Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, August 22nd.

Today on Forbes, meet the ex-NASA engineer training robots to make pre-roll joints.

Inside the Los Angeles headquarters of Steasy, America's largest cannabis brand by sales,

a robotic machine takes 10 pre-rolled joints in its arm,

dips them into a vessel of THC concentrate, and then into another bucket filled with Keefe,

a potent dust-like form of cannabis. In a few seconds, the Stardust machine, made by Van Nuys-based

sorting robotics, will have coded 30 pre-rolls with an extra

punch of THC, the compound in marijuana known for getting people high. In an hour, Stardust, and its one

human operator, will have produced about 1,000 joints ready for consumption. James Kim, the CEO and co-founder of Steasy, while standing next to the Stardust in early April,

says, quote, this machine's output could be more than 10 people.

In another room down the hall, about 140 employees sit at 14 tables, manually dipping

joints into a turppen-infused adhesive and

rolling them into a pile of keef.

Steezy isn't ready to replace its humans just yet, but Kim does envision a day when

all of its joints will be made entirely by machines.

Kim says, quote, robotics is the future, but the future isn't today. It might take a lot more time.

That future is being pioneered by sorting robotics, founded by Nautal Partansky, its CEO,

Cassio Santos, who is the CTO before leaving this year, and Sean Lawlor, who is the C.O.

Before leaving in 2021.

The three founded sorting robotics in 2019. The company has sold about 30 stardust machines,

which go for a hefty $250,000 each, as well as hundreds of lower-priced marijuana machines

to cannabis brands since its founding.

...