearls” or “boba” that contain the active ingredients, he said. Users can control the type, strength, and dosage of the mushrooms through a smartphone app connected to the machine.
“It would look to you like a milkshake maker; something that you can put on your counter in your house,” he said.
The decision to pivot from cannabis to psilocybin also comes amid growing interest in the potential mental health applications of functional mushrooms. Hypha Labs said in a news release Monday that it wants to address the market by providing a novel method for producing the active ingredients in a reliable and “side-effect-free” manner.
“It’s perfectly legal to send mushrooms through the mail,” he said. “And these are not crazy mushrooms. These are just mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms. It’s perfectly legal to do that.”
That could widen access to psilocybin, which many claim can help with anxiety, PTSD, and focus, among other things, as well as other beneficial mushrooms, which are being studied for diabetes and memory, the company said in a news release Monday.
“We’re not selling you psilocybin,” he added. “There are all sorts of things you can do, but it’s not done in a lab.”
According to the firm, the machine can produce the desired ingredients in just 8-10 days, much faster than traditional methods that can take up to 10 weeks and often result in variable dosing and side effects. The company is currently running beta tests to ensure the machines are reliable and produce consistent results, Douglass said.
The company said its the tech allows for the production of “pure, consistent, and measurable” doses of active ingredients in an easily digestible form, which could cater to both consumer and commercial large-scale applications.
Douglass noted that the company plans to sell individual units of the machine along with a subscription model, where users would receive the mycelium to grow their mushrooms on a regular basis.
The company plans to debut the machine at a stock conference, Planet MicroCap Showcase, in Las Vegas on May 1.
Adam Jackson writes about the cannabis industry for the Green Market Report. He previously covered the Missouri Statehouse for the Columbia Missourian and has written for the Missouri Independent. He most recently covered retail, restaurants and other consumer companies for Bloomberg Business News. You can find him on Twitter at @adam_sjackson and email him at adam.jackson@crain.com.
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The Green Market Report focuses on the financial news of the rapidly growing cannabis industry. Our target approach filters out the daily noise and does a deep dive into the financial, business and economic side of the cannabis industry. Our team is cultivating the industry’s critical news into one source and providing open source insights and data analysis
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