Vape-Jet, a robotics and automation company that builds precision production equipment for the legal cannabis industry, has officially relocated its headquarters, engineering staff and manufacturing operations from Oregon to a new facility on Liberty Avenue in the Strip District. The move places a fast-growing, award-winning manufacturer squarely inside the corridor Pittsburghers have taken to calling Robotics Row.
The company's signature products, the Vape-Jet 4.0 and the Jet-Fueler 3.0, are automated systems that dose bulk cannabis extracts into individual handheld devices for retail sale. Built for labor efficiency, versatility across extract types and hardware, and precision that preserves product quality, the machines have made Vape-Jet the industry leader by volume filled. The company's fleet of more than 500 machines operating across the country has now logged upward of 100 million verified fills.
A Track Record Worth Betting On
The relocation caps a run of recognition for the company. Vape-Jet was named one of the Pacific Northwest's 100 fastest-growing private companies by the Portland Business Journal for three consecutive years, and founder Ryan Hoitt and CEO Tim Marsh were featured on Forbes' Cannabis 42.0 List, which spotlights 42 innovators shaping the future of the industry. Rather than chase a bigger city for its own sake, the company went looking for a region with deep bench strength in the exact discipline its products depend on: robotics.
"Moving our headquarters and production to Pittsburgh allows us to build on that experience while becoming part of one of the world's leading robotics communities to drive new product development. We're excited to write the next chapter of the company's story here."
Tim Marsh, CEO of Vape-Jet
That bench strength is exactly what the Strip District offers. The neighborhood is home to Gecko Robotics, Aurora's self-driving technology division, Carnegie Robotics, Aethon, and Seegrid, all within walking distance of one another and all drawing on the research pipeline out of Carnegie Mellon University. For a company whose products combine hardware, machine vision and intelligent automation, proximity to that concentration of engineering talent is not a lifestyle upgrade. It is a supply chain decision.
What It Means for the Strip
Vape-Jet's arrival is a small but telling data point in a larger story about how Pittsburgh's manufacturing identity has shifted. The Strip District built its original economy on wholesale food distribution and rail-served warehouses. Its current economy is increasingly built on companies that design and build the robots and automated systems used across entirely different industries, in this case one as far afield as regulated cannabis production. That a company would uproot an established, award-winning operation in Oregon, a state with its own deep cannabis-industry infrastructure, to move engineering and manufacturing here says something about how far Pittsburgh's advanced manufacturing reputation now travels.
Company leadership says the new Strip District facility will support continued hiring across engineering, manufacturing, operations and customer success, with plans to expand its regional presence as automation continues to spread through regulated industries nationally. For a neighborhood that has spent the past decade reinventing itself one robotics tenant at a time, Vape-Jet is the latest sign the formula is working.