Howard Lee says he hasn’t smoked a joint in forever. But the longtime Seattle tech veteran is definitely riding high as he leads a secretive startup called SōRSE Technology that is looking to be a major player around the red-hot CBD and cannabis craze.
SōRSE has been active for more than three years and has been “under the cover of darkness” for the last two, working hard on science that allows it to convert CBD and THC oils into a water-soluble product that can be infused more seamlessly into beverages, food and topicals.
The company, working out of an industrial area in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, just raised $5 million and $9 million to date. Lee was the onetime CEO of PhotoWorks (previously Seattle FilmWorks) and he was co-founder and CEO of Spoken Communications, which was acquired by Avaya Holdings in 2018.
“I’m the last guy to be in the cannabis space,” Lee said this week. “I hadn’t done any cannabis work, cannabis anything, until some of our original investors came to me and said, ‘Hey, what do we do with this license we have in Washington state?’”
