John Zimmerman, founder and CEO of Harvest Integrated, is trying to tackle two of the biggest issues in cannabis cultivation: proper climate control and access to capital.
In 2022, Harvest adopted a Climate as a Service (CaaS) model, a subscription-based service for HVAC and climate control. The company is on the hook to buy, own, operate, repair and replace the HVAC equipment, in exchange for a monthly fee and long-term agreement with cannabis cultivators.
At MJBizCon 2025 in Las Vegas, Zimmerman said operators "love" the model because it helps them get over the hump and into profitability. He said CaaS is particularly well-suited for existing operators who continue to feel the "sting" from poor decision-making.
The CaaS model is designed to align with cultivator business models and improve equipment operations, especially those struggling with uptime.
"We already knew that there was a lot of poor decision-making on the HVAC side of things," Zimmerman recalled. With benefits like 24/7 remote monitoring and built-in machine learning in the Harvest controls platform, the CaaS model supports preventive maintenance and uptime, including automated service calls.
"We're giving these growers half their time back, because they usually spend this [time] looking at a piece of equipment that they don't really know much about," Zimmerman said, adding that many HVAC systems throughout the industry haven't been designed right from the beginning.
