Aprio Enters Cannabis Market with Price Kong Acquisition

One of the country’s twenty largest accounting and advisory firms is now in the cannabis business.

Aprio, the Atlanta-based firm ranked 20th nationally among U.S. accounting and advisory practices, announced May 6, 2026, that it has agreed to acquire Price Kong, a Phoenix-based CPA and advisory firm that has served cannabis operators across the U.S. and Canada since 2011. The transaction closes June 1, 2026. Price Kong’s entire team — more than 40 professionals including managing partner Ross Dietrich and five additional partners — will join Aprio. Financial terms were not disclosed.

What Price Kong Brings

Price Kong’s cannabis practice is not a marketing addition. The firm built it from scratch before Arizona’s adult-use program existed, and over more than a decade assembled a client base spanning locally-owned operators and publicly traded multi-state companies with operations in multiple states.

What makes the practice worth acquiring is specificity. Cannabis operators face a tax structure unlike anything in conventional industries: federal law bars them from deducting most ordinary business expenses, even on activity that’s entirely legal under their state license. Navigating that constraint, avoiding penalties, and presenting financials that satisfy state licensing boards and investor due-diligence requests requires accountants who have spent real time inside the problem. Price Kong’s cannabis team, led by audit partner Troy Griffith and tax partner Melissa Harrington — both working cannabis clients since 2014 — built exactly that depth. Their work spans tax compliance and planning, full financial statement audits, M&A advisory, compliance reporting under state authority requirements, and cost accounting for cultivators and processors.

That service set has historically been hard to source. The universe of accounting firms willing to touch cannabis has been small, and the subset with audit capabilities that satisfy state regulators has been smaller still. Operators or investors who worked with Price Kong had access to that expertise inside a 40-person boutique; after June 1, 2026, they have it inside a 3,200-person firm with a cross-border advisory practice reaching clients in more than 50 countries.

Aprio’s Expansion Track

The Price Kong deal is part of an active consolidation push for Aprio, which is private equity-backed and has been running an aggressive M&A strategy. Earlier 2026 transactions include the addition of two Oregon-based accounting firms, a state and local tax team from Denver, and federal contractor advisory firm CAVU Advisors in Maryland. Each deal has added either geography or sector depth to the platform.

Price Kong is the first cannabis-specific acquisition and the second Arizona move. Aprio entered the Phoenix market in early 2025 by combining with a Scottsdale-based law practice to form Aprio Legal, a full-service firm that AZ Big Media has since recognized as one of Arizona’s ten most innovative law firms. The Price Kong acquisition adds the accounting and audit capabilities that were missing from that legal-only Arizona presence. In Aprio’s announcement, CEO Richard Kopelman described the goal as building the firm Arizona entrepreneurs turn to when they need accounting, audit, legal, advisory, and wealth services from a single provider — a full-platform pitch that requires both sides to be in market simultaneously.

What It Means for Cannabis Operators

For cannabis businesses, the structural significance of this deal is the scale of the firm now behind a cannabis practice. Boutique specialists — including well-regarded firms like Bennett Thrasher — have historically been the primary option for operators needing sector-specific accounting work. Aprio, at its size, changes that dynamic for cannabis companies that have grown into complex enterprises with multi-state licensing, publicly reported financials, and capital structures requiring institutional-quality audit.

Companies in that position need several things at once: audit that satisfies state licensing boards, tax strategy adapted to the federal disallowance that bars deducting ordinary business expenses, financial statements prepared for debt and equity investors, and M&A advisory when consolidation deals arise. Those services, delivered from a firm that can handle cross-border complexity and sign off on audits at the scale larger operators require, have not been easily available from a single provider. Price Kong built the competency; Aprio provides the infrastructure to take it further.

Ross Dietrich, Price Kong’s managing partner, said the combination lets the team pair its industry specialization with deeper resources. For Price Kong’s existing clients — which include publicly-traded operators with multi-state footprints — that means their financial statements now carry the name of a top-20 national firm. For Aprio, it means entering a regulated industry with ten-plus years of direct operating experience already in the building, not a team learning cannabis compliance from scratch.