A Case Study in Overbranding, Underdelivering, and Executive-Level Delusion
LONDON — Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies, once heralded as the future of pharma-grade weed, has officially entered administration after running out of cash and investors willing to keep pretending it was going anywhere. This was a company that had it all: a Tory peer in the boardroom, a rapper in the cap table, and Imperial Brands—the literal cigarette cartel—as its strategic partner.
And yet here we are, writing its obituary before it ever produced a single sellable product.
A Quick Recap of This Glorious Flameout
Founded in 2017 with dreams of bringing “ethical, effective, cannabis-derived medicines” to the UK market
Raised £16.5 million in its 2021 IPO on the London Stock Exchange, riding the wave of GW Pharma envy
Burned through cash like a hedge fund on ayahuasca
Delisted quietly in 2023 with a press release that read like an HR memo written at gunpoint
Rebranded as “Octavian Therapeutics” in 2025 because nothing screams fiscal confidence like Roman cosplay
Appointed Lord Mott, a Conservative Party loyalist with less biotech experience than your average budtender
Tried to raise £10 million
Failed
Died
The Dream
OCT’s vision was simple: skip cultivation, skip retail, skip all the parts of cannabis that actually involve cannabis—and instead, spend millions developing IP-protected cannabinoid formulas so they could one day sell prescription pills for pain, inflammation, and investor remorse.
It was weed for people too rich to touch plants.
Their investor decks were beautiful—slick animations of cannabinoid receptors lighting up like Christmas trees. Their public statements were clinical, poised, and utterly divorced from the reality of the UK’s weed landscape, where patients still struggle to get a legal prescription for flower and the NHS treats cannabis like it’s anthrax in vape form.
The Reality
Behind the scenes, it was what you’d expect:
No commercial product.
No revenue.
No viable timeline.
And zero acknowledgement that the UK has no infrastructure to support what they were building.
Their entire business model hinged on the hope that regulators, investors, patients, and prescribers would all suddenly, collectively decide to give a shit at the same time. They didn’t.
The Players
Imperial Brands thought this would be their clean break from Big Tobacco. They forgot weed isn’t as easy to sell when you can’t flavor it like bubblegum and push it through gas stations.
Casa Verde Capital (aka Snoop Dogg’s venture firm) tossed in early money, probably off the strength of a pitch deck with words like “formulation pipeline” and “multi-phase activation.”
Lord Mott, meanwhile, thought he could fix a failing weed company by showing up and squinting like a man trying to understand what “bioavailability” means.
None of them asked the obvious: Is the UK even capable of supporting this model?
Short answer: no.Long answer: LOL.
Boof du Jour Analyst Rating: “Sell Your Shares and Get Into Bricklaying”
Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies is what happens when people try to treat cannabis like a pharma startup instead of a plant with a centuries-old market.
They had investors. They had headlines.They had white papers so dense you could roll joints with them.
And now?They have administrators, debt, and a website that’ll be taken offline before their LinkedIn announcement finishes buffering.
Final Take
This isn’t just a bad bet. It’s a case study in cannabis VC delusion:Overpromise, overbrand, underdeliver, collapse.
If you’re going to burn £16 million on cannabinoid research, at least have the decency to make one fucking gummy.
We’ll be back next week with a breakdown of another cannabis biotech startup claiming their nasal spray will “replace opioids and capitalism.”
Spoiler: it won’t.