David Holmes is the Co-founder of Clade9 and brings over 25 years of experience in cannabis breeding and cultivation. He began his career in a small illicit garden in Los Angeles and later expanded into large-scale medical warehouse operations during California’s Proposition 215 era.

In 2013, following a run-in with law enforcement, David shifted his focus toward building compliant, professional cannabis operations nationwide. Leveraging his deep operational expertise, he has helped investors new to the industry design, build, and operate cultivation facilities in Arizona and Nevada. He is currently an owner-operator of licensed cannabis facilities in California and New Jersey.

David holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from UC Riverside and has conducted exoplanet research at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. His rare combination of scientific rigor, systems thinking, and hands-on cultivation experience informs Clade9’s genetics-first approach to modern cannabis.