Jeff Wu serves as the technical director at Xylem, applying his deep understanding of chemistry, electronics manufacturing, automation, and cannabis processing. As both an investor and entrepreneur, Jeff brings a unique blend of scientific knowledge and hands-on experience to the pharmaceutical, laboratory, manufacturing, and cannabis industries.

Q: Can you tell us more about your career journey and what led you to the cannabis industry?
A: Originally, I was doing syringe pumps and then went into laboratory circulators. From there, I worked on ANOVA sous vide machines, which led me into the cannabis industry. A lot of cannabis extraction labs were buying the ANOVA circulators, one to 200 at a time. At that point, and even now, ANOVA is still the most precise temperature control device under $200. When the cannabis field discovered it, they were using it for several applications: warming resin, doing extraction work, and making infused oils. When I found that out, I realized this was a very rapidly growing area that was using a lot of lab equipment. Also, at the same time, I had a few industry acquaintances from the tech space and San Francisco who were also jumping into cannabis.
After ANOVA was acquired, I moved on and became an investor in Eaze during its early years. I also invested in a cannabis research lab in Central Valley in King City, California. The products we made were very interesting and way ahead of their time. The cannabis industry is very challenging, and the original companies I invested in were either foreclosed on or forced into liquidation. I learned a lot from those experiences since I was working directly in the lab with the extractors and technicians. In fact, the technology we were working on survived and evolved to become Xylem Robotics.
Q: What are the underlying equipment challenges that cannabis labs face?
A: We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars—$700,000 in one year—on equipment to find it wasn’t fit for purpose. People like me from other industries are now working to make equipment for this industry since most of it still isn’t designed and optimized for processing cannabis.
As an example, I bought Huber and Julabo super-low temp systems for cryogenic butane extraction. Although they could achieve the required temperatures, they weren't designed for the scale of production we were trying to achieve. You have huge ultra-low temp circulators that can cost a million dollars and sit outside, and you have the Huber or Julabo systems that at -80°C realistically give 200 watts of cooling power. There's nothing in-between for the scale we needed. We couldn't get the plant to freeze properly with that equipment, so some of our product was of substandard quality.
Now it’s easier to find some of the equipment you need. Equipment that we had to paste together you can now buy in sets, like a short path distillation system. But some of the bigger equipment still doesn't exist or is too expensive to be viable. You can buy thin-film separators for distillation work to help increase throughput. But it’s difficult to justify the $250,000 cost to produce a liter of distillate every ten minutes when you're making ten cents per gram on that liter.
To this day, the industry needs specialized equipment that's durable and can take a hit. Even the big boiling flasks are all made of gigantic pieces of glass. It doesn't need to be made like that. When a boiling flask is under vacuum, one little nick or a stray drop can cause it to implode.
Ultimately, we were using lab equipment designed for scientists for production. It just felt incredibly wrong, and it was.
Q: Can you elaborate on some of the technical challenges, like working with standards, in the cannabis industry?
A: A lack of analytical standards was a major scientific issue. If you’re running an HPLC system, what standards do you buy, and from where? Sigma-Aldrich has delta-9 standards, but you need certain licenses to buy those. In effect, a lot of the standards were homemade, especially around 2017-2018. You could get some standards like CBN, but it was still very rare.
“The technical issues were also daunting because we were using equipment that wasn't designed for the job, with standards that didn't exist, and with people who were not qualified.” When you finally made something, you didn’t know if it was actually the expected material. How do you even attempt quality control in these situations? That's on top of all the business issues around government tax, transport, and regulations. It was daunting. Knowing what I know now, I could correct a lot of the original problems, but I wouldn’t boot up my extraction facility again until I see the staffing issue resolved.
Q: What are the main challenges in finding qualified scientific staff in the cannabis industry, and how does this impact operations?
A: It is very difficult to get top level scientists from top universities to even consider working for you. We got to a point where the chemists handling most of our distillation work had bachelor’s degrees and couldn't find work in the chemical industry. This meant hiring staff who didn’t know how to do basic distillation or separation or understand the basics of running MS or HPLC and interpreting the output.
It's not that much better now. I've only met a handful of PhD chemists in the industry who are here because they’re passionate about the product and the cause. There's zero probability of recruiting a typical 27-year-old postgrad. In the testing facilities, more removed from cannabis, you get some masters-level chemists and sometimes PhDs, but even those are difficult to find.
One of the big problems is that if somebody works for a cannabis company, that's seen as a black mark on a resume. Pharmaceutical companies or chemical manufacturers won’t hire them after that.
Q: Despite these challenges, what makes you optimistic about the future of the cannabis industry?
A: The same thing that drew entrepreneurs from Hollywood to Silicon Valley Tech: opportunity in a growing field. Cannabis tax revenue is already bigger than wine, spirits, and beer in Arizona and already bigger than lobster in Maine, if regulations were leveled like for other products, it would be one of the largest sectors in the economy. There are very few opportunities where an industry is created from thin air. There will be winners and losers but there will be a lot of wealth and opportunity creation.
It's messy now, as the organizations and business models are getting shaken out. This is evolution: a comet hits, and the little furry creatures that survive become the next generation. A lot of companies went out of business during COVID. The ones that survived are doing extremely well. Our clients are the ones with the proper business models—they're able to hire and retain the people. They’ve also had simplified supply chains because of the reduced competition.
The opportunity is huge if you can get all your ducks in a row. I'm producing equipment on the machinery and robotics side because I’m optimistic. I wouldn't have thought I'd be building robotic equipment for this industry.
To learn more, visit xylemtech.com