Tilray

In 2013, a small Vancouver Island town became the birthplace of a company that would help reshape the legal cannabis industry. Tilray was founded in Nanaimo, British Columbia, as a subsidiary of Privateer Holdings, a private equity firm betting that marijuana prohibition would crumble. It was among the first licensed producers to get a cultivation license from Health Canada, starting with a single facility in Nanaimo.

The company's trajectory changed dramatically in December 2020, when it announced a merger with Aphria, another Canadian cannabis giant. The deal closed in May 2021, creating a combined entity that kept the Tilray name and began trading on the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchange under TLRY. The merger brought together Tilray's medical cannabis expertise with Aphria's low-cost production and European distribution network.

Tilray today is far more than a cannabis company. Through a string of acquisitions, it has built a portfolio that includes craft beer brands like SweetWater Brewing, Montauk Brewing, and Breckenridge Brewery. By 2025, the Brewers Association ranked Tilray as the fourth largest craft beer company in the United States. It also sells hemp foods and supplements under the Manitoba Harvest brand. In 2023, the company reincorporated in the U.S. and moved its corporate headquarters to New York City, though it maintains major operations in Canada, Portugal, Germany, and the UK.

Revenue for fiscal year 2024 reached about $789 million, driven by cannabis sales in Canada and Europe, plus growing beverage alcohol revenue. The company has faced scrutiny, including a 2018 short-seller report from Prescience Point that questioned its valuation, and shareholder lawsuits over stock volatility. Still, Tilray remains one of the largest publicly traded cannabis companies by revenue, competing with Canopy Growth, Curaleaf, and Trulieve.[edit]