US-based venture capital firm Casa Verde Capital — co-founded by rapper and entertainment entrepreneur Snoop Dogg — has invested £4.5 million in Mamedica, the UK's leading medical cannabis clinic, in what the company describes as the largest fundraising in the UK medical cannabis sector to date.
Mamedica, which launched in 2022 and is headquartered in London, reported 7,500 active patients under care at the time of the fundraising across a range of chronic and neurological conditions. The company said it is on track to double its patient base by the end of this year.
The fundraising was led by Casa Verde Capital, which has established itself as one of the most prominent specialist venture capital investors in the legal cannabis sector across the United States. Other private investors participating in the round include former Premier League footballers Bobby Zamora and Mark Noble, alongside strategic investor and art entrepreneur Jay Rutland.
The UK Medical Cannabis Market — An Alternative Healthcare Investment
Medical cannabis became legal in the United Kingdom in November 2018, following a campaign to make cannabis-based medicinal products available to children with severe epilepsy. Since legalisation, a private prescribing market has developed steadily — with between 80,000 and 100,000 patients now accessing cannabis-based medicinal products through licensed private prescribers, and more than 40 specialist cannabis clinics having launched across the country.
"The UK medical cannabis market is approaching a £1 billion valuation and is expected to support 100,000 patients this year."
The UK medical cannabis market is approaching a £1 billion valuation and is expected to support 100,000 patients this year. Capital continues to flow into cultivation, processing, pharmacy distribution and clinical network infrastructure. For investors considering alternative healthcare investments — assets outside the traditional pharmaceutical, hospital and medical device categories — UK medical cannabis clinics represent an increasingly well-defined investment category with recurring revenue, a growing patient base and a functioning regulatory framework.
The Mamedica fundraising is the most significant equity investment in a UK medical cannabis clinic to date and provides an important reference data point for institutional investors and family office principals evaluating the sector. The clinic model sits at the intersection of specialty pharma — the prescribing of regulated medicinal cannabis products — and digital health, combining an online prescribing platform with proprietary patient data infrastructure and a growing book of recurring patient relationships.
Why Medical Cannabis Qualifies as Both Alternative Healthcare Investment and Specialty Pharma
Medical cannabis occupies a distinctive position in the investment landscape. It is simultaneously a specialty pharma asset — involving regulated pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products, licensed prescribers, MHRA oversight and clinical evidence requirements — and an alternative healthcare investment, operating outside the mainstream NHS commissioning system and attracting capital from investors with an appetite for regulatory-sensitive, early-stage market opportunity.
For family office principals and institutional investors building healthcare allocations, the distinction matters. Specialty pharma investments typically involve established product pipelines, reimbursement pathways and clinical validation — characteristics that medical cannabis is progressively acquiring as clinical evidence accumulates and NHS access expands. Alternative healthcare investments typically involve higher regulatory and commercial uncertainty but correspondingly higher potential returns if the market develops as projected — characteristics that the UK medical cannabis sector still carries in 2026.
The Mamedica fundraising, led by a US-based specialist cannabis VC with a track record in the American legal cannabis market, signals that experienced investors in legal cannabis are applying a specialty pharma lens to the UK opportunity — treating it as a structured, regulated pharmaceutical services business rather than a speculative alternative asset.
Casa Verde Capital and the Wider UK Venture Capital Context
Casa Verde's investment in Mamedica is smaller than the average deal size in the wider UK venture capital market, which continues to see increased competition among investors for top-tier opportunities across both mainstream technology and specialist alternative healthcare investment categories.
Data compiled by PitchBook shows that in the eight months to the beginning of September 2025, UK companies raised £8.9 billion in venture capital funding. Of that total, £2.4 billion — equivalent to 26.9% — was concentrated in the ten largest deals, broadly consistent with 27.1% in 2024 but up sharply from the equivalent figure in 2023.
Source: PitchBook data; The Observer, September 2025Four of the top ten UK venture capital deals in the period involved companies developing artificial intelligence technology — including Synthesia, which raised $180 million for its text-to-avatar generation platform; Quantexa, which raised $175 million for AI-powered fraud detection; and Cera, which raised $150 million for its AI-based in-home healthcare application.
The largest UK venture capital round in the period was secured by Isomorphic Labs, a London-based AI drug discovery company spun out of Google DeepMind in 2021. The company raised $600 million — approximately £450 million — from investors including GV, the investment arm of Alphabet, and Thrive Capital, an early backer of OpenAI. Isomorphic Labs is developing AI systems it believes can reduce the time required to discover and develop a new drug by up to half — a claim that positions it at the frontier of the specialty pharma and drug discovery investment landscape.
What the Mamedica Investment Signals for Alternative Healthcare Investors
The Casa Verde investment in Mamedica carries significance beyond its headline figure. The involvement of a US-based specialist cannabis venture capital firm — alongside high-profile individual investors including former professional athletes and a cultural entrepreneur — signals that the UK medical cannabis sector is attracting a broader and more diverse investor base than at any point since legalisation in 2018.
For institutional investors and family office principals assessing alternative healthcare investments in the UK, the Mamedica fundraising provides a reference data point for the scale and structure of equity investment now available in the sector. The clinic model — combining digital prescribing infrastructure, a growing patient base with recurring revenue characteristics and proprietary patient data — is increasingly legible to professional investors familiar with similar specialty pharma and digital health service models in adjacent healthcare sectors.
The UK medical cannabis market remains early-stage relative to established legal cannabis markets in the United States and Canada. But the structural conditions for continued growth are increasingly well understood by the international investors now entering the sector — a large unserved patient population, a functioning private prescribing framework, a progressive regulatory environment and a growing body of clinical evidence supporting the use of cannabis-based medicines for chronic pain, anxiety, PTSD and neurological conditions.