JUUL

JUUL Labs is a San Francisco-based maker of vaping devices and nicotine e-liquid pods, spun out as an independent company in 2017 from Pax Labs, the vaporizer company its founders, Adam Bowen and James Monsees, had originally started together at Stanford. JUUL's device drove the U.S. e-cigarette category's growth in 2017-2018, at one point capturing over 70% of U.S. e-cigarette retail sales.

That growth brought intense scrutiny over underage vaping use, leading to thousands of lawsuits from individuals, school districts, and state attorneys general, a since-reversed June 2022 FDA order denying JUUL marketing authorization for its products, and a landmark December 2022 agreement to resolve roughly 10,000 individual lawsuits and related claims for about $1.7 billion, on top of hundreds of millions of dollars in separate state settlements, including a $462 million agreement with seven states announced in April 2023.

Tobacco giant Altria took a 35% minority equity stake in JUUL for $12.8 billion in December 2018 at a $38 billion valuation, then wrote that investment down repeatedly between 2019 and 2022 (to roughly $450 million by mid-2022) before exchanging its remaining equity stake for a heated-tobacco intellectual-property license in March 2023, formally ending Altria's ownership position in the company. K.C. Crosthwaite, who joined from Altria, has served as JUUL's Chairman and CEO since September 2019, steering the company through litigation, an FDA marketing-denial fight, and a restructuring of its U.S. business.

In 2025 and 2026 the FDA granted JUUL renewed marketing authorizations for tobacco- and menthol-flavored products, and in August 2026 authorized a redesigned device, marketed as JUUL2, that includes an optional age-verification feature; Crosthwaite has said the company will now seek authorization for additional adult-targeted flavors beyond tobacco and menthol. JUUL remains a privately held company with no public listing, no S-1 filing, and no announced IPO timeline; its shares change hands only in the private secondary market through platforms serving accredited investors.