Aprio Targets Cannabis Sector in Price Kong Acquisition

ATLANTA-PHOENIX – Aprio, the 20th largest business advisory and accounting firm in the United States, announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Price Kong, a Phoenix-based CPA and advisory firm. The transaction, effective June 1, 2026, expands Aprio’s Arizona presence and brings accounting, audit, and advisory capabilities to complement its existing footprint in the market.

Critically, it also marks something else entirely – Aprio’s formal entry into the Cannabis industry.

Price Kong, established in 1967, was among the first firms in the country to offer accounting services to legal Cannabis operators, and has spent more than a decade helping those businesses and their ancillary partners navigate complex regulatory, tax, and financial challenges. Price Kong’s cannabis work has included IRC Section 280E compliance disputes, IRS audit representation, minimizing tax penalties, and negotiating installment agreements – services that demand a specialized understanding of how federal tax law applies to businesses that remain illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, even as they operate legally under state law.

Arizona adds another layer of nuance. The state has decoupled from IRC Section 280E for state tax purposes, meaning licensed Cannabis businesses there may deduct ordinary and necessary business expenses on state income tax returns, even though those same deductions remain prohibited at the federal level. Navigating this dual-tax environment requires exactly the kind of specialized expertise that Price Kong has spent years developing, and that Aprio just acquired.

More than 40 Price Kong professionals, including Managing Partner Ross Dietrich and five additional partners, will join Aprio’s Atlanta headquarters. The financial terms were not disclosed.

Aprio reported $616 million in revenue and employs more than 3,100 professionals across 37 offices. CEO Richard Kopelman framed the Arizona strategy in explicitly integrated terms, describing the goal of bringing accounting, advisory, audit, wealth, and legal capabilities together in one market as “a landmark moment for Aprio.” The implication is clear: Aprio is building a full-service platform for the kinds of growth-stage businesses, including Cannabis operators, that require coordinated legal, financial, and strategic guidance simultaneously.

What the deal signals to the broader Cannabis professional services market is harder to ignore than the deal itself. For years, Cannabis accounting was dominated by boutique specialists – small, nimble firms that built their practices around 280E fluency and seed-to-sale compliance, serving clients that larger national firms viewed as too risky or too niche. That calculus is shifting. As Arizona’s market matures, as more states move toward adult-use, and as the regulatory complexity only multiplies, Cannabis operators need advisors with institutional depth, not just specialist credibility. Aprio, through Price Kong, is betting it can offer both.

Whether that bet pays off will depend less on the acquisition itself than on how well Aprio integrates Price Kong’s Cannabis-specific culture and client relationships into a firm that is, by any measure, a very different kind of institution. Boutique trust is fragile. Cannabis clients have spent years building relationships with advisors who understood their industry when few others would touch it. The firms that succeed in this space going forward will be the ones that can deliver institutional resources without abandoning that earned credibility, and that is a management challenge no term sheet can solve.