Connected and Alien Labs Enter Pennsylvania Through New Partnership With Insa

Connected and Alien Labs are officially entering Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis market after announcing a new partnership with Insa last week, a move that brings two of California’s most influential genetics portfolios into a state that has seen little brand‑level disruption in recent years. 

Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program has matured steadily since it launched eight years ago, but brand‑level innovation has slowed, and few operators have introduced the kind of legacy West Coast names that helped define modern cannabis culture. For Connected founder and CEO Caleb Counts, that gap presented an opportunity.

“Even though Pennsylvania has had an active and regulated medical cannabis market since 2018, one of the things they haven’t really experienced is legacy California brands entering the market,” Counts said in an online interview with IgniteIt. “We look at new markets through a number of different lenses, and in a capital‑constrained environment, we can’t just go spend five or ten million dollars in every market we want to be in. So we look for a partner who is aligned in the ways Connected and Alien are aligned, which is quality and dedication to the craft.”

Counts said that alignment became clear early in the process. Insa had the cultivation scale and the discipline, but not the same level of legacy brand recognition. Connected had the genetics and the following, but needed a partner who could execute at that level inside Pennsylvania’s regulatory framework.

“Insa grows very high‑quality products. We hold ourselves to a very high standard, and we don’t often come across folks who hold themselves to the same standard,” he said.

A Shared Approach to Quality

For Insa co‑founder and CEO Peter Gallagher, the partnership felt natural from the start.

“I’ve always been impressed by Connected and Alien Labs. It’s an iconic cannabis brand,” Gallagher said in the same interview. “What I was always really attracted to is that it’s very authentic. From the outside, I thought that, and once we got into the partnership, everything I thought was true. These guys are ultra-focused on quality, and that’s a shared idea. At Insa, we’re very quality-focused, and they’re deeply involved in the whole process.”

Gallagher said the Pennsylvania market was ready for something new.

“It seemed like in the life cycle of our company, it was the right time to bring on a brand partner, and we felt like we could support it appropriately,” said Gallagher. “It feels like there’s a little bit of stagnation in the Pennsylvania market, in the sense that there’s not a lot of new brands coming in. So it felt like the right time to introduce what I think is one of the best cannabis brands in the world.”

Early Sellouts and Strong Feedback

While the partnership was only broadly announced last week, Insa has already seen success with the partnership’s initial offerings. Connected’s first Pennsylvania harvest sold out immediately, and early patient feedback has been strong.

“We’re just now starting to hear little bits of feedback through the market,” Counts said. “Reddit is one of the best forums to get a gauge of how people are receiving the product, and people are loving it. I wouldn’t claim success through and through just yet, but all early indications are that we’ve got a very successful partnership on our hands that will last a long time.”

Counts said the collaboration has already cleared the most important internal hurdle: proving that Insa can grow Connected and Alien Labs genetics to the company’s standards.

“We established means of communication over numerous visits from our quality assurance team, and Insa knocked it out of the park,” he said. “They’ve achieved a product that we are willing to stand by and put our name on.”

How the Genetics Translate in Pennsylvania

Connected’s strains are known for their distinct expression, and Counts said the Pennsylvania‑grown versions are meeting expectations despite differences in environment and equipment.

“We grow under different lights. We use high‑pressure sodium in California, and they use LED,” he said. “That’s always a bit of a concern, but the industry has come so far. Watching how our genetics worked in their environment was a learning experience for us.”

Counts said his team has already reviewed the flower coming out of Insa’s rooms.

“We’re looking at pictures of our flower, our children, growing in someone else’s facility and going, damn, that’s as good or better than we could have hoped to have seen in some of our own facilities,” he said. “I have absolutely no doubt that the Pennsylvania patient is not only going to be pleased with their experience. I think they’re going to be blown away.”

Why Insa Made the Cut

Connected is famously selective about its partners, and Counts said Insa earned that trust through both quality and philosophy.

“Very few companies outside California had any sort of unique approach to genetics,” he said. “I noticed that Insa had embarked on their own path of genetic development. That’s not for the faint‑hearted. It’s costly, time-consuming, frustrating, and I could tell it was something they had dedicated themselves to. That meant from the start that we had an aligned vision on how we approach cannabis.”

Counts said the partnership has already exceeded expectations.

“When you’re handing something to someone that you’ve created, it’s like handing them your kid and asking them to raise them,” he said. “When they do it so well that you wonder if they even did a better job than you might have, that’s the best thing you can ask for.”