Ottawa-based Hyperlume has raised $12.5 million USD ($17.8 million CAD) in seed funding to commercialize its data-centre interconnection technology. 

The round was led by BDC’s Deep Tech Venture Fund and ArcTern Ventures, with participation from MUUS Climate Partners, SOSV, and Intel Capital, the investment arm of American semiconductor giant Intel, with a strategic investment from LG Technology Ventures. BetaKit asked Hyperlume about the strategic nature of LG’s investment, but did not hear back by press time. 

Hyperlume will use the capital to expand its product, engineering, and R&D teams.

Founded in 2022 by CEO Mohsen Asad and president and CTO Hossein Fariborzi, Hyperlume says it seeks to address connectivity bottlenecks in accelerated computing and artificial intelligence (AI) data centres with its specialized microLEDs (a type of emerging flat-panel display technology), and power circuitry.

Hyperlume claims its interconnects have 10-times the computing performance, five-times the power savings, and four times lower cost relative to traditional copper interconnects.

As their name suggests, data centre interconnects connect two or more data centres together to share and transfer data over short, medium or long distances. With the advent of AI, data centre use, and thus energy consumption, has shot up dramatically. 

RELATED: Climate tech VC ArcTern Ventures closes $450-million CAD Fund III from large institutions

“As the demand for AI grows, so do its energy requirements, placing a significant burden on traditional copper interconnects,” Intel Capital managing director Srini Ananth said in a statement. “Hyperlume’s technology effectively tackles the bottlenecks hindering optimal performance in AI and data centres, representing a significant step forward for the semiconductor industry as it supports the demands of an AI-driven future.”

According to a May 2024 report from Goldman Sachs, data centre power demand is expected to grow 160 percent by 2030 due to AI use, potentially causing data centres to account for up to four percent of overall power consumption worldwide and double their current carbon emissions. Those figures underscore an urgent need to invest in technologies like Hyperlume’s, which reduce energy consumption, Murray McCaig, managing partner at round leader ArcTern Ventures, said in a statement. 

Hyperlume plans to use the proceeds of its oversubscribed seed round to accelerate the development of its tech, as well as expand its product, engineering, and research and development teams. The startup is also looking to strengthen strategic partnerships with leading cloud service providers, chip manufacturers, and AI infrastructure providers. 

Feature image courtesy Hyperlume. 

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The federal government has revealed 12 more non-profit organizations selected to receive a total of $2.8 million through Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ Entrepreneurship Program Ecosystem Fund.

The $8-million ecosystem fund is part of a $25-million federal program that was first revealed in June 2023 with the aim of offering dedicated support to Canadian entrepreneurs who identify as 2SLGBTQI+. The fund, administered by Canada’s 2SLGBTQI+ Chamber of Commerce (CGLCC), is designed to help recipient organizations offer programs and resources to support 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurs, while raising awareness of the challenges they face.

CGLCC CEO says funding addresses the gaps identified in the fund’s initial round. 

Some of the latest supported provincial organizations include the LGBT Chambers of Commerce in Québec, Manitoba, and Ontario, as well as British Columbia’s LOUD Business, Pride PEI, Quadrangle Newfoundland and Labrador, and Halifax’s Tribe Network. 

Tribe Network, launched in 2020, aims to create an entrepreneurship and innovation hub for entrepreneurs identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC). In June 2023, Tribe Network launched Tribe Ventures, a $20-million venture capital fund to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage businesses led by racialized founders.

Organizations in the territories also received support, including the Northern Mosaic Network in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut’s Small Economy Works, and the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon. 

RELATED: QueerTech among 17 organizations selected by feds to deliver $8-million 2SLGBTQI+ Ecosystem Fund

QueerTech, a national nonprofit that supports 2SLGBTQ+ tech workers and entrepreneurs, was among the 17 organizations supported by the 2SLGBTQI+ Entrepreneurship Program Ecosystem Fund’s initial $5.1-million round in August 2024. 

According to the CGLCC, this second round of funding strengthened support in Northern and Atlantic regions and enhanced support for projects benefiting 2SLGBTQI+ Black and racialized communities. 

“This funding will address gaps identified during the first round, providing essential support to organizations across the country, including those in every province and territory,” CGLCC co-founder and CEO Darrell Schuurman said in a statement. “It strengthens the capacity of the 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurial ecosystem and ensures a more inclusive environment for entrepreneurs from all backgrounds.”

Feature image courtesy of the Ministry of Small Business. 

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What happens when Canadian tech minds receive an assignment to solve problems for teachers?

A snowstorm may have dumped over 25 cm of snow on Toronto last week, but it didn’t stop more than 250 people from making their way to Koru’s fifth anniversary and hackathon, which was focused on solving challenges identified by some of Ontario’s school boards. Braving the weather, they came together to celebrate the venture studio’s impact in the Toronto ecosystem and connect with leaders across tech and education.

“If you continuously hear the same friction brought up over and over again, that’s a reinforcing function, saying there’s something here to be solved.”

Bryan Marcovici, Koru

The celebration kicked off two weeks prior, when Koru, a venture studio created by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (Ontario Teachers), invited the tech community to participate in a hackathon focused on three problem areas: facilitating teacher transitions, streamlining student observations, and improving digital learning. 

Koru also offered teams office hours with school district representatives to help them fine tune their solutions. All ideas will be shared with school districts and the broader community.

“Anyone can throw a cocktail party—which we are doing later tonight —but we wanted to showcase our skills in building,” said Leah Carr, Venture General Manager at Koru. 

Since launching in 2019, Koru has built and launched 11 new ventures across a variety of industries, including child care, financial services, and climate tech. Carr said when the team started brainstorming the theme for the hackathon, it was obvious that the solutions should focus on teachers. 

“Ontario Teachers’ exists to help secure the future of teachers, and it’s an area that we care about as well,” said Carr. “So, we started working our networks and talking to school boards and we found out there’s a need for people to help come up with innovative solutions that can be implemented to address pain points for school boards and teachers.”

After 10 days of coding and creating, 23 teams gathered at the Ontario Teachers’ offices to showcase their solutions across two rounds of judging. 

The full-day event kicked off with a panel discussion featuring Carr, as well as Charlotte Nurse, Director of Programs at Canada Learning Code; Alex Norman, Co-Founder of TechTO; Daniel Nieto, Associate Principal at BDC’s Seed Venture Fund; and BetaKit CEO Siri Agrell.

The conversation, which tackled the tension between growth and responsibility, and how to scale a company while staying rooted in community, also offered some key lessons on problem-solving for the hackathon participants.

For Nurse, the key in building tech solutions that solve important problems lies in recognizing who needs support.

“It’s really about looking around for the gaps within your community, and for the ways you can serve your community,” said Nurse, pointing to educators as a prime example.

“Not only do they need your support in the community, they’re also teaching the future,” she added. “My advice would be to look for where you can build within your own community and what direct impact you can make to the people around you.”

That same local-first mindset extends to where solutions are built in the first place.

Norman avoids using the word “impact,” but he’s firm on one thing: tech talent should consider staying and building in Canada, where they can make a bigger difference while enjoying a high quality of life.

After the panel, the first round of judging cut the field from 23 teams to just three finalists. With only four minutes to pitch, teams faced a high-stakes test, not just of their ideas, but of their ability to distill them under pressure.

That evening, more than 250 guests celebrated Koru’s fifth birthday and watched as the hackathon champions were named. 

The third place prize went to Relay, an app designed to streamline the transfer of information to substitute teachers, while second place was awarded to Teacher’s Diary, an AI-powered diary for educators.

In the end, Team DHACK took home the top prize for their app, Obi. The team, which comprised Damian Matheson, Krishiv Thakuria, Henry Fu, Alec Ngai, and Cynthia Lam, won $7,500 in Air Canada gift cards.

DHACK didn’t have to look far for inspiration. After speaking with educators, the team developed an app that lets teachers take notes on students throughout the year, easily review them, and generate report cards using AI at the end of the semester. The team said several teachers they talked to are already eager to use it.

Bryan Marcovici, Co-Founder, CEO, and Managing Partner of Koru, said the event validated the need for builders to work hand in hand with industries and communities to identify needed solutions.

“If you continuously hear the same friction brought up over and over again, that’s a reinforcing function, saying there’s something here to be solved,” Marcovici said.

---

Koru works with Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan portfolio companies to create ventures that shape tomorrow. Learn more about how Koru fuels bold ideas.

All photos provided by Koru.

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The Canadian government has announced $8.1-million in financial support to power Sherbrooke, Que.’s quantum sector across one startup and three innovation partners.

The financial support is being funnelled through the Canadian Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED) to help domestic startups and non-profit organizations develop quantum technology and bring it to market. 

Nord Quantique is the sole startup receiving direct support from CED, through a $1.8-million loan.

“Quebec and Canada are taking their place in the economy of the future, and our government is here to support them,” Minister Pascale St-Onge, the minister responsible for CED, said in a statement. “By boosting innovation in this way, we are helping not only to ensure Quebec’s SMEs and organizations are well positioned, but also to strengthen our global leadership in this emerging area.”

Sherbrooke-based Nord Quantique is the sole startup receiving direct support from CED, through a $1.8-million loan. The new funding will go towards establishing a quantum computer assembly lab by covering costs for specialized equipment, including dilution refrigerators, which operate at incredibly low temperatures, and quantum control electronics.

Founded in 2020 out of Université de Sherbrooke, Nord Quantique develops processors for quantum computing. Last year, the startup claimed it achieved a new milestone for quantum error correction.

A qubit, or quantum bit, is the basic unit of information for quantum systems, like binary bits are to classical computing. Qubits are particularly susceptible to environmental factors and “noise,” leading to errors.

Nord Quantique says its approach can integrate error correction into each qubit, thereby reducing the number of qubits required to perform useful quantum computations. 

RELATED: NGen invests $21.4 million across quantum, space, and EV manufacturing projects

La Presse recently reported that Nord Quantique has received funding interest from the US government’s military research arm, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), into its quantum projects. However, the funding would require the Québec-based startup to secure $20 million USD ($28.4 million CAD) from the Canadian government. The company is exploring its government funding options, separate from an ongoing Series A fundraising effort. 

DistriQ, which is a provincially designated Quantum Innovation Zone, is receiving the majority of the funding. CED is providing a $5.2-million grant for the centre to buy high-end equipment for DevTeQ, a collaborative lab in Espace Quantique 1. Businesses will be able to benefit from the new additions for research and development. DevTeQ already offers quantum computing technology, cryogenic refrigerators, optical microscopes, photonic optics equipment, and more specialized equipment for quantum prototyping. 

CED is contributing a total of $750,000 over three years to support the Québec Quantique initiative, which consists of local groups that support quantum innovation through advocacy, international outreach, and research project funding. The money will go toward promoting the quantum sector and covering the labour costs of the initiative.

PINQ², the Quebec Digital and Quantum Innovation Platform, administered Québec Quantique until 2024, but DistriQ has now taken over. PINQ² was created as an initiative of the university and the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation du Québec to support local quantum development.

L’Accélérateur de création d’entreprises technologiques (ACET), a business incubator affiliated with the Université de Sherbrooke, is receiving $435,000 to fund its operations. The non-profit organization focuses on launching and accelerating tech startups, through coaching, access to resources, and its flagship incubator program, ACET Boost.

The new funding was allocated under the CED’s Support for Regional Quantum Innovation initiative, which provides direct financial support to small and medium-sized enterprises and non-profit organizations, such as quantum innovation hubs or post-secondary institutions. The initiative falls under the government’s $360-million National Quantum Strategy, unveiled in 2021. 

With federal and provincial support, Sherbrooke has grown into a key hub for Canada’s quantum ecosystem. Several quantum startups are headquartered there, including Nord Quantique, Quantacet, and Qubic Technologies.

Feature image courtesy Nord Quantique.

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Canada’s latest tech hub officially opened in the smallest province last night with more than $1.5 million in federal and provincial funding. 

Located on Great George Street in downtown Charlottetown, PEI, The Foundry is operated by the PEI IT Alliance, an industry association formed in 2022 to represent and develop the province’s information technology sector. The Foundry aims to foster growth and collaboration within PEI’s tech ecosystem by bringing startups, established companies, and industry experts into its co-working space. 

“Our maturing tech ecosystem here in PEI is taking its next step.”

Sean Casey
Charlottetown MP

Charlottetown Member of Parliament (MP) Sean Casey announced a Government of Canada investment of $855,000 for the PEI IT Alliance at The Foundry’s grand opening, meant to support startup programming, mentorship, workshops, and events in the new hub to connect entrepreneurs with industry leaders, investors, and potential partners. 

The funding was delivered through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s Regional Economic Growth through Innovation program. The Province of PEI, through Innovation PEI, also supported the project with a pledge of $712,500 to be delivered over 19 months.

RELATED: Atlantic Canada’s startups are finding creative ways to grow

“Our small Island has long had its finger on the pulse of a rapidly changing tech landscape,”  Casey said in a statement. “Now, thanks to the industry leaders and innovators of the PEI IT Alliance, our maturing tech ecosystem here in PEI is taking its next step.”

Just one day after The Foundry’s opening, PEI Premier Dennis King announced today that he would be stepping down from his post after six years leading the province. 

In a press conference, King explained that he had made the decision over the holidays to not seek re-election with , but held out from informing his caucus as he searched for the appropriate time. He said that time became evident as nascent political issues, like the threat of tariffs from the United States, made it clear he should hand the baton to someone who could be “focused for the long term.” 

Feature image courtesy Sean Casey via X. 

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Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify has renewed and expanded its exclusivity agreement with San Francisco-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) tech company Affirm to bring its once United States (US)-restricted partnership to Canada and beyond. 

The renewed multi-year partnership maintains Affirm as the exclusive BNPL provider for Shop Pay Installments in the US, as well as permits the partnership to grow into new markets worldwide, starting with exclusivity in Canada with plans to enter the United Kingdom. 

Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian said bringing the partnership to its international merchants is “a no brainer.”

Shopify and Affirm first struck the partnership in 2020, and later launched Shop Pay Installments for eligible US-based Shopify merchants in 2021. The partnership was last renewed in 2022. Affirm entered the Canadian market on its own in 2021, when it acquired Canadian BNPL firm PayBright for $340 million CAD. 

Shop Pay Installments, powered by Affirm’s technology, gives consumers who use Shop Pay and the Shop App access to a variable payment installment plan when purchasing products from merchants that have the option enabled. 

Shopify chief operating officer (COO) Kaz Nejatian said in a statement that, given the success of the partnership in the US, bringing the partnership to its international merchants is “a no brainer.” 

“Affirm’s premier technology, world-class team, and commitment to transparency make them a natural fit to continue supporting merchants in the Shopify ecosystem, and we look forward to bringing this same value to our merchants in Canada, the U.K., and beyond,” Nejatian said.

RELATED: Shopify’s strong Q4 earnings complicated by Kanye West Nazi T-shirt controversy

Eligible Shopify merchants in Canada will be able to offer Shop Pay Installments at checkout in the coming months, Affirm said in a statement, adding it will allow approved customers to choose from customized biweekly and monthly payment plans with annual interest rates as low as zero percent. 

Earlier this month, Shopify’s strong fourth-quarter earnings call was overshadowed by reaction to Kanye West selling a Nazi t-shirt via his Shopify-powered storefront Yeezy.com, which was taken down after nearly two days with no public comment on the matter. 

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

Feature image courtesy Burst.

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Former Toronto Raptors power forward Pascal Siakam has joined forces with Toronto Metropolitan University’s technology incubator DMZ to jump-start a new accelerator for early-stage EdTech startups.

Applications are open until Tues. Mar. 11.

Founded by PS43 (Siakam’s not-for-profit foundation) and DMZ, the Siakam EdTech Engine is a 12-week virtual accelerator for companies across Canada and the United States that are developing products designed to transform K-12 education.

The accelerator program, which is set to run from April to July 2025, will provide up to six startups with mentorship, other perks like access to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud for Startups, and direct connections to school boards, educators, and students via PS43 and DMZ’s combined network so participating companies can gather feedback and refine their tech.

Applications are open until Tues. Mar. 11. Programming will culminate in a Demo Day where participants will present their solutions to a panel of judges including Siakam for $50,000 worth of grant prizes.

The Siakam EdTech Engine is seeking EdTech startups developing culturally relevant and community-based learning tools, parent engagement solutions, management applications for teachers, and platforms that support student mental health, with priority given to companies with an impact on underserved communities that offer products in both English and French.

With the new accelerator, Siakam is looking to match the impact he made on the court in Toronto. The three-time National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star and two-time All-NBA player, who now plays for the Indiana Pacers, played a key role in helping the Toronto Raptors win their first NBA Championship in 2019.

Through PS43, he aims to “make a difference in the lives of children through education.” In a statement, Siakam said that by teaming up with DMZ, the two organizations hope to give EdTech entrepreneurs the tools they need “to create real change.”

The launch of the Siakam EdTech Engine comes shortly after DMZ received $3.5 million from the federal government to establish a new Centre for Housing Innovation hub that will provide a training program and housing-focused accelerator. DMZ also announced a new fund for early-stage startups in June 2024 with an initial commitment of $5 million.

Feature image courtesy Chensiyuan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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American private equity (PE) firm Primus Capital has acquired a majority stake in Calgary’s Reach, which helps e-commerce and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies sell globally.

Reach founder and CEO Sam Ranieri confirmed to BetaKit that the transaction was a majority recapitalization, but declined to share how much Primus invested in the FinTech startup or at what valuation.

“The right partner was necessary to really take this to the next level.”

Sam Ranieri, Reach

Ranieri has retained an equity stake in Reach, and the company’s 122-person team—including Ranieri and the rest of management—are staying on as part of the deal. The transaction, which saw Reach’s other investors bought out and its remaining debt cleared, closed yesterday. Going forward, Primus will be involved at the board level.

“It’s just not your kind of standard majority recap in that the buyer was very, very, very much invested in the management team and the crew and where we’re going and where we’re delivering,” Ranieri told BetaKit in an interview.

According to Primus’s website, the Ohio-based PE firm typically invests between $15 million and $70 million USD into technology businesses across Canada and the United States (US) with enterprise values of up to $250 million. Primus achieves this via buyouts, recapitalizations, and expansion financings.

Spun out of Calgary-based foreign exchange business Calforex in 2019, Reach describes itself as a “merchant of record” solution that helps mid-market and enterprise e-commerce retailers and SaaS businesses sell around the world more easily and effectively.

RELATED: Helcim closes $27 million CAD to bring payment stack to underserved SMBs

Reach facilitates cross-border payments, fraud prevention, tax compliance, and localized customer experiences within the platforms its customers already use. Ranieri claimed the company attacks the market in “an embedded way” by “seamlessly” bolting on to merchants’ existing infrastructure, which he said has differentiated Reach from some of its competitors.

Reach secured $30 million CAD in equity and debt in its first round of outside capital in 2022. That financing was led by Vancouver-based private credit investor Vistara Growth with support from Canadian oil and gas entrepreneurs Doug Hunter (through Bluesky Equities) and Del Mondor (via Tribune Capital), as well as US venture capital firm Rising Tide.

As BetaKit previously reported, Reach laid off about 12 percent of its staff in November 2022 in light of “overall market conditions and [a] general correction in the tech space.” Ranieri noted at the time that Reach had felt the impact of the retail sector cooling.

Since then, Reach has sought to diversify its customer base, and expanded from e-commerce retailers to SaaS companies, after identifying a market for its services in that sector.

RELATED: Two years after pivot to international financial management, Loop has processed over $1 billion in payments

According to Ranieri, Reach made the most of its last fundraise. Those efforts culminated in the company growing its annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) 95 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024. Ranieri declined to disclose Reach’s actual GMV, revenue, or how profitable the company is at this point.

“We maximized the last round, we became very self-sufficient, and we just basically hit a point in the company’s trajectory here where the right backer …. the right partner was necessary to really take this to the next level,” he said.

The CEO said Reach’s efficiency helped it close this deal in what remains “a tough market for FinTech.” Ranieri claimed Reach had “a few offers” on the table, but ultimately felt that Primus was the best fit given its team and experience and knowledge of the FinTech space.

In a statement, Primus managing director Ron Hess noted that the PE firm had built a relationship with Ranieri and the Reach team over the past few years, during which time he said Primus has “witnessed the return on investment realized by Reach’s customers.” 

RELATED: Canadian tech looks to support its own against US tariff threat

“The company’s impressive growth is driven by its innovative approach to solving the pain points of global expansion for retail and digital businesses,” Hess added.

While Reach’s platform does not solve for the looming threat of tariffs, it will help merchant customers navigate the complexity and volatility associated with them, Ranieri said.

“Nobody wants a surprise bill at the door. Nobody wants their product caught at the border.”

Ranieri said US tariffs pose less of a risk to Reach given that it currently focuses more on helping US merchants sell abroad than the inverse, but acknowledged that if implemented, tariffs will increase the cost of goods going into the US. He noted retaliatory tariffs could have the same impact on the price Canadians and folks from other countries pay for US products. 

Reach plays a role by ensuring the shopper understands what duty is going to cost by providing greater visibility at the point of sale through its tech, Ranieri said. “Nobody wants a surprise bill at the door. Nobody wants their product caught at the border because of a tariff.”

“The price is going to go up regardless; it’s just better to understand what that price is before you buy, because returns are a pain in the ass, caught at the border is a pain in the ass, chargebacks can go up—it’s an absolute shit show, to be honest with you,” Ranieri added.

Reach plans to use this funding from Primus to scale its operations, expand its international coverage, accelerate its product roadmap, and augment its existing payments, tax compliance, and fraud protection offerings as it looks to support more enterprise merchants. Today, Reach has full operations in markets including Canada, the US, the United Kingdom, and Australia, with plans to go live in Japan and the United Arab Emirates shortly.

Feature image courtesy Reach.

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Vancouver-based biotech startup Reverb Therapeutics has closed a $12-million USD ($17-million CAD) seed round to harness the power of the immune system against disease. 

The all-equity round was led by founding investor Amplitude Ventures, with participation from the Myeloma Investment Fund, KdT Ventures, Finchley Healthcare Ventures, InBC, and newly-Canadian venture capital firm Seido Capital.

Amplitude Ventures principal Bharat Srinivasa and partner Jean-François Pariseau are taking seats on Reverb’s board of directors as a result of the round. 

Reverb was founded in 2023 by CEO David de Graaf and chief science officer Surjit Dixit out of Amplitude Ventures’ Pre-Amp venture studio program. Its proprietary platform, called Amplify•R, aims to modify the actions of immune system proteins called endogenous cytokines to redirect them to areas of interest, like cells involved in cancer or autoimmune diseases. 

RELATED: Amplitude Ventures closes $263 million for second precision medicine VC fund

In a statement, Reverb claimed its platform combines engineering of bispecific antibodies (antibodies that bind to two different molecules) with data-driven modelling of antibody interactions, avoiding hurdles like systemic toxicity, immunogenicity, and manufacturing issues, which have blocked other attempts to manipulate cytokines to treat disease. 

Reverb’s lead program, AMP01, blocks a protein involved in tamping down the body’s immune response, while delivering a protein that helps to expand and activate the T cells that help the body fight infections and cancer cells. The company also claimed that in vivo preclinical studies have established a proof-of-concept of its platform’s ability to shrink tumors by redirecting endogenous cytokines.

“The preclinical data generated to date are extremely exciting and we believe that the Amplify•R platform will enable Reverb to succeed where many attempts using exogenous cytokines ran into insurmountable obstacles,” Srinivasa said in a statement. 

The seed funding will help take AMP01 to the “candidate stage” and fuel development of additional programs spanning other cytokines and additional cellular targets, Reverb CEO David de Graaf said in a statement. A candidate molecule is ready to bring into the final studies to support regulatory approval to start human trials, de Graaf explained to BetaKit in an email statement. 

“This is a major value inflection point for biotechs making new drugs and a place where companies often stop to raise the money to do those final studies as well as early stage clinical follow-up,” de Graaf said. 

Reverb was one of the first four announced investments out of Amplitude Ventures’ second precision medicine venture capital fund, which it closed in May 2024 with $263 million CAD. The fund makes investments in new precision medicine companies, which exist at the intersection of tech and healthcare, doling out between $5 million and $30 million per company. 

Feature image courtesy Julia Koblitz via Unsplash.

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The TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) has released the Kraken alongside the 2025 TSX Venture 50, the list highlighting the 50 best-performing companies on the stock exchange last year. 

The Venture 50 methodology has changed slightly from previous years. It previously ranked companies on five separate sector-specific top-10 lists in technology, cleantech and life sciences, diversified industries, mining, and energy. This year, the Venture 50 ranked companies together in one list based on three equally-weighted criteria: one-year share price appreciation, market capitalization increase, and Canadian consolidated trading value.

SPARQ Systems recorded the highest increase in share appreciation and market capitalization.

The methodology change dramatically altered the proportional representation of tech companies on the list, which the mining sector now dominates with 31 of the 50 featured companies.

In comparison, the technology, cleantech and renewable energy, and life sciences sectors had a combined 12 companies on the list. 

Still, St. John’s, Nfld.-based Kraken Robotics took the top spot this year. It’s Kraken’s fourth appearance on the list since listing on the TSXV in 2015, and a return to form after its absence from the British Columbia-dominated 2024 Venture 50, after topping the list the previous year.  

The marine technology company, which provides complex subsea sensors, batteries, and robotic systems, sported a 323 percent share price appreciation and added more than $587 million to its market capitalization last year. In October, the company announced it raised more than $51 million CAD through a bought deal public offering to expand its facilities and increase its manufacturing capacity. 

RELATED: Ocean innovator and Kraken Robotics founder Karl Kenny passes away at age 64

Some other technology companies that made the list include Vancouver-based Neptune Digital Assets and Kingston, Ont.’s SPARQ Systems. 

SPARQ Systems, which designs and manufactures microinverters for residential and commercial solar electric applications, recorded a 944-percent increase in share price and 1,379-percent increase in market capitalization, both the highest of all the companies on this year’s list.

Neptune, which placed 11th with 168-percent share price appreciation, also made the 2024 Venture 50 list. Some of Neptune’s digital asset operations include Bitcoin mining, proof-of-stake mining, blockchain nodes, and decentralized finance. 

According to TMX Group, which operates the TSXV, the 2025 TSX Venture 50 companies collectively represent a combined market capitalization of $21.7 billion as at Dec. 31, 2024, a 289-percent increase amounting to an additional $16 billion in just one year. During the same period, the average share price appreciation was 207 percent, outpacing the 121-percent growth in 2023 and 73-percent growth in 2022.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story erroneously noted 11 tech companies on the TSX Venture 50 list instead of 12. BetaKit regrets the error.

Feature image courtesy Yiorgos Ntrahas via Unsplash.

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Karl Kenny, the founder and former CEO of St. John’s, Nfld.-based Kraken Robotics, passed away on Feb. 11 at the age of 64. 

Born on April 15, 1960 and raised in Fermeuse, a village approximately 80 km south of St. John’s, Kenny spent his life at the intersection of tech, business, and the sea.

Following his time in the Royal Canadian Navy as a maritime surface officer, Kenny became a serial tech entrepreneur, forming many companies in his home province of Newfoundland and developing a wide range of advanced marine technologies and products in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

“An ideas man and a builder, Karl’s energy was as relentless as his passion to compete against the bigger industry players,” Kraken Robotics CEO Greg Reid said in a statement. “He was an incredible force that drove Kraken to success. On behalf of the Board of Directors, management and employees, he will be sorely missed.”

He leaves behind a legacy of innovation and excellence that we will continue to carry on in our work.

David Shea
Kraken Robotics

Having been part of the team that developed an early computer mouse at Microsoft in the 1980s, Kenny formed a photo e-commerce solution company in the 1990s called Telepix.

His entrepreneurial ambitions turned seawards in July 2003, when he co-founded Marport Deep Sea Technologies, which developed underwater sensing and communication applications for the commercial fishing industry.

After nearly a decade as Marport’s president and CEO, Kenny founded Kraken Robotics in 2012 to design and develop sensors, software, and robotics for the marine industry.

Kraken has become one of Newfoundland’s most valuable tech companies, currently trading on the Toronto Venture Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of nearly $665 million CAD. Kraken Robotics also led the first-ever project out of the federal government’s Ocean Supercluster through the Innovation Superclusters Initiative in 2019. 

RELATED: Kraken Robotics raises $51.75 million CAD through bought deal public offering

In December 2022, Kenny announced he would retire from his post as president and CEO of Kraken, passing the reins to Reid. In his farewell address to shareholders, Kenny said the decision was one of the most difficult he had to make in his career, but that it was right for him, personally, to spend more time and focus on his family.

“Karl’s strategic vision and entrepreneurial spirit enabled Kraken, a small start-up out of Newfoundland, to punch well above our weight and become recognized worldwide for our high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar technology,” Kraken executive vice president and CTO David Shea said in a statement. “We’re grateful for everything Karl contributed to Kraken and recognize that he leaves behind a legacy of innovation and excellence that we will continue to carry on in our work.”

Feature image courtesy Kraken Robotics.

The post Ocean innovator and Kraken Robotics founder Karl Kenny passes away at age 64 first appeared on BetaKit.

Vive Crop Protection had the tech. The science was solid. But before the Ontario company started selling its advanced fungicide and insecticide delivery systems to the US market, it took a very close look at the map.

Vive could have pushed out its products to farmers nationwide, but instead, it focused on key Midwest regions, locking in on places where farmers face significant pest and disease challenges.

“You can’t just replicate your Canadian playbook and expect to succeed.”

Geoff Baum, C100

The startup developed a sales strategy tailored to distributors and retailers in these regions, helping achieve early traction with a lean salesforce.

One investor described Vive as a “15-year overnight success,” referencing the time and meticulous planning that went into the company’s US launch.

As Canadian companies weigh the risks and rewards of expanding into the US amid shifting trade dynamics, successful startups have shown that a data-driven, deliberate approach can make all the difference.

Geoff Baum, Chief Mentor at C100, which connects Canadian companies to global opportunities, sees Vive as one of the few startups that cracked the code on US expansion.

Most startups “under-resource and over-generalize their efforts,” Baum said. “They go in seeing big dollar signs in a big, new market, but they don’t understand the reality of what it’s going to take to be successful.”

This approach wastes time, burns resources, and achieves no real traction, he said.

Eric Sleeth, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sage, agrees that companies need better data to guide their expansion plans.

“Expanding into new regions requires having the right visibility into your performance. Without these insights, companies are flying blind.”

Eric Sleeth, Sage

“Expanding into new regions requires having the right visibility into your performance,” Sleeth said. “Without these insights, companies are flying blind. They need to see what’s working and what’s not, so they can make strategic adjustments before missteps turn into major setbacks.”

For companies seeking a successful entry to a new geography, Baum said assessing the feasibility of a new market and gathering that data requires more than a handful of quick conversations.

“The typical startup spends two weeks talking to three customers, and they say, ‘We’re done. We have product-market fit.’ 

“In reality, they should be talking to 100 customers, and that will take three to six months or more,” Baum added.

Going slow is particularly important when entering a market as expansive and competitive as the US. 

“You can’t just replicate your Canadian playbook and expect to succeed,” Baum added.

He pointed to Vancouver-based Jane Software as another company that took a measured approach when expanding its software for allied health practitioners to the US. The startup relied on word-of-mouth referrals over aggressive sales tactics and took careful steps to align its platform with US laws and regulations.

“Jane was very deliberate about which markets they did go to,” Baum added. “The US market was really hard at the beginning, so they grew their business in markets they felt they knew better. And then gradually, they built their business in the US market.”

Sleeth said the most successful companies navigate expansion with precision,  tracking costs, performance, and risks.

“Without clear financial and operational insights, startups can misjudge market demand, overextend resources, and fail to adjust in time,” Sleeth added.

This is where Sage Intacct helps companies take a data-driven approach to expansion. The platform aims to provide real-time visibility into a company’s financial health, and enable faster, smarter decision-making. Startups can track financial and operational trends across different locations, and adjust strategies proactively.

“For companies expanding internationally, this means they can move beyond relying on spreadsheets and static reports, and instead use real-time insights to identify risks, seize opportunities, and scale with confidence,” Sleeth added.

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Discover how Sage Intacct empowers your global ambitions with SaaS Intelligence and real-time reporting. Expand into new markets with confidence and request a demo today.

Photo by BetaKit / C100.

The post The data behind smart US expansion first appeared on BetaKit.

A new report shows venture capital (VC) investments in Canadian tech last year grew slightly compared to 2023, buoyed by later-stage megadeals while seed-stage funding continued to struggle.

Megadeals—raises over $50 million—accounted for 62 percent of all dollars invested in 2024.

In its year-end market overview, the Canadian Venture Capital Association (CVCA) tracked $7.86 billion (all figures in Canadian dollars) invested across 592 deals in 2024, a roughly 10-percent increase in dollar value. But without Vancouver-based legaltech firm Clio’s $1.24-billion Series F round, the total amount invested nationwide would have dropped by six percent year-over-year. 

The latest numbers from the end-of-year report mirrored those of Q3 2024: outlier deals, such as Clio’s, accounted for a significant portion of VC activity in Canada. Meanwhile, seed-stage funding rounds dropped by nearly half compared to the year before. 

Q4 saw the fewest transactions and second-lowest value invested of the year, which the report noted is a common trend for the year’s final quarter. However, it marked the poorest Q4 performance since 2020, amid a climate of economic and political uncertainty in Canada. 

Clio ensures BC is on the Best Coast

Clio’s outsized contribution indicates a larger trend in megadeals propping up Canadian VC last year. Megadeals—raises over $50 million—accounted for 62 percent of all dollars invested in 2024. Q4 added $701 million in megadeal transactions to the year’s total.

Despite a drop in deal count compared to 2023, the average deal size grew by 30 percent year-over-year, up to $13.3 million. Clio’s Series F, Cohere’s $616-million Series D, Blockstream’s $289-million convertible note financing, and Waabi’s $275-million Series B all boosted this metric. 

Clio’s round also buoyed the standing of its home province of BC. More than three-quarters of all VC transactions took place in Ontario, Québec, and BC in 2024, and these provinces accounted for 88 percent of all dollars invested.

RELATED: Clio boosted Canadian VC investment in Q3 2024, but early-stage funding reaches “worrisome” low

Ontario took the top spot with $2.5 billion raised across 252 transactions. However, BC nearly matched Ontario’s dollars invested for the first time ever despite only closing 88 deals, again due to Clio totalling roughly half of the dollars raised in the province. Québec followed with $2 billion invested across 108 deals. 

BC’s 2024 performance was not mirrored by the Atlantic provinces, which saw their deals cut in half compared to 2023, except for Newfoundland and Labrador—a disappointing downturn following a landmark year for Nova Scotia in 2023. 

Series A Crunch or Seedpocalypse?

CVCA president and CEO Kim Furlong noted in the report that the overall uptick in VC funding was “a solid performance driven by key late-stage transactions.” However, she noted that the low seed-stage deal count “presents concerns about the long-term pipeline of high-growth startups.”

Seed transactions in 2024 saw $510 million deployed across 201 deals, dropping by 47 percent compared to the year before. The poor seed-stage performance continued a trend that Furlong called “worrisome” in the fall. When reached for comment by BetaKit, Furlong reinforced that concern, adding that low pre-seed and seed numbers could have “long-term implications for Canada’s competitiveness in emerging sectors.”

Matt Cohen, founder of Ripple Ventures, told BetaKit that “dollars invested are only one part of the story,” especially as Canadian companies focus on capital efficiency and revenue.

“It’s a sometimes misleading judgment of the health of the market,” Cohen said, noting that many pre-seed deals in Canada go unreported.

Cohen said that the pipeline of companies moving from seed stage to Series A funding rounds could represent a greater cause for concern. 

RELATED: BDC Capital targets late-stage tech companies with nearly $1 billion in new fund commitments

The top Canadian VCs investing at the seed stage were the Golden Triangle Angel Network (GTAN), the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)’s venture arm.

Yesterday, BDC Capital announced nearly $1 billion in funding for later-stage companies through direct investment funds, citing a market need for growth investments. In 2024, BDC Capital participated in 18 seed rounds, 30 Series A or B rounds, and 13 later-stage deals, but deployed the most capital at the Series A and B stages.  

The most active VC funds in 2024 by dollars invested were all government-backed or pension funds.

Furlong expressed support for BDC’s new funding commitments, noting that later-stage support is crucial to ensuring that companies scale in Canada. 

“Ensuring these high-performing firms have access to capital and strategic resources is crucial to keeping them headquartered in Canada,” Furlong wrote in an email to BetaKit. “BDC’s recent $1-billion commitment to late-stage investment is a significant step in this direction.”

However, the most active VC funds in 2024 by dollars invested were all government-backed or pension funds: BDC, Export Development Canada (EDC), Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Investissement Québec. BDC ranked first overall both in deal count and dollars spent for 2024—a showing unlikely to change in 2025 given its new commitments.

As for private firms, Lumira Ventures, Portage Ventures, and Diagram Ventures led the pack in terms of dollars invested. The private firms that closed the most deals included the GTAN, Startup TNT, and CABHI. 

US investors continued a strong post-pandemic streak, leading participation in 32 percent of all VC deals in Canada, despite dropping by two percent year-over-year. Notably, Clio’s Series F round was backed entirely by American investors.

Those US investors continued to provide capital to the Canadian ecosystem amid what was on track to be the worst VC fundraising year in a decade. According to CVCA Intelligence data, Canadian VCs raised $2.3B across 38 funds in 2024, roughly on par with 2020 levels.

When asked whether 2025 will bring an increase in Canadian VC fundraising, Furlong said that markets do not respond well to economic uncertainty, but that it was “impossible to forecast.” 

Fusion acquisition provides life sciences boost 

The Information, Communications & Technology (ICT) sector got the lion’s share of money invested, reflecting a multi-year trend, with $4.5 billion across 285 deals, despite deal count in the sector dropping year-over-year. The largest portion went towards internet software and services, followed by non-internet software and e-commerce. 

Cleantech narrowly missed second place, garnering $1.1 billion across 58 deals and earning the highest average deal size of $18.4 million. BC led the provinces in cleantech deals, with 15 transactions. 

Life sciences continued on a strong multi-year streak, netting the second-highest level of dollars invested in the sector on record. VCs invested $1.4 billion across 128 deals, a 15-percent increase compared to 2023. 

The life sciences sector, which saw the most activity in Ontario, Québec, and Alberta, also boosted a sleepy Canadian exit landscape. AstraZeneca’s $3.26-billion acquisition of Fusion Pharmaceuticals was the largest exit of 2024, accounting for 63 percent of all exit value for the year.

Canadian exits dropped in 2024, with investors netting $5.2 billion across 40 exits, the vast majority of them mergers and acquisitions (M&A). This represented a downturn from 2023’s “record” year for M&A. The Canadian IPO dry spell continued, with not a single company going public.

Cohen said that he expects to see more US acquisitions of Canadian companies in the next year, regardless of the economic uncertainty created by the US tariff threat.

“No matter what the dollar is or tariff talk, there’s always been an appetite to acquire Canadian R&D talent and full acquisitions,” Cohen said.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash.

The post Megadeals kept Canadian VC funding afloat in 2024: report first appeared on BetaKit.

Victoria-based background-check technology startup Certn and Toronto-based software rollup company Quadshift are benefiting from the Business Development Bank of Canada’s (BDC) bolstered venture capital arm this week, securing a combined $53 million in funding from the agency’s recently topped-up investment vehicles. 

Certn raised $30 million from BDC Capital’s Growth Venture Fund. According to BDC, Certn will use the capital to expand its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered background checks.

Founded in 2016 by Andrew McLeod, Evan Dalton, and Owen Madrick, Certn provides a software platform to facilitate the pre-employment background screening process, meant to help  businesses hire more quickly while also managing risk. 

In June 2024, the federal and British Columbia privacy commissioners launched a joint investigation into Certn’s use of personal data and compliance with Canadian and BC privacy legislation, particularly as it relates to its tenant-screening services, which the company said it was co-operating with. 

Certn also tapped seasoned leader Sarah Miller Wright to become its first president and oversee its global operations last year. However it appears that, after less than a year in the role, Miller Wright is no longer with the company. Her LinkedIn profile states that her employment with Certn ended in January 2025, and she is no longer featured on the leadership page of Certn’s website. The last version of the webpage archived on the Wayback Machine last shows Miller Wright listed on the leadership team on Dec. 9, 2024.

Following publication, CEO McLeod confirmed to BetaKit that Miller Wright departed Certn, but declined to disclose the reasons behind her departure. McLeod added that Certn is not looking to replace her role.

Meanwhile, verticalized business-to-business (B2B) software rollup company Quadshift raised a $23 million CAD all-equity round led by BDC Capital’s Growth Equity Partners program, with participation from Celtic House Venture Partners and undisclosed minority investors. Quadshift will use the funding to accelerate its acquisition pipeline, the company said in a statement. 

RELATED: BDC Capital targets late-stage tech companies with nearly $1 billion in new fund commitments

Founded in 2017, Quadshift looks to build businesses through strategic acquisitions, then supporting their growth through strategic guidance, best practices, and resources in finance, marketing, sales, IT, and product development. Quadshift says it seeks out profitable vertically-focused B2B subscription software companies that make between $500,000 and $10 million in revenue. Quadshift currently has 13 companies in its portfolio, CEO John Paterson told BetaKit in an email statement.

“Quadshift is a resonating fit with BDC Growth Equity’s mandate to support Canadian entrepreneurs, and we look forward to our partnership and helping the team drive growth through both continued acquisitions and organic initiatives,” Michael Notto, partner at BDC Growth Equity Partners, said in a statement. 

The funding rounds follow BDC Capital announcing today that it is injecting nearly $1 billion across the Growth Venture Fund and the Growth Equity Partners program. The bank funneled $500 million into the Growth Venture Fund and expanded its mandate to include both direct investments and co-investments. Additionally, BDC committed $450 million to its Growth Equity Partners program. 

Backed by the Canadian government, BDC Capital is the country’s largest and most active venture capital investor, with more than $6 billion in assets under management. 

UPDATE (02/19/2025): This article has been updated with commentary from Quadshift CEO John Paterson and Certn CEO Andrew McLeod.

Feature image courtesy of Certn.

The post Certn and Quadshift secure capital from BDC Capital’s topped-up funds first appeared on BetaKit.

A new annual Toronto event initiative led by local tech leaders has launched to fill the gap left by Collision’s departure to Vancouver.

Toronto Tech Week will take place from June 23-27 and feature a variety of partner-hosted and community events designed to cement the city’s reputation as a global tech powerhouse.

Led by a new volunteer-run, non-profit organization, Toronto Tech Week has received financial backing from presenting sponsors Shopify, Google Cloud, and the City of Toronto. The inaugural event is also supported by over 40 community partners, including Golden Ventures, Wealthsimple, Cohere, Elevate, the University of Toronto, DMZ, and BetaKit, the official media partner for the week.

The second annual BetaKit Town Hall will take place as a Toronto Tech Week anchor event on Monday, June 23. This year will be more ambitious.

“Toronto Tech Week is a pivotal moment for the tech ecosystem,” said Toronto Tech Week organizer and BetaKit board chair Satish Kanwar. “By bringing together the brightest minds and most promising ideas, we are positioning Toronto as a city where anything is possible to achieve.”

Toronto Tech Week noticeably falls into Collision’s old spot in the city’s event calendar. Hosted in Toronto since 2019, organizer Web Summit announced last year that the event would relocate to Vancouver for 2025 under new branding.

Fellow Tech Week organizer and Golden Ventures general partner Ameet Shah told BetaKit that the idea took shape last summer following “honest conversations between community leaders across the tech ecosystem on improving the city’s connectedness and standing globally.”

Toronto Tech Week will feature a variety of community-run events, as well as anchor events and experiences from established partner hosts. Featured events are intended to accommodate higher attendance numbers and will follow an overlap-free schedule throughout the week. Shah noted that some community partners will align existing events to the week, while others will create brand-new and bespoke events for Tech Week.

“By unifying all these initiatives and organizers under one banner, we created a larger local initiative to channel the ecosystem’s energy into a single impactful week,” Shah said. The hope is that Toronto Tech Week becomes an opportunity to engage Canadian expats and global investors alongside the local tech ecosystem.

The second annual BetaKit Town Hall will take place as a Toronto Tech Week anchor event on Monday, June 23. BetaKit will also release the inaugural issue of BetaKit’s Most Ambitious, released in digital and print formats, to highlight inspiring tech efforts from across the country. A BetaKit’s Most Ambitious evening event will also be held on Monday night.

“This event is a terrific opportunity to showcase Toronto’s vibrant tech sector, shape the future, and drive our city’s economic growth for years to come,” said Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow in a statement.

Toronto Tech Week will launch a centralized events platform and calendar this Spring to organize and promote the full list of partners and events. Shah told BetaKit that the grass-roots programming will lead to a more tactical and valuable experience for attendees, with panels and fireside chats mixing with product demos, hackathons, and open houses.

“Being led by builders from the community, the focus is on substance: real insights, real discussions, and real experiences that move the ecosystem forward,” he said. “We’re all stewards of this ecosystem, and it’s incumbent on us to help it achieve its true potential.”

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

Feature image courtesy Toronto Tech Week.

The post Local leaders launch Toronto Tech Week to accelerate city’s ambitions first appeared on BetaKit.

In an effort to counter low investment activity in Canada, the venture arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) will inject nearly $1 billion across two direct investment vehicles targeted at later-stage companies.

“What we’re aiming to do is to share the risk with the companies so that they can continue their growth.”

Geneviève Bouthillier

BDC Capital has committed $500 million to its Growth Venture Fund (GVF), expanding the fund’s mandate to include both direct investments and co-investments. The bank will also funnel $450 million into its Growth Equity Partners (GEP) program.

Backed by the Canadian government, BDC Capital is the country’s largest and most active venture capital (VC) investor with more than $6 billion in assets under management.  

The bank positioned the new funding as a way to increase access to capital for entrepreneurs navigating economic uncertainty amid inflation, higher borrowing costs, labour shortages, and a looming trade war between the United States (US) and Canada. 

“What we’re aiming to do is to share the risk with the companies so that they can continue their growth,” Geneviève Bouthillier, executive vice-president of BDC Capital, said in an interview with BetaKit. 

The GVF launched in 2021 as a renewal of a co-investment VC fund in line with the organization’s expanded strategy to help later-stage Canadian firms scale. The GVF targets companies with revenue exceeding $10 million and has invested in startups such as ApplyBoard, Borrowell, and Verafin.

Bouthillier said the new investments, particularly into the GVF, help address a gap in later-stage funding that it noted in its 2024 VC landscape report. It found that funding to late-stage Canadian companies was almost cut in half in 2023 compared to 2022, and deal counts dropped by 19 percent. 

RELATED: BDC appoints Geneviève Bouthillier as head of BDC Capital amid “uncertain market conditions”

“If the chain is broken at one point on the investment continuum, well, this is not good,” Bouthillier said. “We’re in contact with our portfolio companies day after day, and this is really a market need.”

BDC said that without access to later-stage funding, Canadian companies may need to “seek investment from foreign investors to remain competitive.” Through this nearly $1-billion commitment, the BDC said, it is ensuring the growth of such companies in Canada.

The new GVF funds have already been deployed toward two Canadian tech companies: Victoria-based Certn secured $30 million from the fund, and Toronto-based StackAdapt was backed in part by the GVF in its latest round. BDC declined to say how much of the StackAdapt investment was issued as secondary. 

BDC also announced today that its GEP program is leading a $23-million growth equity round in Quadshift, a Toronto-based software acquirer. The GEP program makes minority-stake equity investments in Canadian mid-market growth businesses, totalling over $440 million in 36 Canadian companies. BDC Capital currently invests out of its $300-million GEP Fund III, launched in 2024. 

Stages of concern

Not everyone agrees that the BDC should focus its efforts on later-stage companies.

“The biggest problem is in the seed and early-stage part of the market,” Mark McQueen, the former president and CEO of Innovation Banking at CIBC, told BetaKit. If the government is to do “heavy lifting” in the sector, McQueen said, its money would be best spent supporting early-stage companies. 

McQueen recently argued in a Substack opinion piece that BDC should be taken public to make it a more effective driver of Canada’s innovation economy. 

Data from the Canadian Venture Capital Association Q3 2024 shows that Canadian startup fundraising in 2024 was buoyed by large funding rounds like Clio’s Series F round, but fell short in early-stage investments. 

RELATED: BDC writes down venture capital portfolio by $220 million in annual report 

McQueen added that 2024 was a strong year for venture debt, indicating that later-stage companies in Canada are securing financing, just not in the form of traditional equity investments. In Q3 2024, non-dilutive financing reached $528 million across 25 deals and is on track to surpass record 2022 numbers.

“The biggest problem is in the seed and early-stage part of the market.”

Mark McQueen

Bouthillier said that BDC Capital is still “very active and involved” at the early stage. It launched a $50-million envelope for its Seed Venture Fund (SVF) in 2023, which BDC said would dole out $10 million in investments per year. At the time, the BDC said it hoped to play a leadership role in Canada’s seed-stage ecosystem and have the SVF serve as a potential pipeline for other BDC funds. The SVF has made seven investments since then, according to a BDC spokesperson.

BDC’s push toward direct investment in later-stage companies could also create friction with other firms investing at the growth stage, particularly during an especially tough VC fundraising climate. Data from RBCx showed only five Canadian VC funds had collectively raised a total of  $500 million CAD by the midpoint of 2024, putting the year on pace to be Canada’s worst for venture fundraising since 2014.

BDC Capital lists nearly 60 external VC funds as part of its indirect portfolio, including BDC spinouts Framework Venture Partners and Amplitude Ventures. Expanding the GVF’s mandate to include direct investment could put it in competition for deals with these funds. 

When asked if the new investments indicated a larger strategic shift at BDC Capital, Bouthillier said the bank is still focused on serving both indirect and direct markets. 

BDC Capital wrote down its VC portfolio by $220 million in its most recent annual report. The portfolio is worth $2.98 billion as of Sept. 30, 2024, according to its Q2 2025 financial report. In fiscal 2024, BDC Capital approved $234.6 million into direct equity investments and $171.9 million into indirect equity investments, such as external funds.

Feature image courtesy BDC Capital. 

The post BDC Capital targets late-stage tech companies with nearly $1 billion in new fund commitments first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based FinTech startup Glassbox wants to reimagine the humble workhorse of corporate finance.

Led by a former investment banker, the company is developing a software platform designed to help professionals in the space build financial models and evaluate deals faster than traditional spreadsheet tools like Microsoft Excel.

“I tried to automate my way out of my job.”

Allison Harris, Glassbox

Glassbox has emerged from stealth, announced $1.65 million CAD in pre-seed funding, and opened up the waitlist for its financial modelling and analysis platform as it gears up for a more fulsome rollout later this year.

Founded in 2023 by CEO Allison Harris, who has an engineering background and experience in energy investment banking and derivatives structuring on Wall Street, and CTO Ian Kennedy, a seasoned software engineer, Glassbox hopes to help finance teams save time and take full advantage of artificial intelligence (AI).

“What our product’s excellent at is building any financial model really fast,” Harris told BetaKit in an exclusive interview.

Glassbox’s pre-seed round, which closed in August and was raised via simple agreement for future equity, was co-led by Toronto-based StandUp Ventures and New York City’s FinTech Collective, with support from Los Angeles-based Watertower Ventures. It brings Glassbox’s total funding to $1.85 million, a figure that includes $200,000 from Antler from 2023.

During her time on Wall Street, much of Harris’ work involved spending long hours building financial models in massive, complex spreadsheets via Microsoft Excel. The pace of deals was “relentless,” and she had many friends in the same boat. “Their late nights were so often because of these error-prone, 20-tab spreadsheets they had to crunch numbers on,” she said.

Frustrated by this, Harris said she built a solution using the programming language Python that allowed her to construct analytical processes for deals faster. 

“I tried to automate my way out of my job,” she said. 

RELATED: OneVest closes $29-million CAD Series B led by Salesforce Ventures to fuel US expansion

Sensing an opportunity, Harris ultimately quit investment banking after just two years to focus full-time on solving this problem, joining Antler’s Residency program as part of its Winter 2023 cohort. There, she met Kennedy and the pair decided to team up.

While other industries have embraced collaboration tools and AI assistants, Harris noted that finance teams have been left with bigger, more complex Excel files.

“Thus far, tools like Copilot in Excel or other Excel integrations have failed to really elevate financial analysts in the way that engineers have been elevated by [large-language model] solutions,” Harris claimed.

Glassbox hopes to change that with its platform, which is designed to enable customers to generate complex financial analyses faster and more easily with AI. The startup is building agentic tools on top of existing frontier models. Glassbox’s FinScript framework allows users to input plain text instructions that align with large-language models’ capabilities for processing written information, which the company claims adds context and structure to data and enables faster, more auditable analysis.

In a statement, FinTech Collective co-founder and managing partner Brooks Gibbins described Glassbox as “the financial modelling equivalent of GitHub for code management or Notion for content creation.”

RELATED: Street Context acquired by American market intelligence firm BlueMatrix for undisclosed amount

Harris said that some of Glassbox’s users do not even need AI to build spreadsheets faster, claiming that building financial models on its platform relative to the complex linking and manual formatting required by Excel saves time. But every Glassbox model can still be easily converted into an Excel spreadsheet.

“We will always support Excel export, but we will … continuously make it so that that becomes less and less necessary,” she said.

Harris claimed Glassbox’s platform could be used to build financial models in any sector. But as a small team, the startup is focusing on energy infrastructure and real estate initially, targeting private equity investors, corporate development professionals, and small investment banks in this space.

To date, Glassbox has invested its pre-seed funding largely in product development, expanding its team from two to four employees to complete the build of its product and begin delivering it. Now, the startup is putting some of its capital towards its go-to-market efforts. At the moment, Harris claimed that Glassbox has about 20 months of runway remaining.

Glassbox is currently working to move folks from its waitlist into a private beta as the company readies for a broader launch later this year, when it plans to fundraise again.

Feature image courtesy Glassbox.

The post Glassbox announces $1.65 million in funding to “reimagine the spreadsheet” for corporate finance first appeared on BetaKit.

Friday was Valentine’s Day, and I hoped to share with you some Canadian tech-themed Valentine’s messages the team had drafted, but on advice from counsel, we’ve decided to keep them in our Slack. The Cohere and Shopify ones were particularly good, as you might imagine (and will now have to).

So instead I’ll tell you a love story about an old flame: Canadian Patent 2497122, also known as KEYBOARD FOR MOBILE DEVICES. How best to describe her? Only in the abstract:

A keyboard comprising a plurality of transparent keys. In use, the keyboard is attached to a device such as a mobile device, to overlie a display screen of the device. One or more images displayed on the display screen are made visible to a user through the keys, which may be pressed by a user. User input is determined by identifying a pressed key, and the image or part thereof visible through the key when pressed.

Short and sweet, this patent was one of several to help my old employer Research in Motion become Canada’s then-largest tech company, reaching some 80 million BlackBerry smartphone subscribers worldwide in 2011.

Canadian patents only last 20 years, and 2497122—issued Feb. 15, 2005—expired on Saturday. A quick search of the Canadian Patent Database shows that many of its brethren have also expired or are about to.

Was this the most important patent in the history of Canadian tech? Was it even the most important patent in RIM’s portfolio? The answer to both questions is probably not, but love isn’t about facts: it’s about feeling!

It’s also a reminder that what’s important in the moment might not be for much longer. The iPhone was released three years after the patent was issued, and three years after that BlackBerry smartphone sales peaked before cratering in 2013.

Still, I prefer to remember my old loves fondly, so 2497122 will remain in my mind as a testament to Canadian ingenuity and productivity. 

Have a Canadian tech patent (expired or otherwise) you love more? Send it to me.

Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

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Major media companies sue Cohere for alleged copyright infringement

A group of major North American media companies filed a lawsuit against Toronto-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere last week, alleging that it engaged in “massive, systematic copyright infringement and trademark infringement.”

The consortium of publishers suing Cohere includes The Atlantic, Condé Nast, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, the Toronto Star, and Vox, among others.

The publishers’ complaint alleges that Cohere has scraped copies of their articles from the internet without permission or compensation and used them to power its AI services.

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Shopify’s strong Q4 earnings complicated by Kanye West Nazi T-shirt controversy

Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify’s strong fourth-quarter earnings last week were overshadowed by reaction to the news that Kanye West was selling a Nazi t-shirt via Shopify-powered Yeezy.com.

The controversial American rapper and producer promoted his Shopify-powered Yeezy store in an advertisement during the Super Bowl, leading prospective customers to find a single product: a white T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. After hosting the site for nearly two days with no public comment on the matter, Shopify confirmed to BetaKit that it had removed the Yeezy store. 

This controversy comes as Shopify posted strong Q4 2024 financial results that beat its previous forecast for revenue growth and included a tidy profit on the back of a strong holiday season and another record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend.

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Canada looks to strike balance between AI innovation and regulation at Paris AI Summit

Under outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, Canada reaffirmed its commitment to responsible AI development at the AI Action Summit in Paris last week as the United States and the European Union grow further apart in their approaches to regulating the tech.

At the Summit, Canada signed an international treaty and a statement that prioritized human rights, accessibility, and transparency in AI development. Alongside Trudeau’s public remarks, the signing indicates an alignment with the EU’s pro-regulatory approach to AI, while the new US administration decries “excessive” regulation. 

Canadian tech companies, meanwhile, have had mixed reactions. 

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Canadian tech looks to support its own against US tariff threat

Since the onset of a Canada-US trade war, Canadians have doubled down on buying local, and Canadian tech has been no exception.

Ecosystem players spearheaded a crop of tariff-response initiatives last week, designed to promote products from fellow Canadian startups, track the impact of tariffs on supply chains, and encourage consumers to buy domestically made products.

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Knix, Hopper, Grammarly founders among business leaders asking for “immediate recall” of Parliament

A number of Canadian tech CEOs and investors are part of a group calling for the “immediate recall” of Parliament to face the “uncertainty” presented by economic threats from the US.

An open letter signed by over 100 business leaders demanded the immediate resumption of Parliament to ensure the Canadian government can “confront head-on the current crisis and be able to adapt to our new reality and, most importantly, deal productively with the US government.” The letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the opposition parties last week.

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Crowd Control: PixMob lit up this year’s Super Bowl stands

You may not have realized it, but while the Philadelphia Eagles were lighting up the Kansas City Chiefs during Super Bowl LIX Sunday night, a Canadian company was lighting up the stands.

All 75,000 fans inside New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome received a PixMob LED light bracelet for the NFL championship match, turning the stands into a “human-resolution screen” that punctuated touchdowns, kickoffs, and the pre-game ceremony with lighting animations and effects.

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Loopio’s  Zak Hemraj shares tips for Canadian CEOs leading teams through “crisis after crisis”

At a TechTO event last Monday, TechTO co-founder Alex Norman described the ongoing US-Canada trade dispute as part of a continuum of disruptions faced by Canadian tech founders over the past five years, including COVID-19, inflation, and the evolution of AI.

Loopio CEO Zak Hemraj, who took the stage with Norman, acknowledged that his cohort of Canadian technology CEOs have faced exceptionally complex times, and shared some tips he’d learned through it all.

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The shift was about more than a better tech stack. It was about meeting the expectations of the modern customer. “Customers don’t just compare us to other banks,” said Akif Unal of TD. “They compare us to all of the digitally led players out there.”

Read more about how TD pulled off one of the biggest tech migrations in Canadian banking.

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Weekly Canadian Deals & Dollars

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• BRN – Clio donates $3M CAD to create new innovation hub at UBC
• VAN – GTMfund closes $54M USD for second operator-led VC fund
• VAN – Photonic claims quantum computing error correction leap
• EDM – PrairiesCan doles out $6.7M CAD to four companies
• CGY – Canada Growth Fund commits up to $50M CAD to Longbow
• KW – FedDev invests $18M CAD across startups and new tech hubs
• TOR – Thomson Reuters launches second corporate VC fund
• TOR – Clutch recovers valuation with $50M CAD Series D round
• TOR – FedDev invests $16M CAD in life science hubs and startups
• TOR – Alexi secures $4.5M venture debt for AI litigation software
• TOR – Payfare defends acquisition deal from shareholder dissent
• MTL – Femtech startup Coral raises $4.1M CAD seed round

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The BetaKit Podcast — AI’s new moat with Coveo’s Louis Têtu

“You’re going to see Coveo starting to invest quite aggressively actually to be a market taker. We’re not a disrupted company. We’re a market taker in AI.”

Coveo’s current CEO and future executive chair, Louis Têtu, joins to discuss the applied AI company’s earnings performance and where the market is heading in the face of customer fatigue and DeepSeek disruption.

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Take The BetaKit Quiz – This week: Musk eyes OpenAI, Shopify’s Kanye problem, and a Canadian startup at the Super Bowl

Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Time to prove it. Test your knowledge of Canadian tech news with The BetaKit Quiz for Feb. 14, 2025.

Feature image courtesy Canadian Patents Database.

The post A piece of Canadian tech history just expired first appeared on BetaKit.

There’s a lot going on right now, but one news item that stands out is the surprise emergence of the DeepSeek LLM: competitive with OpenAI’s best large language models, at a ‘fraction’ of the development cost.

True or not, the news sent existential shockwaves through Western tech (and Western markets).

“ You’re going to see Coveo starting to invest quite aggressively actually to be a market taker. We’re not a disrupted company. We’re a market taker in AI.”

Louis Têtu
Coveo

We’re not going to talk too much about DeepSeek on this podcast. More the question that its emergence posed: if it’s not compute and sacks of money, where is the moat in AI?

To help me answer that question is Louis Têtu, CEO of publicly traded applied AI company Coveo and one of the best quotes around.

You will experience that on this podcast as we roll through the evolution of AI in a market tired of experiments, and what that means for revenue models and pricing for all those companies who spent a lot of money developing products that seem increasingly commoditized.

Têtu also takes a hard line on AI regulation and Canada’s productivity issues, and explains why the best CEO quote in Canadian tech will soon no longer be the CEO of Coveo (alongside the company’s FY25 Q3 results, Coveo announced that Têtu would soon move into the executive chair role).

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

But back to the big question: AI moats and which side of the water Coveo feels it’s on.

Let’s dig in.

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Edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy Coveo.

The post AI’s new moat with Coveo’s Louis Têtu first appeared on BetaKit.

The Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) had a busy week dispensing $34 million in federal funding to help create new tech and life sciences hubs and help scale startups in Waterloo Region and Toronto. 

Earlier this week, Ruby Sahota, the minister responsible for FedDev Ontario, announced a commitment of $18 million to support two new innovation hubs, and support the growth of seven companies in Waterloo Region. Sahota committed another $16 million to the life sciences sector in the Toronto area, supporting two hubs and four companies. 

In Waterloo Region, FedDev Ontario is investing $3.9 million in the Accelerator Centre to launch a new Sustainable Development cohort of its AC:Studio program, following a successful pilot. According to FedDev Ontario, the new AC:Studio program will provide around 45 startups with funding, mentorship, and operational support for their work on reducing carbon emissions. Applications for the program will open on April 30.

Another $5 million is going to the University of Waterloo to create the Consortium for Sustainable Scale-up in Metal Additive Manufacturing. The new hub aims to bring Canadian businesses together to grow Ontario’s advanced manufacturing sector and make it more sustainable by developing waste and CO2 reduction solutions. 

Meanwhile, FedDev also dispersed $9 million to help seven Waterloo Region businesses scale up. Benefactors include vehicle windshield protection producer Alchemy, cargo drone company Avidrone, metal fabrication company Ball Service Group, artificial intelligence (AI) mapping platform GeoMate, materials producer Smarter Alloys, and AI property documentation platform Planitar. 

FluidAI Medical received the largest commitment of the Waterloo companies, gaining $2 million to help scale the commercialization of its post-operative care devices and technology for global markets. FluidAI secured a $20-million CAD Series A round in October 2023. 

RELATED: Federal government provides $3.5 million for DMZ’s new Centre for Housing Innovation

Of FedDev Ontario’s $16 million in life sciences funding, Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP) received $3.5 million from to work with academic and research institutions to create, scale, and fund up to 50 life sciences ventures. Another $5 million went to the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization (OBIO) to launch the Health Commercialization Access Program, which aims to support the growth of 100 Canadian biotechnology and health technology companies. 

While these programs are separate, TIAP and OBIO have teamed up before, launching a healthtech funding stream to help companies with intellectual property management, company creation, and echnology de-risking in January 2024. 

The remaining $7.5 million of FedDev funding was split between four scaling medical device companies in the Greater Toronto Area: McRae Imaging, Nanz Pharma, Synaptive Medical, and Traferox Technologies. 

Last month, Toronto-based incubator DMZ received $3.5 million from FedDev Ontario to establish the Centre for Housing Innovation (CHI), a new hub that will provide a training program and a housing-focused accelerator.

Feature image courtesy Ruby Sahota via X.

The post Toronto and Waterloo Region orgs get $34 million in FedDev funding first appeared on BetaKit.

Feature image courtesy PixMob.

The post Musk eyes OpenAI, Shopify’s Kanye problem, and a Canadian startup at the Super Bowl first appeared on BetaKit.

Burnaby, BC-based legaltech company Clio says it’s looking to foster local business talent through a $3-million donation to the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Powerhouse Project, a new flagship building for the UBC Sauder School of Business. 

Clio’s investment will fund an entrepreneurship and innovation hub inside the building that will serve as the formal home of the Creative Destruction Lab-Vancouver (CDL-Vancouver). 

Founded in 2012 at the University of Toronto, CDL is a non-profit that delivers an objectives-based program for scalable, seed-stage, science and tech-based companies. CDL now has a global presence, with chapters across Canada, the United States, and Europe. 

Through CDL-Vancouver, participating ventures will gain access to a network of students, faculty, and industry leaders in the new space, which will support workshops, seminars, and accelerators meant to equip students and startups with the skills needed to scale their businesses.

UBC Sauder and Clio said the Powerhouse Project emphasizes the importance of cultivating local talent to compete on the global stage and that, by reducing reliance on hubs like Silicon Valley, they aim to support local talent and foster an entrepreneurial ecosystem in British Columbia (BC) that drives innovation and economic growth.

In a statement, Clio CEO Jack Newton said BC is home to incredible talent with the potential to lead on a global scale. 

“Fostering that talent here creates a stronger innovation ecosystem that benefits not only our province but the world,” Newton said. “At Clio, we’re proud to invest in initiatives that ensure BC remains a hub for bold ideas and transformative leadership.”

Last week, Clio promoted Luke Slan to act as its new general manager overseeing its Canadian operations with the aim of expanding in its home market. The company closed the largest software funding round in Canadian tech history in July 2024, a $1.24-billion CAD ($900-million USD) Series F round valuing the company at a more than $4-billion CAD ($3-billion USD) pre-money valuation.

The University of Waterloo also recently received a private donation to help it attract talent. Product-development company Interop Labs provided the University of Waterloo with $1-million USD ($1.4 million CAD) to support a new laboratory for artificial intelligence and blockchain research. The lab aims to attract talent to the university by offering industry seminars, scholarships, and fellowships.

Feature image courtesy UBC Sauder. 

The post Clio donates $3 million to create new innovation hub at the University of British Columbia first appeared on BetaKit.

Under outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, Canada reaffirmed its commitment to responsible AI development at the AI Action Summit in Paris this week as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) grow further apart in their approaches to regulating the tech. 

Canada split from the US delegation in its signing of the Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable AI.

The two-day summit, co-hosted by France and India, brought together politicians, tech CEOs, researchers, and non-profit organizations from more than 100 countries to discuss international and country-specific AI policy. The Canadian delegation included AI companies such as Cohere and organizations like the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

At the Summit, Canada signed an international treaty and a statement that prioritized human rights, accessibility, and transparency in AI development. Alongside Trudeau’s public remarks, the signing indicates an alignment with the EU’s pro-regulatory approach to AI while the new US administration decries “excessive” regulation. 

Canadian tech companies, meanwhile, have had mixed reactions.  

Split decision

In Paris, Canada signed the first legally binding international AI treaty, which it helped develop. The treaty establishes common guidelines for countries to follow when writing AI-related policy. Stated goals of the convention included strengthening global co-operation and protecting citizens against potential harms while capitalizing on the tech’s benefits.

The legal framework already counts 11 countries and the EU as signatories. The US and the United Kingdom (UK) first signed the agreement in September 2024.

Canada signed it on Feb. 11, showing a commitment to prioritizing human rights and global collaboration in AI development. The Canadian government said in a statement that it had previously “sought views on the convention” from Canadian experts, Indigenous groups, and the public.

RELATED: CIFAR leader expects CAISI to help inform AI policy in Canada and abroad

Canada split from the US delegation in its signing of the joint Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable AI. The key tenets of the statement include ensuring AI is “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.” Sustainability and energy consumption are also considerations, as data centres use significant energy, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

Neither the US nor the UK signed the agreement, indicating a divergence between Western nations on how tightly AI development should be regulated.

In a Feb. 10 speech in Paris, Trudeau emphasized the need for guardrails and transparency to ensure that everyone can benefit from AI advances, not just a handful of “oligarchs.” 

The Prime Minister added that regulation is needed to protect against misuse of AI, including “cunning disinformation.” The remarks echoed those he made last Friday during a closed-door portion of the Canada-US Economic Summit in Toronto. 

“How do we make sure that AI and the tools that come with it are used responsibly as a way of empowering citizens to be able to make more informed choices about their lives, about their work, about their future?” Trudeau said at the Toronto summit, according to recordings BetaKit obtained of the closed-door sessions. 

AI optimism, fear, and complexity

However, Trudeau also noted in his Paris speech that “heavy-handed” regulation should not come at the cost of innovation. Some EU initiatives seeking to regulate patents and online privacy have now fallen through, alongside Canada’s Bill C-27 and its Artificial Intelligence and Data Act. 

In Paris, the new US administration went further in its rhetoric. US Vice-President JD Vance told conference attendees that his administration would champion pro-growth, deregulatory AI policies. The US plans to be the “partner of choice” for AI implementation worldwide and “excessive” regulation would “kill a transformative sector,” Vance said.

RELATED: In 2024, Canada struggled to find its place in the global AI race

Some Canadian tech leaders welcomed this approach. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein reposted the speech with the caption: “He nails it. Optimism over fear.”

To Sara Hooker, VP of Research at Cohere, Vance’s speech was a marker of the summit’s “complexity.” She wrote on X that it was part of a wider trend, noting that “even the EU seems at pains to say that safety should be balanced with innovation.”

Yesterday, Cohere was sued by a group of 14 publishers, including the owner of the Toronto Star, for alleged copyright infringement. The AI company had previously signed Canada’s voluntary AI code of conduct, which does not mention copyright.

Hooker added that despite more countries attending the summit, “the overall trend was one of realism and fault lines fell along national boundaries,” as opposed to global collaboration.

Canada’s AI policy commitments come during Trudeau’s last days in office, after announcing he would resign once the Liberal Party picks a new leader. Trudeau’s commitments in Paris could represent some of the leader’s last impacts on Canadian AI policy, with Bill C-27 unlikely to be revived now after Parliament returns with a new Liberal leader in place and an election likely to follow.  

However, Canada will continue its work on global AI policy when it hosts the G7 Summit in Alberta in June. At a roundtable with other world leaders on Sunday, Trudeau said that conversations on powering AI with clean electricity will be a priority at the Summit—though, at that point, he won’t be in office to lead them.

Feature image courtesy Justin Trudeau via LinkedIn.

The post Canada looks to strike balance between AI innovation and regulation at Paris AI Summit first appeared on BetaKit.

Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) is investing $6.7 million across four Edmonton startups to help them scale advanced manufacturing and expand into new markets. 

Through its Business Scale-up and Productivity program, the federal regional economic development agency is supporting Levven Electronics, Care Group, Demir Engineering, and Grengine. The investments are meant to help the “high growth” companies scale up and create high-quality jobs for Canadians, Terry Duguid, the minister responsible for PrairiesCan, said in a statement. 

Funding round was part of Min. Duguid’s first visit to Alberta since becoming the minister responsible for PrairiesCan.

Demir Engineering received the largest investment, gaining $2.5 million to expand its in-house production industrial products. PrairiesCan said the metal alloy product design and manufacturing company will use the funding to scale up its advanced manufacturing business, increase its workforce, and expand into new domestic and international markets.

Fellow advanced manufacturers, Grengine and Levven Electronics, received $1.5 million and $1.25 million from PrairiesCan for similar reasons; to scale up and expand manufacturing for their respective battery energy storage and internet-of-things home technologies.

Meanwhile, Care Group is the only software-focused company of the batch, receiving a $1.5-million investment to help scale its digital mental health platform to more than 50 rural and Indigenous communities across Canada. PrairiesCan said the contribution supports increasing access to mental health care for underserved populations.

RELATED: Champagne stays put as Liberals name new FedDev, PrairiesCan ministers in cabinet shuffle

Founded in 2019, Care Group consists of three tech solutions focused on different parts of the healthcare system: EaseCare, InstaCare, and CorpCare. In May 2024, Care Group closed a $2-million CAD round with participation from Alberta’s Accelerate Fund III to help it expand into new markets across Canada and the United States. 

“Our government is proud to support Alberta’s technology sector by providing the capital and resources needed to enhance competitiveness and bring Alberta-made solutions to the world,” Duguid said in a statement. 

The round of funding was part of Duguid’s first visit to Alberta since becoming the Minister responsible for PrairiesCan. The Winnipeg South MP took over Dan Vandal’s post in a December cabinet shuffle intended to replace some ministers who had resigned or made it known they would not be seeking re-election. 

Feature image courtesy Prairies Economic Development Canada via LinkedIn. 

The post PrairiesCan doles out $6.7 million to help four Edmonton companies scale and expand into new markets first appeared on BetaKit.

A group of major North American media companies filed a lawsuit today against Toronto-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere, alleging that it engaged in “massive, systematic copyright infringement and trademark infringement.”

The consortium of publishers suing Cohere includes The Atlantic, Condé Nast, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, the Toronto Star, and Vox, among others. 

In their complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, the publishers accuse Cohere of unfairly using their content to train its AI models and displaying full or partial copies of articles. “Left unfettered, such misconduct threatens the continued availability of the valuable news, magazine, and media content that publishers produce,” the document states.

A Cohere spokesperson described the lawsuit as “misguided and frivolous.”

The publishers’ complaint alleges that Cohere has scraped copies of their articles from the internet without permission or compensation and used them to power its AI services. It also claims that Cohere “blatantly manufactures fake pieces” and attributes them to publishers, “misleading the public and tarnishing our brands.”

The group is seeking damages from Cohere, including up to $150,000 per work infringed, and a court order preventing the company from using copyrighted works to train or fine-tune its AI models. The consortium has also requested a jury trial.

“Cohere strongly stands by its practices for responsibly training its enterprise AI,” a Cohere spokesperson told BetaKit. “We have long prioritized controls that mitigate the risk of IP infringement and respect the rights of holders. We would have welcomed a conversation about their specific concerns–and the opportunity to explain our enterprise-focused approach–rather than learning about them in a filing. We believe this lawsuit is misguided and frivolous, and expect this matter to be resolved in our favor.” 

Some of the publishers suing Cohere have licensed their content to other large-language model (LLM) makers. This group includes The Atlantic, Vox, and Condé Nast, which have inked deals with Cohere competitor OpenAI.

RELATED: Academics, nonprofits caught in middle of data consent fight as AI companies push for access to copyright works

This marks the latest of a series of AI copyright suits filed against tech companies by a group that includes other news outlets as well as authors, visual artists, and musicians. Whether defendants’ copying amounts to “fair use” could be the defining legal question.

The Toronto Star and other large Canadian news organizations launched a similar suit to this Cohere action against OpenAI last year, alleging that OpenAI used their copyrighted works to train the AI behind its popular chatbot ChatGPT without permission or compensation. The New York Times has made comparable allegations in a lawsuit of its own against OpenAI. 

In other recent AI copyright news, Anthropic struck an agreement in a suit brought by music publishers over song lyrics, Meta lost a fight in its battle with a group of authors, and Toronto’s Thomson Reuters won its case against now-defunct legaltech startup Ross Intelligence.

RELATED: Major Canadian news orgs sue OpenAI for copyright infringement

Founded in 2019 by former Google researchers, Cohere builds LLMs that power chatbots and other generative AI applications. Unlike some of its rivals, which include OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and Google, Cohere caters exclusively to businesses.

Last year, Cohere closed $500 million USD in Series D financing at a $5.5-billion valuation, making it one of Canada’s most valuable tech startups. The company counts a group that includes AMD, Export Development Canada, Fujitsu, Inovia Capital, Nvidia, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures among its backers.

Cohere offers customers that build applications on top of its AI models indemnification from intellectual property infringement claims.

As part of a recent public consultation on copyright in the age of generative AI, Cohere, Google, and OpenAI backer Microsoft have advocated to the Government of Canada for a legal exemption to the Copyright Act to allow them to use copyrighted materials to train their AI models without having to pay copyright holders or obtain their permission, arguing that text and data mining for AI training does not constitute copyright infringement.

Feature image courtesy Web Summit via Flickr.

The post Major media companies sue Cohere for alleged copyright infringement first appeared on BetaKit.

Vancouver-based quantum startup Photonic has published a paper detailing a new quantum error correction method that it says requires fewer quantum bits (qubits) than previous methods. 

The breakthrough comes in the form of a new family of Quantum Low-Density Parity Check (QLDPC) codes that Photonic is calling “Subsystem Hypergraph Product Simplex” codes (SHYPS).

“The quantum field must now be divided into those whose hardware can run these new codes, and those who can’t.”

David Shaw 
Global Quantum Intelligence

Photonic said that QLDPC codes have long been predicted to reduce qubit overheads, but no one had discovered how to perform quantum logic with them. 

With the advent of SHYPS, Photonic co-founder and chief quantum officer Stephanie Simmons claims quantum algorithms can use dramatically fewer physical qubits while running—perhaps as low as 20 times less. 

“Unlocking the quantum logic of high-performance QLDPC codes has been the holy grail of quantum error correction R&D for decades, and one of the obstacles to cost-effective quantum computing at scale,” Simmons said in a statement. “We’re excited to share these milestone results which have moved the goalposts for useful quantum computing 20 times closer.”

Photonic said the codes have been stress tested to demonstrate that the logic works in practice, not just in theory, but warned the patent-pending SHYPS code has specific high connectivity hardware requirements for implementation that not every approach to quantum computing can deliver. Specifically, SHYPS works best with a “non-local” connectivity approach, meaning qubits connect to other qubits that are not situated near each other, versus a “nearest-neighbour” connectivity approach, which works just as it sounds. 

RELATED: Xanadu claims networking breakthrough with new photonic quantum computer Aurora

David Shaw, a lead analyst with industry group Global Quantum Intelligence, said that the new work “knocked it out of the park.” 

“The quantum field must now be divided into those whose hardware can run these new codes, and those who can’t,” Shaw said. “We’re going to see a race between players that invest in the scarce skills required for in-house code innovation, and those that seek to be fast followers.”

Photonic marks yet another Canadian quantum company announcing a technical stride. Just a few weeks ago, Toronto-based quantum computing company Xanadu claimed it had figured out how to network quantum computers together, another one of the key challenges facing the industry.

Photonic was founded in 2016 by Simmons, who is also a co-chair of Canada’s National Quantum Strategy Advisory Board, and Michael Thewalt, a physics professor at Simon Fraser University. The startup raised $137-million CAD ($100 million USD) from a pool of investors that included strategic partner Microsoft in November 2023.

Feature image courtesy Photonic via its website.

The post Photonic claims breakthrough in quantum computing error correction first appeared on BetaKit.

The Canada Growth Fund (CGF), the federal government’s clean energy investment fund, will commit up to $50 million CAD to Calgary-based private equity firm Longbow Capital for its second Energy Transition Fund. 

The commitment comes in addition to Longbow’s initial $150-million CAD close for the fund in November, backed by “institutional and family office investors” and returning anchor investors TD Bank Group, Caterpillar Ventures, and the federally funded BDC Capital. CGF will invest a percentage of the fund until its total commitment has reached a maximum of $50 million CAD, a CGF spokesperson told BetaKit in an email statement.

CGF is a $15-billion fund created to attract private capital to the Canadian cleantech market.

Longbow said the fund, which is targeting $250 million CAD, has a mandate to invest in North American businesses that are “expected to benefit from the momentum behind the energy transition,” with a focus on companies that help lower carbon emissions through “efficient and cost effective solutions.” 

The CGF is a $15-billion fund first introduced in the federal government’s 2022 budget aimed at attracting private capital to the Canadian cleantech market. The fund is managed by a subsidiary of Canadian public sector pension fund PSP Investments, which is led by president and CEO Yannick Beaudoin. CGF made its first-ever investment in October 2023, when it topped up Calgary-based cleantech startup Eavor’s Series B round with $90 million. 

In a statement, Beaudoin said CGF’s commitment to Longbow’s second Energy Transition Fund is its 10th investment to date and supports its mandate to provide additional capital that supports the growth of Canadian cleantech companies and managers.

“With their expertise in the energy sector and pipeline of investment opportunities, we look forward to an ongoing partnership with the investment team at Longbow,” Beaudoin said.

RELATED: Longbow Capital completes $150-million initial close of second Energy Transition Fund

Founded in 1997, Longbow Capital claims it has approximately $1.5 billion in assets under management across the energy and power sector, including low-carbon energy solutions, energy and power production, infrastructure, services, and technology. Longbow’s first Energy Transition Fund raised a total of $181 million in 2022. 

The firm has backed Canadian cleantech firms such as Clir Renewables and Arcus Power, and was recognized with the 2024 PE Deal of the Year at last year’s CVCA awards for its big exit from hydrogen and natural gas distributor Certarus. Its second fund has completed one disclosed investment to date, the $210-million equity round of Houston, Texas-based energy management platform VoltaGrid in March 2024.

Feature image courtesy Longbow Capital.

The post Canada Growth Fund commits up to $50 million to Longbow Capital’s second Energy Transition Fund first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based Payfare is defending itself and its acquisition deal with American FinTech giant Fiserv after minority stakeholder Kingsferry Capital Management called on shareholders to reject the deal this week. 

In late December, the Toronto Stock Exchange-listed company announced it agreed to be acquired by Fiserv in a $201.5-million CAD ($140 million USD) deal at $4 CAD per share; a 90-percent premium over its pre-announcement closing price. Payfare came to the deal through a strategic review it initiated in September 2024, following its stock price plummeting to an all-time low after losing its biggest client, DoorDash, to Fiserv itself. 

“Kingsferry and Mr. Chan have not put forward any alternative plan or better offer.”

In a letter urging shareholders to reject the deal sent out on Tuesday evening, Kingsferry, which has gathered an approximately 10.6-percent stake in Payfare through annual stock purchases over the past four years, claimed the deal is a significant undervaluation and alleged conflicts of interest among insiders. 

Specifically, Kingsferry said that Payfare is misleading shareholders by classifying the deal as a significant premium, because it was based on a “deeply distressed stock price” far below its intrinsic value. The firm, whose website says it is regulated by the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission, scrutinized Payfare for excluding previously discussed pipeline opportunities from the financial forecasts used to justify the acquisition. It also said that not all synergies that could benefit Fiserv, like its fraud detection system, had been considered. 

Payfare disputed the claims on Wednesday morning, reiterating that the deal’s 90-percent premium outperforms the median and average of comparable transactions over the past five years. The company pointed out that Kingsferry had never raised any concerns or objections through the strategic review process, and added the deal does factor in the components Kingsferry claimed were omitted. Additionally, the company’s board said Payfare believes being acquired is simply less risky than continuing solo. 

“The Board considered the risks involved in Payfare achieving its standalone plan, including its pipeline opportunities and determined that the transaction with Fiserv provides certainty against potential downside factors tied to Payfare achieving its standalone plan,” Payfare’s statement read. 

RELATED: Fiserv to acquire Payfare in $201.5-million CAD deal after swiping its DoorDash business

Kingsferry also accused Payfare’s board of having conflicts of interest stemming from “restricted share units (RSUs), change-of-control payouts, debt forgiveness to certain directors, and lucrative employment contracts,” but did not elaborate on whom these specifically benefit. The firm questioned the timing of Payfare approving more than 1 million RSUs (shares that cannot be immediately sold) to “certain insiders” just before it received an initial offer from Fiserv in November. 

In response, Payfare took aim at Kingsferry co-founder Hugo Chan, a former Payfare director, claiming he had approved of such grants during his time on the company’s board. 

“Ironically, Mr. Chan, during his time as a Payfare board member, voted to approve many of the ordinary course compensation arrangements for the company’s board and executives that he now criticizes, all of which have been publicly disclosed to investors,” Payfare’s statement reads. 

“Kingsferry and Mr. Chan have not put forward any alternative plan or better offer,” the statement says. 

Payfare is holding a shareholder meeting to determine if the deal will go through on the morning of Feb. 21. Shareholders must have their proxy vote on the transaction submitted before Feb. 19 at 11 a.m. ET. 

Feature image courtesy Nicholas Cappello via Unsplash.

The post Payfare defends Fiserv acquisition deal from minority shareholder dissent ahead of vote first appeared on BetaKit.

A number of Canadian tech CEOs and investors are part of a group calling for the “immediate recall” of Parliament to face the “uncertainty” presented by economic threats from the US.

An open letter signed by over 100 business leaders demands the immediate resumption of Parliament to ensure the Canadian government can “confront head-on the current crisis and be able to adapt to our new reality and, most importantly, deal productively with the US government.” The letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the opposition parties yesterday. 

“Can you imagine, if your company were facing an existential crisis, sending a key part of your team on an extended break?”

Andrew Graham
Borrowell

“We are in a period of turmoil and uncertainty,” the letter reads. “We need a strong, empowered, legitimate, and robust government, supported by a sitting and functioning Parliament, to deal with these very grave, complex and delicate matters.”

Signatories of the letter include Canadian tech CEOs and founders such as Fred Lalonde of Hopper, Joanna Griffiths of Knix, Max Lytvyn of Grammarly, John Bianchini of Hatch, Andrew Graham of Borrowell, Cherif Habib of Dialogue, and Liran Belenzon of BenchSci.

Several VCs also signed, including Sophie Forest, managing partner at Brightspark Ventures, Luge Capital co-founder and general partner David Nault, and Two Small Fish Ventures co-founder Allen Lau. 

“Canada is facing big challenges including American tariffs and slow growth,” Graham told BetaKit.

“Can you imagine, if your company were facing an existential crisis, sending a key part of your team on an extended break? You’d be called irresponsible, for good reason.”

RELATED: Canadian tech looks to support its own against US tariff threat

According to the Financial Post, John Ruffolo, founder of Maverix Private Equity, and Chris Arsenault, CEO of Inovia Capital, were facilitators of the initiative. Ruffolo told BetaKit that Shahir Guindi, chair emeritus at law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, was a main organizer of the letter.

“We’re in one of the biggest crises of our time, the future of our country is at stake, and all that we’re saying is ‘get back to work,’” Ruffolo said.

On Jan. 6, Trudeau prorogued Parliament until March 24 and announced he would be stepping down, prompting a Liberal leadership race set to conclude on March 9. 

Ending the prorogation would likely result in a no-confidence vote, which could then trigger a federal election before the required date of Oct. 20. 

The call to resume Parliament echoes those of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who have both argued that a sitting Parliament is necessary to pass legislation associated with combatting US tariff threats.

The letter warns of “dire economic and other consequences” for Canadians should US tariffs be imposed. 

On Feb. 1, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to implement 25-percent tariffs on virtually all Canadian goods and 10-percent tariffs on Canadian energy. Trudeau pledged to respond with in-kind tariffs on $155 billion of US imports.

After negotiations, the two leaders agreed to a 30-day détente. However, Trump signed another executive order Monday to levy 25-percent additive tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, which are set to go into effect on March 12 and stack on top of other proposed tariffs. 

With files from Douglas Soltys. Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Creative Commons under license CC0 1.0.

The post Knix, Hopper, Grammarly founders among business leaders asking for “immediate recall” of Parliament first appeared on BetaKit.

In a north tower meeting room at TD Bank in 2021, a team huddled around a conference table, laptops open. 

High above downtown Toronto, the group formed the equivalent of a “mission control room,” according to TD Vice President of Growth Marketing, Akif Unal.

“We were moving the entire digital memory of TD to the cloud.”

Michael Abbott, Accenture

Each colleague brought a specific competency: campaign strategy, data analytics, system architecture.

Together, they were part of a group involved in one of the biggest undertakings in the bank’s history: migrating billions of data records into the cloud. 

The project would span more than 20 business lines, involve thousands of employees, and require three full years of work. It prompted TD Bank to establish a specialized data FinOps function, work with some of the biggest players across the tech ecosystem, and spawned more than 15 separate patent application filings.

“It was a massive effort,” Unal said.

But the bank’s large-scale data migration has quickly paid off, giving the bank the speed and flexibility to adapt to customers’ changing expectations, apply the emerging powers of AI to a wealth of financial data and—in doing so—take a huge leap forward in an increasingly competitive market. 

“Customers don’t just compare us to other banks,” said Unal. “They compare us to all of the digitally led players out there.”

Unlocking the library

A bank, in many ways, resembles a massive library. 

Each transaction, customer record, and financial forecast represents a unique data point or volume of information.

For an organization like TD, which has been keeping such records since 1955, those data points number in the billions, with more added every day. 

Taken as a library, this data has massive potential to help the bank make better decisions based on customer insights. 

TD began consolidating its enterprise data nearly a decade ago with an on-premises, Hadoop-based platform. Its recent migration initiative focused on retiring that platform and moving to modern data management tooling in the cloud, giving the bank a powerful new way to unlock its knowledge.

The process also held the promise of freeing the bank from the constraints of on-premise systems, where hardware investments must be made years in advance and server capacity acts as an ever present constraint.

Like many legacy organizations, TD was contending with an aging system that was straining under its own weight. But moving decades of data into the cloud is not a plug-and-play operation, especially in the world of financial services, where billions of dollars and vital customer trust are both in play.

“You don’t just put data in the cloud and hope it works,” said Jeff Martin, TD Chief Data Officer and CIO of Corporate Platforms.

An engine change midflight

The amount of data that TD needed to migrate into the cloud was massive, by any measure. 

In all, it would require moving several petabytes of data to an entirely new system. To put that in perspective, one petabyte is equivalent to 500 billion pages of standard text.

As TD began its migration process in 2021, the bank worked with Microsoft, Accenture, and Databricks, asking them to help TD establish a modern data platform on the Azure cloud. Even for those tech giants—each of which is well-acquainted with enterprise migrations—this program represented a different level of complexity.

“It is one of the largest migrations that we’ve ever been part of,” said Arun Ulagaratchagan, Corporate Vice President, Azure Data at Microsoft.

Michael Abbott, who leads Accenture’s Banking and Capital Markets industry group, likened the task to changing a plane’s engines midflight.

“In essence, we were moving the entire digital memory of TD to the cloud,” he said.

And like most moves, packing was the hardest part.

Martin explained that before even “one byte of customer data” could be moved into the cloud, the bank would need to leverage a series of cyber controls to ensure the information’s security.

The migration initiative included implementing more than 700 of these cyber controls to protect the bank’s data; including measures like encrypting data during storage and transfer, as well as restricting access to data through secure digital safe rooms.

Behind the scenes, the bank also developed new frameworks to streamline data ingestion, curation, orchestration, and job scheduling—functions that previously depended on the performance of various applications and processes.

Systems that previously leveraged custom-coding were standardized, and infrastructure provisioning that previously required physical setup was automated.

“The biggest challenge was just the sheer magnitude and size of it all, and getting it moved over, tested, proven, and making sure it’s accurate,” recalled Martin.

Sylvie Makhzoum, Vice President, Executive Platform Product Owner and Product Technology Lead, said the migration also required a major culture shift at the bank. According to Makhzoum, technology, analytics, and business teams had to operate as a cohesive unit, with each contributing to a tightly integrated delivery process.

To make this possible, the bank heavily invested in upskilling. Starting in 2022, more than 4,000 employees completed training on the new cloud platform, taking part in regular webinars, live demos, Q&A sessions, and workshops.

Eventually, TD moved over 20,000 processes to the cloud, as well as years of customer records and operational data. All of this unfolded, Makhzoum noted, while the bank’s daily operations carried on uninterrupted.

“You have to remember that the world doesn’t stop,” she said. “You’ve got the old system, the new system, and the old one is still getting updated. It’s a moving target.”

The flip side of speed

While the cloud migration offered TD some enormous benefits, it also surfaced unexpected issues.

Makhzoum explained that on-premise servers have built-in capacity limits—part of the problem the bank was trying to address.

But those limits also had controlled costs. 

In contrast, the cloud’s inherent elasticity opened the door to virtually unlimited computing power. Every new process and computation facilitated by the cloud came with a cost, and without careful monitoring, spending could have quickly spiralled out of control.

“In the cloud, we can add more compute very quickly, within seconds if needed,” said Makhzoum. “Operating a data platform on the cloud is a complete paradigm shift compared to on-premises, and ensuring delivery team members take cloud consumption costs into consideration is critical.”

To address this, TD established a specialized data FinOps team one year into the migration. This team worked with engineers to track consumption patterns and optimize how the bank used its computational resources on the cloud.

It implemented a range of strategies, such as using spot instances, which represent unused computing power that a cloud service provider sells off at a lower price to ensure maximum utilization of its resources. The bank also used different storage tiers depending on need and required service level, and also gave the bank’s business units visibility into their own cloud usage at a more granular level than what was ever possible previously.

The new reality

In June 2024, TD officially shut down its 1,000 legacy servers, marking the final step of the migration.

While decommissioning those servers cut the bank’s infrastructure costs immediately, the true breakthrough, according to Martin and Makhzoum, came in the flood of insights facilitated by new levels of access to meaningful data that the cloud provides.

For TD, moving to the cloud meant unlocking opportunities and insights their old, siloed systems could never identify. 

Now, TD can process months of historical data every day, while adding millions of new pieces of information—from credit card activity to mutual fund transactions. 

That aspect of the cloud alone gives TD “a level of agility and speed that really isn’t even possible or viable” with older systems, Makhzoum said.

Unal, in his role as Vice President of Growth Marketing, said that sourcing data for marketing campaigns that used to take months are now rolled out in days. This, among other factors, has allowed his team to deploy 54 percent more campaigns year-over-year with the same resources.

And because the cloud helps TD analyze data more effectively, the bank can send more personalized messages to customers. For instance, if a customer consistently spends on travel, the bank might send them a message about a credit card that offers higher rewards for flights or hotels.

“We’ve seen two to three times higher engagement rates with personalized marketing,” Unal said. To TD, that translates into stronger customer relationships, higher retention rates, and increased revenue from products and services that align more closely with what customers actually want.

The migration was also an investment in protecting the bank’s “digital crown jewels,” the bank’s sensitive customer and business data. These include customer account details, transaction records, and proprietary systems, where even a small breach could cause massive financial losses, disrupt operations, and damage the bank’s reputation.

The cloud gives TD the ability to implement heightened security measures to protect these assets, often in less time.

Moving to the cloud also paved the way for practical advancements within TD Bank’s operations. Makhzoum noted that the reusable frameworks developed by its teams helped to streamline operations, and many were included in the more than 15 patent applications in total that were filed as part of this initiative. Two of those patents have already been granted—one for managing historical data and another for securing access to sensitive data within the platform.

Building for the long game

The cloud is also now the foundation for TD Bank’s next big leap: artificial intelligence.

“To have good AI, you need good data,” Martin explained. “AI without high-quality data would just be artificial. It wouldn’t be very intelligent.”

“Customers don’t just compare us to other banks. They compare us to all of the digitally led players out there.”

Akif Unal, TD

By centralizing its data on the cloud and making it easier to access trusted data at scale, TD can now experiment with generative AI with the same level of velocity as a FinTech startup.

Last year, the bank introduced a generative AI-powered chatbot for its call centre, designed to help live agents find answers to customer queries with increased speed and accuracy.

“We went from prototype to production in three months,” Martin said, adding that this would not have been possible with the bank’s old setup.

Still, rolling out generative AI in a bank is not taken lightly, especially when handling customer data.  

“We don’t assume accuracy, we ensure it,” Martin said, adding that TD made sure every new tool was carefully tested with a human-in-the-loop approach before being used more broadly.

Microsoft’s Ulagaratchagan said “getting enterprise data ready for generative AI has become a critical priority for their partners.” 

“TD has really leapfrogged forward by taking the entire data estate, bringing it to the cloud, modernizing it, making it GenAI-ready, and putting a strong digital foundation in place,” he said. “It puts TD in an incredibly powerful position to take advantage of the GenAI transformation.”

Beyond the immediate benefits of moving off-premises, Martin said the migration has also prompted TD to fundamentally rethink how it operates and views itself in the financial services sector.

“To be a great customer service company, you have to have a great handle on data,” he said. “We’ve got a strong enterprise approach to data, where all data is treated as an enterprise asset, and we’ve built out a platform that enables us to be able to use that data to serve our customers better.”

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Join the teams at the forefront of expanding technological innovation in Canada’s financial sector.

All photos provided by TD Bank. Feature image by TD / BetaKit.

The post How TD moved petabytes of data to the cloud with Microsoft and Accenture first appeared on BetaKit.

Since the onset of a Canada-US trade war, Canadians have doubled down on buying local, and Canadian tech has been no exception. 

Ecosystem players have spearheaded a crop of tariff-response initiatives designed to promote products from fellow Canadian startups, track the impact of tariffs on supply chains, and encourage consumers to buy domestically made products. 

#CDNtech supporting #CDNtech 

ByCanada.Tech, a new “coast-to-coast startup directory” has emerged as the most comprehensive database of Canadian tech companies so far. The website was founded by Derek Jouppi, founder and CEO of Advite.ai, with the goal of providing Canadian alternatives to well-known American tech products. 

ByCanada.Tech allows users to search for Canadian alternatives to well-known American tech products.

Jouppi took to LinkedIn last week to crowdsource data from Canadian startups. The site says it now lists over 7,000 companies. 

The website allows users to search for Canadian alternatives to well-known American tech products, such as Toronto-based HOVR instead of Lyft and Winnipeg-based Bold Commerce instead of Stripe.

Jouppi told BetaKit that the threat of tariffs motivated him to create the project, but that “Canadians deserve to know how to source local [and] support our entrepreneurs through any economic period.” 

RELATED: Canadian tech is up against a ticking tariff clock

Beyond Jouppi’s initiative, several Canadian tech leaders have shouted out fellow Canadian business-to-business products. One such example is Ian Paterson, CEO of Plurilock, who listed FinTech companies that his company “trusts to get the job done,” including Float, Plooto, Certn, and Vault.  

“As a Canadian company, we know the power of homegrown innovation,” Paterson wrote. “We choose the tech that keeps us moving fast and operating efficiently, built by the companies who truly understand how we work.”

Other organic posts have listed Canadian tech alternatives. Mhairi Petrovic, founder of Vancouver-based Out-Smarts Marketing, shouted out Thinkific and Jane App. Siamak Sartipi, founder and CEO of Waterloo-based portfolii, listed Igloo Software as an alternative to Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Tracking the tariff threat 

US President Donald Trump signed an order to impose 25-percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports yesterday, which would stack on top of the blanket 25-percent tariffs on virtually all Canadian goods the President is threatening to levy in early March.

Multiple tools are now available for Canadian businesses to calculate the impact of tariffs on their supply chains.

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Export Development Canada (EDC), and the Trade Commissioner Service jointly launched the Canada Tariff Finder, a tool that allows businesses to see what tariffs apply to an import or export product. It also allows users to compare similar products or source countries.

The tool only provides customs and duty information for countries that have a free trade agreement with Canada.

The Business Data Lab’s Canada-US Trade Tracker, associated with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, provides up-to-date data on the value of cross-border trade across sectors and by geographic region.

For example, users can identify the largest exports from each Canadian province to the US and top trading partners by state.

Scan to buy Canadian 

The Buy Beaver app, previously known as IsItFromCanada.ca, launched on Feb. 6 as a grocery-scanning community platform to encourage users to buy locally.

With a smartphone or desktop app, users can scan the barcode on grocery items and obtain a score out of five for how “Canadian” the product is based on where it was produced and its parent company. The data is crowdsourced and relies on users inputting product information. 

“Think of it as a community-driven platform where users like you help identify truly Canadian products,” the website reads.  

RELATED: Reliant on US materials and production, Canadian consumer goods startups could be caught in trade war crossfire

Founded by two Montréal-based entrepreneurs, Buy Beaver is currently free but says it may introduce premium features eventually. 

“After hearing people voice concerns about rising tariffs, I wanted to help them make truly informed decisions,” co-founder Christopher Dip said in a statement. “We believe every purchase can be a vote for Canadian businesses.”

The Buy Beaver team said that it has reached over 10,000 users so far. 

Feature image courtesy Buy Beaver.

The post Canadian tech looks to support its own against US tariff threat first appeared on BetaKit.

After making a pit stop to recover from the 2022 market downturn, Toronto-based online vehicle marketplace Clutch is back on the road with a $50-million CAD Series D round that pumped its tires, and valuation, back up. 

In an interview with BetaKit, Clutch CEO Dan Park said the all-equity round values the company just above its once-peak valuation of $575 million CAD, but did not disclose the exact number. The financing was led by Silicon Valley-based Altos Ventures, with participation from new investors Industry Ventures and BMO Capital Partners, return investors FJ Labs and Flight Deck Capital, and a small group of undisclosed angels. 

“It’s been a while since we’ve been in that building phase, so we’re excited about that.”

Dan Park

The valuation is a significant recovery for Clutch, which laid off 22 percent of its staff in June 2022, and then another 65 percent in early 2023 after a $95-million Series C round fell out of its grasp due, it said, to the challenging macroeconomic conditions of the time. Clutch ended up settling for a $20-million round that slashed its valuation by 97 percent to $15 million. 

Park said the company increased its revenue by 81 percent last year, ultimately raking in $320 million and demonstrating profitability. Hitting these milestones drew inbound interest and catalyzed the company’s strongest round of funding since its 2021 Series B round. 

“Given where the financing landscape has been over the last couple years, we thought this was a good testament to what we’ve achieved over the last two-and-a-half years, and one to capitalize on strengthening our balance sheet, ultimately, to continue to push growth,” Park said. 

Clutch has been shoring up its balance sheet for a while, having not even touched last year’s $10-million convertible note financing from iA Financial and a previously undisclosed matching convertible note from Altos, Park said. Now it’s starting to look ahead. Though Clutch continues to focus on its core Eastern Canada market, Park said the company has ambitions to return to Western Canada, a market it abandoned as part of its 2023 layoffs. 

RELATED: Clutch receives $10-million strategic investment from iA Financial group

To Park, the more pressing matter is building more of Clutch’s reconditioning facilities, which inspect, repair, and refurbish the used cars the company buys for its platform. Clutch currently has a 100,000-sq. ft. facility in Mississauga and, while no shovels are in the ground yet, Park said the new capital provides the optionality to build new facilities across Canada. 

“We’ve been through a lot, but this funding … puts us back on stable ground to allow us to get back to building, and it’s been a while since we’ve been in that building phase, so we’re excited about that,” Park said.

Clutch also said it plans to continue to hire, having added more than 70 vehicle inspectors, mechanics, licensed technicians, apprentices, detailers to its staff in January alone. The wave brought its total headcount up to roughly 240 employees, still a far cry from the 340 it had before its 2022 layoffs, as it stares down yet another potential economic crisis in the looming trade war.

Park described getting out of the previous economic downturn as a “Herculean team effort,” and said that the threat of tariffs affecting the Canadian economy is “disappointing and scary.” 

“I’ve been at Clutch for five years, and we’ve gone through a global pandemic and basically an evaporation of growth capital in 2022, I’m certainly not excited for tariffs at this point,” Park said, adding that while tariffs would be terrible for the broader Canadian economy, Clutch is relatively insulated from the direct effects because it sources all its cars from Canada, employs only Canadians, and serves the Canadian market exclusively.

Park said that tariffs and counter-tariffs could put pressure on the automobile, and thus Clutch’s, market in many unpredictable ways, but said he’s confident in his team to navigate whatever is thrown at them. 

“We’ve gone through our fair share of existential crises,” Park said. “I think going through really hard things as a team just brings you closer together, and gives us the confidence that we are able to pivot and move things that we need to in order to survive.”

Feature image courtesy Clutch. 

The post Clutch recovers valuation and eyes growth with $50-million Series D round first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based femtech startup Coral has raised $4.1-million CAD seed round to address a yawning gap in women’s health care through its menopause virtual care platform.

The all-equity, all-primary round was led by Montréal-based Brightspark Ventures, with participation from Diagram Ventures and women-led venture capital (VC) fund The51. The round closed at the end of last year. 

Coral is a newly launched virtual health platform that offers personalized care for women experiencing hormonal changes leading up to perimenopause all the way to post-menopause. The platform, which is accessible through an app, collects detailed information on the patient through questionnaires and blood tests which can be done at home or a clinic. 

“We are very bullish about our ability to make a step-function change in women’s health.”

Fiona Lake Waslander
Coral

Users then connect with a nurse to develop a treatment plan, which can include medication such as hormone replacement therapy, lifestyle changes, and a nurse practitioner if needed, Coral said. 

Coral matches users with a wellness coach, who is available to chat asynchronously with users to talk through symptom management. Co-founder and CEO Fiona Lake Waslander told BetaKit that these coaches act as an educational resource and ensure consistent follow-ups. 

A six-month plan costs roughly $700. Coral’s services are eligible as medical expenses according to Canada Revenue Agency guidelines, so they may be covered under some users’ workplace benefits plans such as health spending accounts or private health services plans. 

RELATED: Flora Fertility closes $1.5 million CAD to bring individual fertility insurance across North America

Menopause symptoms hit every woman differently. Though most women experience the transition to menopause between 40 and 50, symptoms can arise earlier and last an average of seven years. Changes in hormone levels trigger symptoms in 85 to 95 percent of women, which can include hot flashes, insomnia, trouble concentrating, bone density loss, diminished libido and pain during intercourse, and severe depression.  

Despite the ubiquitous nature of menopause symptoms, nearly 40 percent of Canadian women reported feeling that their symptoms were undertreated, according to a 2022 survey by the Menopause Foundation of Canada. A 2023 study of women in the United Kingdom found that over 20 percent considered leaving their roles at work due to menopause symptoms. 

Waslander said her team will use the capital for platform development, marketing, brand awareness, and expanding its team of eight. Coral plans to be active nationwide by the end of the year.

Anna Chif, co-founder and chair of Coral, brings her expertise in co-founding virtual healthcare platform Dialogue, which was acquired by Sun Life Financial in 2023. Chif said that after leaving Dialogue, where she was chief product officer, she experienced hormonal changes that led to “completely debilitating” symptoms. 

“In those years, that should be the prime of our lives,” Chif said. “We should be knocking it out of the park.” 

Waslander said that her 20-plus years of experience in the tech industry, which included exiting digital home-remodelling company Skylight, meshed well with Chif’s experience scaling a digital health startup. Rounding out the co-founder trio is John McCalla, who was vice president of engineering at Dialogue.

RELATED: Dialogue acquires IP, other assets of fellow digital health platform Koble

“We are very bullish about our ability to make a step-function change in women’s health,” Waslander said.

The women’s health technology, or femtech, sector in Canada has received little funding relative to health tech more broadly. Industry group Femtech Canada has called on the federal government to invest up to $100 million to support women-led health ventures as part of its next federal budget.

Coral’s model of a virtual health clinic resembles that of some American startups, such as Midi Health and Evernow, which also connect users with licensed healthcare professionals to manage menopause-related symptoms and health outcomes. 

Canadian femtech startups include Montréal-based Eli Health, which has developed the Hormometer, a handheld device to track hormone changes, though it does not focus exclusively on menopause symptom management.

Feature image courtesy Coral.

The post Coral closes $4.1-million seed round to launch menopause virtual care platform first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify’s strong fourth-quarter earnings today have been overshadowed by reaction to the news that Kanye West was selling a Nazi t-shirt via Shopify-powered Yeezy.com.

The controversial American rapper and producer promoted his Yeezy store in an advertisement during the National Football League’s Super Bowl on Sun. Feb. 9. According to Variety, immediately after this ad aired, West replaced his Yeezy store’s previous content with a single product: a white T-shirt emblazoned with a Black swastika.

“This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”

The swastika is a symbol associated with Nazi Germany, and West’s item was labelled HH-01, which the Anti-Defamation League noted is code for “Heil Hitler.” West’s account on X (formerly Twitter) was deactivated on Mon. Feb. 9 after he posted a series of antisemitic messages to the social media platform in recent days, including posts praising former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and declaring himself a Nazi.

West’s Yeezy store was operational yesterday. According to The Logic, Shopify was aware of the situation then and instructed support staff to give “no comment” and end chats if merchant clients asked about the firm hosting it. The store is now unavailable as of this morning. Shopify has confirmed to BetaKit that it removed the Yeezy store in a statement that was also shared with other media outlets and appears to mark its first public comments on the matter.

“All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform,” a Shopify spokesperson told BetaKit in a statement. “This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.” Shopify did not respond to BetaKit’s other questions regarding the situation.

News of the T-shirt West was marketing and the company powering the store selling it sparked sharp criticism yesterday from former Shopify executives, including ex-senior director of investor relations and social impact Katie Keita, who argued in an X post that “humans get to define hate of other humans based on religion/ethnicity as immoral.” 

RELATED: Shopify quietly kills Indigenous entrepreneurship program Build Native

Keita’s post came in response to Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke’s 2017 comments explaining the company’s position on censoring merchants after the company faced backlash for hosting Breitbart. Shopify has long faced public criticism for providing services to stores that advocates say promote hate, including Breitbart and Libs of TikTok in 2022. Shopify has also supported the new online store of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was ordered to pay over $1 billion USD in damages after US courts found he intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.

Shopify’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) currently states: “There are activities we don’t allow on the platform because they breach the social contract of commerce. This means you can’t call for, or threaten, violence against specific people or groups. And you can’t sell products that facilitate intentional self-harm.” 

As recently as June 2024, Shopify’s AUP specifically prohibited hateful content, noting that its services may not be used “to promote or condone hate or violence against people” based on a variety of characteristics, including race, ethnicity, and religion, according to archived snapshots of the webpage via Wayback Machine. But last summer, Shopify changed the policy to remove its hateful content provision.

Shopify posts revenue beat, hits ‘Rule of 50’ in Q4

This controversy comes as Shopify posted strong Q4 2024 financial results that beat its previous forecast for revenue growth and included a tidy profit on the back of a strong holiday season and another record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend.

During its Q4 earnings call, Shopify only took questions from analysts and did not make any statements regarding Kanye West, his store, or the T-shirt. Shopify executives did not answer a question from an analyst about how artificial intelligence can help with content or listing moderation during the call “considering the controversy around the Super Bowl advertisement that took place.”

Shopify’s revenue rose 31 percent year-over-year to over $2.8 billion during Q4 after its gross merchandise volume (GMV) jumped to nearly $94.5 billion, up 26 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. This surpassed Shopify’s previous forecast of revenue growth at a mid-to-high twenties percentage rate.

The company also posted a nearly $1.3 billion profit during the fourth quarter, up from $828 million the year prior, and expanded its free cash flow margin to $611 million—or 22 percent—an increase from 21 percent in Q4 2023, and in line with its previous expectations.

Overall, Q4 2024 marked Shopify’s seventh consecutive quarter of 25 percent or greater revenue growth when excluding the sale of its logistics business in 2023. The company also expanded its free cash flow margin and saw GMV growth accelerate each quarter of last year, achieving GMV growth of 24 percent in 2024—its highest mark in three years.

“These consistent results are a testament to our strategic initiatives and operational discipline, positioning us well for continued success and growth in the future,” Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said in a statement.

During Shopify’s earnings call, president Harley Finkelstein highlighted that together, Shopify’s Q4 metrics put it “in the rare air of hitting the ‘Rule of 50’ at a size and scale that very few are achieving.” Per McKinsey, the Rule of 40 states that, at scale, a healthy software-as-a-service company’s growth rate and free cash flow margin should add up to 40 percent or more. Shopify’s fourth-quarter revenue growth (31 percent) and free cash flow margin (22 percent) put the firm at a combined 53 percent.

Shopify stock price has been on the rise since the company’s Q3 earnings. But despite a strong fourth-quarter performance, Shopify’s shares oscillated today on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges following mixed Q1 guidance, before ultimately closing the day up three and two percent, respectively.

Q4 is typically Shopify’s highest volume quarter, while the first quarter is consistently its lowest GMV quarter seasonally. For Q1 2025, the company anticipates revenue growth at a mid-twenties percentage rate year-over-year, a free cash flow margin in the mid-teens, and gross profit dollars to grow at a low-twenties percentage rate.

Shopify responds to tariff threats

These results come as the threat of tariffs from the United States (US) looms. Lütke recently claimed in an X post that Shopify would be “unaffected” by tariffs but Canadian small businesses using its platform were “not so lucky.” He also criticized Canada’s plans to impose retaliatory tariffs on the US, but announced “buy local” features in the company’s Shop app.

Robert Gillezeau, assistant professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto, previously told BetaKit that it is “extremely unlikely” Shopify would be unaffected by tariffs, noting a slowdown in economic activity and sales on both sides of the border is likely to result, and contested Lütke’s assessment that retaliatory tariffs are the wrong response.

In the company’s latest annual report, Shopify included “the imposition of or an increase in tariffs” among the potential risks to its business. In a recent blog post, Shopify endorsed “open trade” and called on regulators to give online merchants the “freedom to expand without constraints imposed by geopolitical brinkmanship.” In the post, Shopify described the de minimis exemption (which permits people to bring or ship up to $800 worth of goods into the United States each day duty-free, and is on the chopping block in the US come March) as “crucial for small businesses in international trade.”

“We try to protect and empower every business we can, but obviously—especially—we care about the underdogs, so as soon as we’ve seen anything, whether it’s tariffs or [the potential rollback of] de minimis, we usually get to work from a product perspective, and we did that right away,” Finkelstein claimed during the company’s Q4 earnings call.

Finkelstein noted all Shopify merchants can now display and collect duties during checkout and consumers can shop in their home country using the Shop app’s new search filters, and reiterated Shopify’s case against eliminating de minimis. “By exempting these sort of low-value shipments from taxes and duties, they keep costs down and allow entrepreneurs to compete on a much larger scale,” he said.

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

Feature image courtesy Burst.

The post Shopify’s strong Q4 earnings complicated by Kanye West Nazi T-shirt controversy first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based legaltech startup Alexi has secured $4.5 million CAD in venture debt from TD Innovation Partners (TDIP), TD Bank’s full-service banking platform for technology companies.

Alexi develops artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for litigators. Founded in 2017, the startup sells AI-powered litigation software designed to help lawyers and legal teams produce research memos, identify relevant legal issues and arguments, and automate routine tasks.

The legaltech company plans to use this venture debt to deepen its existing offerings, develop more efficient, reliable, and scalable AI tools, enhance its customer experience, and continue expanding its presence with law firms across North America.

Alexi co-founder and CEO Mark Doble told BetaKit that the startup will use this debt to fuel growth initiatives.

Alexi co-founder and CEO Mark Doble told BetaKit that this funding strengthens the startup’s balance sheet and will be used to fuel its growth initiatives. In a statement, Alexi vice-president of finance George Taleporos noted that the financing “also establishes a robust partnership with one of Canada’s leading financial institutions.”

This venture debt comes eight months after Alexi closed a $15-million, all-equity Series A led by Drive Capital. That round was supported by existing investor Draper Associates and other undisclosed backers, and brought Alexi’s total funding at the time to over $20 million.

As to why Alexi decided to raise more now, Doble claimed the startup has been “seeing record growth and the ability to add more capital to increase growth made sense for us at this time.” Doble noted that these two financings have enabled Alexi to invest in sales and marketing and its new products within Advanced Legal Reasoning (ALR) and Alexi Enterprise. 

Alexi’s other co-founder, former CTO Samarth Bhasin, quietly departed the company last September and has since begun building a new startup in the AI space, according to his LinkedIn profile. BetaKit has reached out to Bhasin for comment.

RELATED: Legaltech startup Alexi looks to ramp up hires with $15 million CAD in funding

“Sam’s departure was a mutual decision made in the summer of 2024, and we deeply appreciate the contributions he made during his time at Alexi,” Doble told BetaKit. “His leadership played a role in shaping the company’s early growth, and we remain grateful for his impact. While he has moved on from an active role, he continues to be a shareholder in Alexi.”

Alexi claims that it doubled the size of its team and customer base and updated its platform with enhanced AI research capabilities and the ability to analyze and summarize documents of up to 2,000 pages in 2024. 

During this time, Doble said Alexi has also released several new products. These include ALR, an AI tool to help litigators analyze issues on any given litigation file, and Alexi Enterprise, a private, self-hosted AI solution to help large law firms streamline their workflows.

Doble claimed Alexi helps legal professionals save time and is now capable of creating memos on its own, leveraging its in-house AI model and learning based on lawyer style and comments.

RELATED: TD Bank launches Innovation Partners banking platform for tech companies

Today, Alexi has more than 40 employees. Doble declined to share Alexi’s current revenue or customer count but claimed the startup has been seeing double-digit growth month-over-month.

Launched in June 2024, TDIP marks TD’s entry into Canada’s innovation banking and lending landscape, which shifted following the shutdown of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in 2023. TDIP is staffed largely by former leaders from SVB and RBCx, RBC’s tech banking division.

In a statement, TDIP director of capital solutions Mark Kiyonaga said that Alexi’s “commitment to product excellence, strong leadership team and their ability to deliver align well with [TDIP’s] goal of supporting transformative companies that are changing the way industries operate.”

Kiyonga told BetaKit that Alexi meshes well with TDIP’s focus on supporting innovative tech solutions in AI and automation that enhance business efficiency and decision-making, and noted that TDIP has already lent to several AI-based startups and other early-stage tech companies.

UPDATE (02/11/25): This story has been updated to clarify that Alexi Containers is now called Alexi Enterprise based on new information shared by Alexi.

Feature image courtesy Alexi.

The post Alexi secures $4.5 million in venture debt from TD to develop AI tools for litigators first appeared on BetaKit.

You may not have realized it, but while the Philadelphia Eagles were lighting up the Kansas City Chiefs during Super Bowl LIX Sunday night, a Canadian company was lighting up the stands. 

Montréal-based PixMob, which produces controllable light-up LED bracelets and moving video transmitters (MVT) for live events, was tapped to help in its seventh Super Bowl this year. While PixMob is no stranger to the Super Bowl, first assisting with the event in 2014, this year its mandate expanded from the halftime show to the full game. 

All 75,000 fans inside New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome received a PixMob LED light bracelet for the NFL championship match, turning the stands into a “human-resolution screen” that punctuated touchdowns, kick-offs, and the pre-game ceremony with lighting animations and effects. 

“What makes MVT so exciting is that it controls the audience’s LED wearables like pixels on a TV screen,” PixMob chief commercial officer Jean-Olivier Dalphond said in a statement. “Each fan becomes an active pixel in a canvas of animated effects that transforms the typically dark stadium space.”

PixMob’s time-to-shine really came through during the halftime show, which featured performances from artists Kendrick Lamar and SZA (not to mention a cameo from tennis star Serena Williams). When Lamar wrapped up his set list, which included the Grammy-winning Drake diss track Not Like Us, the stands spelled out “GAME OVER” using PixMob’s tech. 

Founded in 2006, PixMob says it designs, manufactures, and deploys its products and effects in over 40 countries. The company claims its tech has been used in over 5,000 events to date, including the Olympic Games, the NBA and NHL All-Star games, Eurovision, and even Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.

Feature image courtesy PixMob. 

The post Crowd Control: PixMob lit up this year’s Super Bowl stands first appeared on BetaKit.

Thomson Reuters has launched its second corporate venture capital fund with $150 million USD ($215 million CAD) to invest in early-stage technology companies. 

Much like its initial fund, Thomson Reuters Ventures (TRV) Fund 2 will target Series A investments with “flexibility to explore earlier and later-stage opportunities,” the company said in a statement. Both TRV funds invest in technology companies that operate in many of the same spaces its parent company does: legal, tax, accounting, risk fraud and compliance, media, and financial technology markets. 

The new fund, which is fully sourced from Thomson Reuters’ balance sheet, has yet to deploy any capital, but a “couple of deals” will close in the first quarter of 2025, TRV managing director Tamara Steffens told BetaKit in an interview. 

“Provided that our investments are doing well, we certainly stick with them.”

Steffens said that TRV is sticking with the same strategic focus for Fund 2 because they’re familiar with it and, from a venture perspective, TRV is looking for the next generation of technology to learn from and partner with. While she said TRV doesn’t require the use of artificial intelligence (AI), it tends to be a fit.

“Particularly in the three areas of tax, legal, risk and fraud, those areas are perfect for AI,” Steffens said. “We tend to see a lot of newer companies that are using AI [that is] native to the way they designed the product, which is a very good fit for our categories and where we’re going.” 

Steffens anticipates making 20 to 25 investments from Fund 2 over the next three years, with cheque sizes ranging from $4 million USD to $7 million USD, and some funds allocated for follow-on pro rata investments. 

“Provided that our investments are doing well, we certainly stick with them,” Steffens said. “We’re not one and done.”

RELATED: Thomson Reuters acquires American portfolio company Materia AI

The Toronto-based business information services giant launched its venture capital arm with its first $100-million USD fund in 2021 to support the ecosystem of early-stage companies operating in its focus areas. 

A total of 23 investments were made through the first fund, which currently has funds set aside for follow-on pro rata investments, Steffans said, but declined to disclose how much. She added the first fund is performing well based on the stage that it’s at but, given it invested in early stage companies, TRV won’t see the results for seven to 10 years. 

The fund has seen one exit so far, albeit a self-induced one. Thomson Reuters acquired New York, NY-based Materia AI this past October, just months after TRV invested in its seed round. While Steffens said she doesn’t anticipate acquiring a majority of their portfolio, it is a pipeline for Thomson Reuters to get to know if a company is a good fit. 

Feature image courtesy Thomson Reuters. 

The post Thomson Reuters launches second Corporate Venture Capital Fund with $215 million first appeared on BetaKit.

It’s not often that a group of Canadian technology founders break out in a rendition of the national anthem.

That’s what happened last Monday at a TechTO event, shortly after an agreement was reached to temporarily pause a threatened 25 percent US tariff on Canadian goods.

“It’s one of your responsibilities as a leader to help people focus. Bring people back to the things that are in front of them and the things they can control.”

“The last five years has been one shock to the system after another,” TechTO co-founder Alex Norman acknowledged after the impromptu demonstration of national pride.

Norman described the ongoing US-Canada trade dispute as part of a continuum of disruptions faced by Canadian tech founders over the past five years, including COVID-19, inflation, and the evolution of AI.

Loopio CEO Zak Hemraj, who took the stage with Norman, acknowledged that his cohort of Canadian technology CEOs have faced exceptionally complex times.

“COVID was the first time I felt, ‘I’m leading through a crisis,’” Hemraj said. “And since then it’s felt like it’s crisis after crisis.”

Toronto-based Loopio, which offers RFP management tools, was one of countless Canadian companies left wondering last week if proposed US tariffs would apply to Canadian software products.

“It’s hard when your team is looking to you for answers and you don’t have them,” said Hemraj.

He advised the 400-person audience to help their teams focus on tangible things, especially when factoring in social media and remote work environments.

“It’s so easy for people to spiral,” he said. “It’s one of your responsibilities as a leader to help people focus. Bring people back to the things that are in front of them and the things they can control.”

Looking forward, Hemraj said that dramatic advancements in AI have posed the greatest existential challenge to his 10-year-old company.

“When we came into the market, we were disrupting the old way of doing things. Here we are 11 years later and there are all these companies coming in saying: ‘Loopio is the old way of doing things,’” said Hemraj. “Hearing that as a founder is soul crushing.”

The transition towards AI-focused innovation was evident even in the event lineup.

The other two founders featured at TechTO were Fion Lee-Madan, co-founder of FAIRLY AI, and Jai Mansukhani, co-founder at OpenSesame, which builds AI agents using natural language.

Hemraj said AI companies like these have been a galvanizing force for Loopio, which has invested heavily in its own generative AI approach.

But he sees more established technology companies as having a competitive advantage against AI challengers, as they are able to test new tools with an existing roster of established customers.

“It’s a really interesting full circle experience,” Hemraj said of the urgent need to adapt to a shifting landscape. “It forces you to get more involved and experiment again.”

Watch the full conversation with Loopio’s Zak Hemraj here.

Feature image courtesy of Sean Pollock for TechTO. Check out the full calendar of TechTO events here.

The post Loopio’s  Zak Hemraj shares tips for Canadian CEOs leading teams through “crisis after crisis” first appeared on BetaKit.

GTMfund has closed $54 million USD for its second operator-led venture capital (VC) fund, surpassing its initial $50-million target.

Headquartered in Vancouver with an office in Scottsdale, Ariz.—where founder and general partner Max Altschuler is based—GTMfund invests in early-stage business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies on both sides of the border. GTMfund invests globally, with a focus on startups in the United States (US) and Canada.

GTMfund has already deployed more than twice as much capital in Canada through Fund II as it did via Fund I.

With Fund II, GTMfund founding partner Scott Barker told BetaKit that the VC firm plans to deploy more capital into Canadian companies and grow its office in Canada. Barker noted that GTMfund has deployed half of Fund II to date and already invested over twice the dollars in Canada as it did through its first fund.

GTMfund’s limited partners (LPs) include folks who either have worked at, or currently work at, successfully scaled software companies. This group consists largely of go-to-market (GTM) experts in marketing and sales (hence the VC firm’s name), which GTMfund leans on to help its portfolio startups navigate GTM challenges and source potential deals.

“Founders need value-add beyond capital because technology moats have become obsolete; the best product doesn’t win,” Barker said. “Above everything, founders need help with go-to-market. It’s the make-or-break and difference between winners and those who tried.” 

A technology or technical moat refers to the level of complexity required to develop a product—the greater the moat, the more distinct and difficult to copy the product. Barker argued that artificial intelligence has eroded technical moats, leaving GTM “as one of the last true moats.”

At a smaller scale, Toronto-based Gambit Partners is taking a similar operator-led approach to investing in early-stage tech startups.

RELATED: Gaiia closes $18-million CAD Series a as it looks to build the Shopify for ISPs

GTMfund launched its first fund in 2021, for which it closed $22 million from approximately 250 operator LPs. For Fund II, which it began raising in January 2023 and closed in October 2024, GTMfund attracted more than 300 operator LPs and its first institutional investors. This group included Montréal’s Inovia Capital and foreign firms HarbourVest Partners—which deploys funding via the Government of Canada’s Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative—Bain Capital Ventures, Foundation Capital, Franklin Park, and Nexus Bay Capital.

The VC firm plans to back about 40 startups through Fund II, with a focus on B2B SaaS companies at the pre-seed and seed stages and the occasional Series A investment, cutting cheques of between $500,000 and $1.5 million.

GTMfund has invested in six Canadian companies to date, including Québec City-based Oxio spinout Gaiia, which sells operating software to challenger internet service providers, Toronto cannabis enterprise resource planning platform GrowerIQ, and Ottawa-based e-commerce performance and error monitoring platform Noibu.

Some of GTMfund’s biggest winners so far include San Francisco-based enterprise generative artificial intelligence startup Writer and security compliance business Vanta, which have both achieved unicorn valuations.

RELATED: GrowerIQ acquires cannabis tech competitor Ample Organics from US-based Akerna

Three of GTMfund’s four executive team members were born and raised in Vancouver, including Barker, partner and platform director Paul Irving, and vice-president of marketing Sophie Buonassisi. GTMfund has also expanded its Canadian team for Fund II by recruiting LOI Venture senior analyst Casey Van Maanen as an associate.

Barker said GTMfund views Canada as an attractive market to invest in given its growing ecosystem of successful tech companies, the country’s “deep technical talent, supported by top-tier universities,” and the cost advantages it offers. 

As to how current macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions—including the weak Canadian dollar and the looming threat of US tariffs—might impact the VC firm’s plans to invest in Canada, Barker noted that “near-term volatility may influence [GTMfund’s] immediate decisions, but our focus is on long-term potential and outsized outcomes.”

Feature image courtesy GTMfund.

The post GTMfund closes $54-million USD Fund II to back more early-stage Canadian B2B SaaS startups first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada’s unwanted trade war with the United States began with a 30-day détente following multiple conversations between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Donald Trump on Monday.

The ticking clock extension didn’t slow the trade war news this week, nor BetaKit’s coverage. Monday also saw Ontario Premier Doug Ford threaten to rip up the province’s $100-million contract with Elon Musk-owned Starlink as part of a pledge to ban American companies from provincial contracts. That threat has also been paused.

On Tuesday, Global Affairs Canada’s Deputy Chief Trade warned tech leaders that Canada is “not out of the woods yet,” and reinforced existing government supports to help businesses reach international markets. On Thursday, CDPQ announced a new support program designed to help Québec businesses do just that if and when tariffs hit. 

But what about Canadian businesses thoroughly intertwined with the US? BetaKit’s Madison McLauchlan profiled two companies reliant upon US materials and production capacity not found in Canada. “Retaliatory tariffs would just punish us twice,” they said.

On Friday, the prime minister hosted a Canada-US Economic Summit in Toronto. BetaKit has obtained audio of the closed-door portion of the summit, which featured SRTX founder Katherine Homuth asking those assembled for tactical advice days after cutting 40 percent of her workforce in anticipation of an expected 41 percent duty on exports.

In response, Prime Minister Trudeau acknowledged the “real consequences” of the threat of tariffs before saying: “Our goal as a country, and it’s not an unreasonable goal, is to make sure those tariffs never happen.”

While Canadians might hope this 30-day reprieve offers the time to make that happen, our counterparts have their own plans. Late Sunday evening, President Trump said he would announce 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, as well as “reciprocal tariffs” on countries levying duties on US goods.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

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Canadian tech leaders launch Build Canada for AI-refined policy ideas from entrepreneurs

With elections looming, a group of Canadian technology leaders has teamed up to launch a new platform for entrepreneurs to share policy ideas with the help of experts and artificial intelligence (AI).

Build Canada bills itself as “a platform of bold ideas for growth, innovation, and prosperity” proposed by successful Canadian entrepreneurs with deep knowledge in relevant areas.

The team behind the policy platform lists 28 Canadian tech entrepreneurs as supporters, including outspoken Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke and leaders from Koho, Cohere, and SRTX, among others. It intends to take big policy ideas suggested by Canadian tech entrepreneurs and use a combination of humans and AI tools to research and draft memos, with final review from policy experts before publication.

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Lightspeed to stay public company after strategic review

After completing a strategic review of its business and operations, Montréal-based Lightspeed Commerce has announced plans to stay public and execute “a full transformation plan,” to the dismay of investors.

The announcement, which came alongside the release of Lightspeed’s fiscal third-quarter 2025 earnings, indicates that a go-private deal or acquisition is not on the immediate horizon. Lightspeed’s share price dropped approximately 17 percent on the news. 

After this week’s earnings call, BetaKit spoke to Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva to explore Lightspeed’s focus on its “two crown jewels”: its stock buyback plan, and the talent it’s hiring in its home city of Montréal.

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Waabi inks partnership with investor Volvo to develop and deploy self-driving trucks

Toronto-based autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Waabi has teamed up with one of its investors, Swedish automaker Volvo, to build and commercialize self-driving trucks.

In an interview with BetaKit, Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun described the deal as “a massive step forward” for the AV startup. “It’s the last piece that we needed in order to really have a solution that can scale,” the Canadian AI leader said.

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MaRS appoints Grace Lee Reynolds as permanent CEO, adds board members

MaRS Discovery District has appointed Grace Lee Reynolds as its new permanent CEO, letting her shed the interim label before she even officially takes the role.

Some of Lee Reynolds’s strategic priorities as CEO include enhancing support systems to “increase the odds of success” for science and technology ventures, co-space planning, and expanded funding models.

Ontario hardtech and AI incubator ventureLAB and women-focused angel network The Firehood also appointed new leaders this week. The Firehood tapped Theresa Evanoff to be its new executive director as it looks to expand its presence in international markets, while ventureLAB appointed Nima Khadem Mohtaram to become its first-ever head of medtech initiatives.

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Clio and Intel add new general managers in Canada as #CDNtech exec shakeups carry into 2025

Burnaby, BC-based legaltech company Clio and American semiconductor company Intel promoted new general managers to oversee their Canadian operations this past week. Meanwhile, startups ThoughtExchange, Verv, and Lorica also made changes at the top. 

These appointments reflect Canadian tech companies kicking off 2025 much like they kicked off 2024: by remodeling their leadership.

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Wealthsimple launches margin trading feature for eligible users

Toronto-based FinTech giant Wealthsimple launched margin trading accounts for eligible clients this week.

In a blog post announcing the launch, Wealthsimple vice-president of product Swapnil Parikh said that the waitlist for the feature has been one of its largest ever, and those selected for early testing have already accrued more than $40 million in margin balances.

Eligibility is based on self-reported assets, debts, and income, as well as the user’s financial situation at Wealthsimple, a company spokesperson told BetaKit in an email statement. ​

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FEATURED STORIES FROM OUR PARTNERS

With cyberattacks surging, businesses are increasingly looking for protection from insurance—but a new TELUS study indicates that expectations aren’t meeting reality. 

Martin Bélanger, Vice President of Technical Sales at TELUS, believes many companies don’t fully understand cyber insurance, resulting in businesses receiving payouts smaller than expected after filing a claim. “Home insurance has been around for decades, so insurers and policy holders know what to protect, but we’re not there yet with cyber insurance,” he said.

Read more about the cyber insurance measures that can help lower premiums and boost coverage.

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Weekly Canadian Deals and Dollars

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• CAN – Feds launch $175.1M Canadian Genomics Strategy
• CGY – RetinaLogik secures $1.1M CAD and Health Canada licence
• SSK – Rayhawk closes $3M CAD seed led by Emmertech
• KW – Interop Labs donates $1.4M CAD to University of Waterloo for new AI blockchain lab
• TOR – Teachers’ Venture Growth leads round valuing StackAdapt at $2.5B USD
• TOR – LavaReach acquired by Landbase for undisclosed amount
• MTL – FliiP raises $4.4M CAD seed round

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The BetaKit Podcast — Is Canada a secret video game powerhouse?

“Part of the magic of the games industry here is that it’s not one thing.”

Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) president and CEO, Paul Fogolin, joins to discuss video games’ $5.1 billion contribution to Canada’s economy and the results of his organization’s latest study on the Canadian gaming industry.

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Take The BetaKit Quiz – This week: Trade war showdown: Buy local, ban Starlink, and Build Canada

Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Time to prove it. Test your knowledge of Canadian tech news with The BetaKit Quiz for Feb. 7, 2025.

On February 25, 2025, Geordie Rose, Jack Newton, Greg Malpass, and other top tech leaders will share the insider playbook on navigating acquisitions, structuring deals, and negotiating like a pro at TechExit.io Vancouver. Connect with Canada’s top founders and investors—because when opportunity knocks, you want to be ready.

Feature image courtesy Amber Mac via LinkedIn.

The post Canadian tech is up against a ticking tariff clock first appeared on BetaKit.

So we’re in a trade war.

This is a national story, and on this website, you can find many stories tracking its impacts on Canadian tech. But suffice it to say there has been a lot of talk recently about how best to diversify and strengthen the Canadian economy.

How about gaming?

“Part of the magic of the games industry here is that it’s not one thing.”

Did you know that some of the world’s most popular games are made here in Canada? I’m talking about huge properties like Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed, alongside indie games like Celeste, Cuphead, and Balatro, the latter nominated for Game of the Year with 5 million copies sold.

Gaming also added $5.1 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2024, with 88 percent of that revenue coming through exports. That GDP number is nowhere near Canada’s top industries, but we’re looking for diversification opportunities, right?

I got this data from a recent report on Canada’s video game industry released by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC). This week on The BetaKit Podcast we speak to Paul Fogolin, ESAC’s new president and CEO.

We don’t often cover the gaming industry on BetaKit, but as you’ll learn in this episode, there are a lot of parallels to the rest of Canadian tech: we punch above our weight, we don’t own our IP, and the largest companies in the world make great use of our talent and our tax credits.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

But there’s so much opportunity for Canada to do more, be a global leader, and diversify its economic portfolio.

How would that happen, and how does Canadian gaming fit into an industry currently dominated by too-big-to-fail releases and publishers, rampant layoffs, developer crunch, and burnout?

Grab your joystick and let’s dig in.

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Feature image courtesy Balatro.

The post Is Canada a secret video game powerhouse? first appeared on BetaKit.

Burnaby, BC-based legaltech company Clio has promoted a new general manager to oversee its Canadian operations as it looks to expand in its home market.

The new manager, Luke Slan, started as an account executive in 2018, where he was recognized as the company’s top sales representative in 2020 and 2021 before becoming a sales manager in 2022. In a statement, Clio said Slan is tasked with leading efforts to drive its growth and strategic expansion in Canada. 

Slan’s “deep understanding of both our platform and the Canadian legal industry makes him the ideal person to lead the charge and drive success for law firms across the country,” Clio chief operating officer Ronnie Gurion said in a statement. 

Canadian tech companies kick off 2025 much like they kicked off 2024: by remodeling their leadership. 

Last year, Clio closed the largest software funding round in Canadian tech history, a $1.24-billion CAD ($900-million USD) Series F round valuing the company at a more than $4-billion CAD ($3-billion USD) pre-money valuation. CEO Jack Newton told BetaKit at the time that Clio used the “substantially secondary” round to bring on investors that could help it scale from $200 million USD to $1 billion USD in annual recurring revenue.  

American semiconductor company Intel made a similar appointment this week, appointing Asma Aziz as general manager of Intel Canada. Prior to her appointment, Aziz served as Intel’s interim regional chief marketing officer for the Americas. In her new role, Aziz is responsible for implementing a strategy to grow Intel’s presence in the Canadian market.

Aziz and Slan’s appointments reflect Canadian tech companies kicking off 2025 much like they kicked off 2024: by remodeling their leadership. 

Rossland, BC-based engagement software startup ThoughtExchange appointed George Psiharis as its new CEO in late January. Psiharis brings experience as a former chief operating officer at both Clio and Montréal-based healthtech startup AlayaCare. 

RELATED: The year quiet quitting got loud for tech execs

ThoughtExchange co-founder and former CEO Dave MacLeod led the search for the new leader after nearly 10 years at the helm, the company said in a statement. MacLeod will now transition to company president and chief product officer, where he will oversee research and development and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation. 

Toronto-based cybersecurity company Lorica also appointed Marcella Arthur to CEO last month. Lorica, which provides end-to-end encrypted data processing for AI applications, was founded in 2017 by chief research officer Glenn Gulak and CTO Alhassan Khedr. Last June, the company tapped former president of accounting software startup FreshBooks, Mark Girvan, to take over as CEO, a position that seems to have been short-lived. According to Girvan’s LinkedIn profile, he is now the chief revenue officer of Denver, Colo.-based inventory management platform Cin7. 

Finally, Sudbury-based healthtech startup Verv appointed John Simmons as its executive chairman and interim CEO last month. Founded in 2012 by company president Jeff Sutton, Verv is developing an at-home blood testing kit that it claims can separate plasma with just a few drops of blood. The company secured $3.8 million CAD in seed funding from United Kingdom in vitro diagnostics company Randox Laboratories in June 2022. 

Feature image courtesy Clio. 

The post Clio and Intel add new general managers in Canada as #CDNtech exec shakeups carry into 2025 first appeared on BetaKit.

The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), an institutional investor and pension fund manager, has launched a support program designed to boost the productivity of Québec businesses and help them pivot to new markets as the prospect of a trade war with the United States (US) looms. 

CDPQ plans to launch a contest for technological projects “in the coming weeks” and provide funding to the winners.

The new program will focus on providing capital, technology, and networking opportunities.

CDPQ said it would provide flexible financing on top of its existing programs to fund businesses’ investment projects “without increasing debt or immediately diluting their capital.” 

The amount of financing available through the program was not listed. BetaKit reached out to CDPQ for more information but did not hear back by press time. 

Through a partnership with Québec City-based applied AI startup and CDPQ portfolio company Vooban, program participants will be given support for integrating technologies such as automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI). CDPQ plans to launch a contest for technological projects “in the coming weeks,” and provide funding to the winners.

The CDPQ also said it would connect participating businesses with networking opportunities to “explore new markets to diversify their client base, suppliers or operations.”

The announcement comes as Canadian companies brace for the possibility of a trade war with the US. Though a 30-day reprieve was announced Monday, a 25-percent tariff on Canadian goods imported into the US—and an equivalent retaliatory tariff from Canada on American-made goods—could go into effect as soon as March 4. 

RELATED: Reliant on US materials and production, Canadian consumer goods startups could be caught in trade war crossfire

“Whether or not the tariffs materialize, it’s time to leverage all the know-how of our companies to drive Québec forward. CDPQ will be there to finance productivity-boosting projects and help companies diversify their markets,” Charles Émond, president and CEO of CDPQ, said in a statement.

In an interview on Radio-Canada’s Téléjournal, the CEO said the more efficient and productive Canadian businesses are, “the more indispensable we will be” to the US. Émond added that CDPQ will not be withdrawing its US investments. 

Québec-based startups are already feeling the impact: textile manufacturer SRTX made temporary layoffs Wednesday, while Canadian consumer-goods startups warned retaliatory tariffs could wipe out parts of their businesses.

The Québec government also indicated it would boost support for businesses should the US impose tariffs on Canadian goods in March. Premier François Legault said yesterday that his government would provide short-term loans through Investissement Québec (IQ), similar to a COVID-era program.

Legault’s government has been subject to scrutiny in the media for its robust level of financial support to the business sector, which totals over $15 billion in loans, subsidies, and direct investment to startups and enterprises since 2018. 

Richard Chénier, general manager of the government-supported non-profit Québec Tech, took to LinkedIn to share his vision for how Québec should respond to the tariff threat. 

Chénier proposed nine measures to increase innovation in the province, including implementing a rule requiring companies of a certain size to adopt Québec technology, rolling out incentives for the creation of corporate venture capital funds, and dedicating half of incentive budgets to attracting US companies to the north. 

“It’s time for a change,” Chénier wrote. “If this crisis doesn’t bring about the long-awaited transformations, we will have missed a huge opportunity.”

Feature image courtesy CDPQ.

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Feature image courtesy GlacierNPS via Flickr. CC0 – Public Domain.

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San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI)-powered go-to-market platform Landbase has acquired Toronto-based AI research tool LavaReach for an undisclosed amount. 

Founded in 2023 by Daniel Zhao and YiMing Han as a two-person bootstrapped company, LavaReach’s platform aimed to help sales teams research companies at scale. Lavareach’s tool automatically researches a list of prospective companies based on a user’s plain-language, intelligence-gathering questions. Landbase said in a statement that Zhao and Han will join the company and use “their deep technical skills and AI prowess” to help scale its go-to-market automation solutions. 

According to Landbase, the acquisition process was completed within a week. 

“I connected with them after receiving a well-crafted cold outreach message, and after speaking with them, we quickly recognized our shared vision for the industry and the opportunity to bring together a team with both deep technical expertise and a strong execution mindset,” Landbase co-founder Daniel Saks said in a statement. 

Saks himself is a Canadian entrepreneur who co-founded San Francisco-based software firm AppDirect with Nicolas Desmarais in 2009. Desmarais is part of one of Canada’s most influential families across a number of sectors. They backed notable Canadian tech companies like Wealthsimple, Koho, and Borrowell via Power Corporation. AppDirect, which has raised more than $400 million in venture funding to date, provides a platform that helps businesses sell, distribute, and manage cloud-based software and services. 

RELATED: Canadian AppDirect co-founder launches Landbase with Inovia, Desmarais family backing

Saks departed from his executive role at AppDirect in 2022 and went on to create Landbase, which emerged from stealth with $12.5 million USD ($17.8 million CAD) in seed financing this past September. The startup developed GTM-1 Omni, an AI model meant to automate go-to-market workflows and launch omnichannel campaigns with minimal manual input. 

Some of AppDirect’s investors, including Canadian venture firm Inovia Capital and the Desmerais family, have also backed Landbase. 

“Since co-founding AppDirect in 2009, I’ve been committed to supporting the Canadian tech ecosystem,” Saks told BetaKit in September. “I’m grateful to continue this commitment with Landbase.” 

Landbase later secured $4 million CAD in growth capital through a private credit facility from CIBC Innovation Banking. Saks told BetaKit in December that the capital would help Landbase scale its operations. 

Feature image courtesy Landbase. 

The post San Francisco-based Landbase taps Canadian roots with acquisition of LavaReach first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian consumer goods startups say the government’s response to a growing trade war with its southern neighbour could hurt them even more than US tariffs, as their supply chains rely on US materials and production capacity that doesn’t exist in Canada. 

“Retaliatory tariffs would just punish us twice.”

Matt Bertulli
Pela Case & Lomi

Matt Bertulli, the CEO of two Canadian manufacturing companies—Pela Case, which makes biodegradable phone cases, and Lomi, which makes composting appliances—told BetaKit that US tariffs and a Canadian reciprocation would be “almost catastrophic” if they couldn’t “find a way around them.”

“Retaliatory tariffs would just punish us twice,” Bertulli said. “Now we’d be paying more for our raw materials from the US too.”

Pela Case imports the raw materials it uses for phone cases from the US.

Bertulli said that 60 percent of sales for both products are in the US, nearly all of which is direct-to-consumer (D2C). 

Bertulli said that it manufactures the majority of Pela Case’s products in British Columbia, despite having “no tax advantage” to do so. He claimed that his competitors outsource production to China. 

The threat of Trump’s tariffs has been paused until at least March 4 following Canada’s negotiations with the US president over border security. The move follows repeated claims of Canada’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal crossings into the US.

RELATED: Deputy Chief Trade Commissioner on tariffs: Canada “not out of the woods yet”

The looming trade war has triggered a widespread push to buy domestic products and boycott US goods, amid a rare wave of Canadian outrage. Canada’s largest tech company, Shopify, introduced buy-local features allowing users to filter for products that are sold from Canada on its Shop app in response to the tariff threat. 

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), a lobby group for tech scale-ups, echoed the need for economic nationalism on Monday.

“Governments are committing to buy Canadian, to reduce interprovincial trade barriers, and to support the growth of our homegrown businesses. At CCI we have been calling for exactly this kind of approach for years,” CCI President Benjamin Bergen said in a statement. 

The looming threat is already impacting Canadian startups and small businesses that rely on US imports and serve American customers. 

Montréal-based SRTX, the maker of Sheertex tights, decided to lay off 40 percent of its workforce yesterday under threat of tariffs and amid an active fundraising effort. Trump’s proposal to eliminate the “de minimis” exemption, which allows people to bring up to $800 worth of goods into the US each day duty-free, would add a 41-percent tax on top of SRTX’s D2C shipments. 

Bertulli said his companies are in a similar boat and would be impacted by the removal of that exemption, driving prices higher for US consumers. 

US dependent

For Kyle Feigenbaum, CEO and co-founder of gourmet natural dog food startup Healthybud, removing the “de minimis” exemption would have less of an impact on its Canadian sales.

Feigenbaum says that a significant portion of its business could be stalled by Canada’s decision to impose retaliatory tariffs.

Healthybud makes dog treats with “superfood” ingredients, such as mushrooms and the evergreen shrub ashwagandha, which it claims carry health benefits for pets. The majority of its products, particularly the functional dog treats, are made in Canada—but a large portion of its exports go to the US.

The company also manufactures raw dog food using a special freeze-drying process. Feigenbaum explained that the “freeze-drying space in Canada is tiny” and that Healthybud has been unable to find a Canadian freeze-drying company willing to take them on due to limited capacity. 

Healthybud’s dog food is freeze-dried in Wisconsin, which the company says is its next best option. “Because we favour the quality of the product over where it’s made, we had to go to the US,” Feigenbaum told BetaKit. 

RELATED: SRTX temporarily lays off 40 percent of staff ahead of US tariff “worst-case scenario”

Feigenbaum said that 25 percent tariffs on US imports would not be sustainable for this part of his business. Healthybud wouldn’t be able to import products from the US and sell them in Canada profitably, and capacity issues would prevent the company from producing domestically. 

“Because we favour the quality of the product over where it’s made, we had to go to the US.”

Kyle Feigenbaum
Healthybud

“Although it’s beautiful to see Canada come together, and the support for business from Canadian consumers was felt, that’s not a long-term solution,” Feigenbaum said. “We are dependent on the US as a business.”

The CEO added that Healthybud is exploring an array of options over the next few weeks, including producing a similar dog food in Canada, rethinking its pricing strategy, and diversifying its export markets—but as an early-stage company, these are easier said than done. 

The Deputy Chief Trade Commissioner with Global Affairs Canada told tech CEOs yesterday that Canada is not “out of the woods” on the tariff threat yet, and that Canadian companies should be exploring diversification strategies to be less reliant on the US as an import source and an export market. 

Feigenbaum said he would have liked to see an “openness to negotiation” from the Canadian government, as well as speedier information availability for small businesses. 

“I think speed is extremely important, especially when entrepreneurs like myself are dealing with new information that potentially impacts our business within hours,” Feigenbaum said.

Bertulli called Canada’s retaliatory response “stupid” and said that Canada needs to reckon with being smaller than its southern neighbours. 

“We should be focused on taking down interprovincial trade barriers and getting our resources to global markets instead of getting into a trade war with the US,” Bertulli said.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke echoed this sentiment, posting on X on Sunday that he was “disappointed” by the US tariff threat and Canada’s proposed retaliation.

Feature image courtesy Healthybud.

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The Government of Canada officially launched the Canadian Genomics Strategy this week as it looks to advance commercialization and adoption in the sector.

The strategy is backed with $175.1 million CAD in federal funding to be dispensed over the next seven years through programming intended to strengthen Canada’s ability to translate genomics research into real-world applications. 

These include supporting the development of personalized medicine, advanced diagnostics, and novel therapeutics, such as vaccines. The strategy also looks to bolster the use of genomics in agriculture to improve crop resilience and livestock health, and in clean technology with biofuels and bioremediation techniques. 

Canada’s Global Innovation Clusters are receiving $20 million to expand their programming to advance genomics-specific initiatives.

“Today’s launch of the Canadian Genomics Strategy will help solidify Canada’s position as a global leader in genomics innovation and place our talented researchers, innovators and businesses at the forefront of this cutting-edge work,” Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement. 

Genomics is a field of biology that studies the entirety of an organism’s genetic information and how it interacts with itself.

The strategy was first announced with a $400 million commitment in the 2021 budget, $136.7 million of which went to federally backed investment vehicle Genome Canada to kick-start the new strategy. The Government of Canada held consultations with a total of 470 researchers, business leaders, and interested Canadians to help shape the strategy in summer 2022.  

While the Canadian Genomics Strategy aims to boost the industry’s commercialization, adoption, data accessibility, and talent pipeline, these aren’t the only concerns facing the country’s life sciences sector, according to AbCellera vice-president of business development Anne Stevens. 

RELATED: Vantage Points: Anne Stevens explains how Canada almost lost AbCellera to the US

On a panel at BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver in October, Stevens said that Canada needs policies and incentives that better match the realities of scaling in life sciences, including support for research and development, intellectual property  retention, and revenue growth. She described how AbCellera had once repeatedly questioned whether Canada provided the right environment for long-term growth, and eventually had to ask the Government of British Columbia and Canada to help the company stay. The federal and provincial government ended up providing $375 million to support construction of the company’s new $701-million biotech campus in 2023.  

As part of the strategy’s funding commitments, Genome Canada is getting another big boost of $96 million over five years to provide funding opportunities through its Genomic Applications Partnership Program, which provides support to projects that are ready to develop or adopt new domestic genomics tools and products. 

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Global Innovation Clusters are receiving $20 million over six years to expand their programming to advance genomics-specific initiatives. The Global Innovation Clusters program consists of Digital Technology (DIGITAL), Protein Industries, Advanced Manufacturing (NGen), Scale AI, and Oceans.

This week, DIGITAL announced it invested $6.1 million in a genomics project aligned with the Canadian Genomics Strategy. Led by DNAstack with support from industry partners, the $17.5 million project is developing an artificial intelligence-powered platform that aims to share and analyze omics and health data across the world. DIGITAL said in a statement the platform is meant to deliver better health outcomes for Canadians by making it easier to analyze exponentially growing volumes of distributed health data.

Feature image courtesy Yasir Naqvi via LinkedIn.

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After a year of testing the waters, Montréal-based point-of-sales and e-commerce giant Lightspeed said today that it’s not going private after all. Alongside its fiscal year 2025 Q3 earnings, the company revealed plans to move forward with a “full transformation plan,” including a $400-million USD share buyback following a strategic review. 

If the details of the plan sound familiar, that’s because they are: founder Dax Dasilva told BetaKit it’s “not a different plan” from what was outlined last year upon his return as CEO. Instead, it’s a double-down on his profitability promise.

But that promise has shifted from FY 2025 to “positive free cash flow within the next year.” The decision to remain public also triggered a sharp drop in Lightspeed’s stock price despite the impending stock buyback.  

BetaKit sat down with Dasilva to explore Lightspeed’s focus on its “two crown jewels,” its stock buyback plan, and why it’s hiring in its home city of Montréal.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to keep Lightspeed public, and were there buyers interested in purchasing the company?

We wanted to navigate what’s the best corporate structure for Lightspeed to embark on this transformation, we had a really great engagement  …and we did go into extensive discussions with a number of participants.

So all options were on the table.  

We had to weigh alternatives of proposals versus what we can achieve in the public market. And ultimately, management and the board concluded that we can maximize shareholder value by continuing to execute our conservation plan as a public company.

A lot of Canadian tech companies in recent years have returned to private markets. Why did it make more sense to stay public versus pursue a privatization deal? 

Ultimately, the decision was, ‘what is going to ensure the best path for success, for the transformation?’ The object of the process was not, you know, ‘let’s sell Lightspeed,’ or ‘let’s take Lightspeed private.’ It’s ‘what is going to create the most value in terms of the transformation?’ ‘What’s the best path to benefit shareholders?’ 

 We’re trying to provide the best outcome for that context.

RELATED: Lightspeed to stay public company after strategic review

Why are you splitting focus into retail in North America and hospitality in Europe? 

We have really amazing positions in both of those markets. And I think all of the other parts of our business that are in our efficiency portfolio, these are good businesses. But they don’t have as high of an ROI as those two growth engines for Lightspeed. They have the highest close rate, the best competitive dynamics, the best unit economics, and so to invest equally across all of the different parts of the business doesn’t make sense. 

We discovered in the industry review that Lightspeed doesn’t have just one crown jewel. We have two crown jewels. We have a proven right to win. They’re going to receive the bulk of investment in go-to-market and in product and technology. And that’s where a dollar spent is going to net the highest new location count and the highest software subscription revenue.

When do you expect to reach profitability on a net-income basis?

We’ve been adjusted EBITDA positive for, I believe, five quarters. We’re going to speak at Capital Market Day about how free cash flow will evolve in FY26 but we expect positive free cash flow within the next year.

What was the main motivation behind the share repurchase plan?

We have a lot of conviction in our plan. I think buying Lightspeed shares right now makes a ton of sense. It’s a vote for the transformation. 

We have more than enough cash on our balance sheet to fund programs like our capital business or to do some opportunistic M&A. We’re not focused on doing large, strategic M&A but  we have enough cash to be able to fund any opportunistic tokens that might be the right fit for Lightspeed.

On the earnings call this morning, it was noted that your transformation plan is very similar to what you outlined last year when you rejoined the company as CEO. Can you walk us through what’s different and what you’ve learned since then?

The plan is to grow in these two key markets and to optimize our other markets for profitability. So it’s not a different plan. In addition to that, we’re still optimizing to capture ICP merchants, which is $500,000 and above in terms of annual transaction volume. 

And so by focusing our resources on these two growth engines, that’s going to create more growth, it’s going to create more location count, more ARPU. And by optimizing the rest of the business for profitability, we’ll have growing EBITDA and free cash flow. That’s the shift in the financial profile that we want to see, and this is the way to get there. What we’ll be able to do at Capital Markets Day is map out what that looks like over several years. 

We’ve had really, really good reception from investors, like: ‘This is where Lightspeed’s strong. We hear lots of great things about the products in these particular areas. It doesn’t make any sense for you to compete head to head with a competitor like Toast in the US for hospitality, but you guys are it for Europe, we see you everywhere. And we see you everywhere in North America, in your focus verticals.’

RELATED: Lightspeed, Well Health hit new revenue milestones in latest quarterly earnings

Will the transformation plan include further restructuring or layoffs? 

We’re actually doing a ton of hiring. We expect a lot of positions to be hired in North American retail, and in European hospitality.

For North American retail, that’s outbound remote, so remote reps in the Montréal HQ calling out to businesses across North America. So hiring for retail, a lot of it will happen here in Montréal. 

Would a tariff-related drop in North American retail sales and transaction volume affect Lightspeed, and are you planning for that?

I think anything macro-economic that impacts retail and and even hospitality supply chains can have an impact. But it really depends on what gets tariffed and where individual businesses buy their supply, what their mix is, and whether their suppliers constitute an area that is tariffed or not. 

I think the best way that retail can prepare for a future where there are more trade wars is to have real visibility on your suppliers and supply chain. And perhaps have alternatives, you know, ready to go as a part of your technology stack, or have your technology stack be able to manage that for you, which you can do with Lightspeed’s Supplier Network. 

More than ever, what we’re offering with Lightspeed Supplier Network is future proofing businesses and giving them optionality and real flexibility when managing inventory and managing the brand suppliers they work with.

With files from Josh Scott. Feature image courtesy Elevate.

The post Dax Dasilva on staying public, Lightspeed’s plans for growth, and hiring in Montréal first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based FinTech giant Wealthsimple launched margin trading accounts for eligible clients this week. 

In a blog post announcing the launch, Wealthsimple vice-president of product Swapnil Parikh said that the waitlist for the feature has been one of its largest ever, and those selected for early testing have already accrued more than $40 million in margin balances. 

Margin trading is an investment strategy that lets investors borrow funds against their portfolio to increase purchasing power, much like a line of credit but specifically for investing. The brokerage holds the positions in a margin account as collateral for the loan but, if the account drops below a certain value, the brokerage can issue a margin call. This means that the account investor must add funds to the margin account by a certain date, or the brokerage can liquidate (cash out) an investor’s positions. 

RELATED: Can Wealthsimple build Canada’s largest financial institution?

Parikh acknowledged the risk that comes with margin accounts, so users must go through a “quick-yet-rigorous” approval process to open an account. 

Eligibility is based on self-reported assets, debts, and income, as well as the user’s financial situation at Wealthsimple, a company spokesperson told BetaKit in an email statement.  

Wealthsimple is providing risk-conscious features, such as a margin health tracker and new educational resources that outline the dos-and-don’ts for potential margin investors. For example, Wealthsimple advises against investing in speculative and low-returning assets when borrowing on margin, because investors need to outperform their interest rate or they could actually lose more money than if they hadn’t used margin at all.  

The margin health tracker shows users a daily gauge of their account’s risk level, and will provide a warning and next steps if they approach triggering a margin call. 

This past November, San Francisco-based Iconiq Capital purchased about $100 million in Wealthsimple stock in a secondary transaction with the challenger bank’s current and former employees. Iconiq, a family office that caters to many of Silicon Valley’s elite including Mark Zuckerberg, valued Wealthsimple at $5 billion, making it one of Canada’s most valuable private tech companies. 

Wealthsimple co-founders, CPO Brett Huneycutt and CEO Michael Katchen, joined The BetaKit Podcast in October to discuss the company’s 10-year journey, its recent growth, and how it plans to build “the largest Canadian financial institution.”

Feature image by Chloe Lukas, courtesy Wealthsimple.

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After completing a strategic review of its business and operations, Montréal-based Lightspeed Commerce has announced plans to stay public and execute “a full transformation plan,” to the dismay of investors.

Lightspeed’s transformation plan involves focusing on two “leading growth engines” for the company: retail in North America and hospitality in Europe. The company intends to expand the number of locations it serves, increase software and payments penetration, and optimize other areas of the company’s business for efficiency.

Lightspeed plans to buy back up to $400 million USD worth of its shares from investors.

Lightspeed said its board, a committee of independent directors, and executive leadership unanimously reached this decision, noting that this strategy “presents the best available path to maximizing value” for both the firm and its shareholders.

According to The Globe and Mail, Lightspeed’s largest shareholder, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, gave the move a nod of approval. But investors more broadly have not reacted favourably to the news: as of publication time, Lightspeed’s share price has dropped approximately 17 percent since markets closed yesterday.

The point-of-sale and commerce technology company confirmed its strategic review in September 2024 following reports that it was exploring options, including a potential sale that might have seen it join the growing ranks of Canadian tech firms exiting public markets. Today’s announcement, which came alongside the release of Lightspeed’s fiscal third-quarter 2025 earnings, indicates that a go-private deal or acquisition is not on the immediate horizon.

As part of its transformation plan, Lightspeed intends to free up capital to invest in growth areas and conduct a share repurchase program to return up to $400 million USD in cash to shareholders. The company already had authorization to buy back $100 million of shares and intends to do so immediately, while also expanding the program by an additional $300 million, subject to market conditions.

In a letter to shareholders, Lightspeed founder and CEO Dax Dasilva indicated that profitable growth remains the firm’s top priority. Going forward, Lightspeed, which is currently adjusted earnings before income, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) positive but operating at a loss, intends to prioritize product and go-to-market investments in its two key growth markets, North American retail and European hospitality.

RELATED: Lightspeed confirms strategic review of business as company reportedly explores sale

Lightspeed intends to hold its rescheduled Capital Markets Day on March 26 to provide a more comprehensive update on its transformation plan and its operational and financial impact. The company previously postponed the event last fall due to its strategic review.

Founded in 2005, Lightspeed sells point-of-sale and commerce software and hardware to restaurants, retailers, and hospitality providers. The company is dual-listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ‘LSPD.’

Lightspeed’s stock has fallen approximately 90 percent from its COVID-19 pandemic high in September 2021. It dropped precipitously amid the broader tech downturn, a fall fuelled at least in part by an October 2021 short-seller report critical of some of Lightspeed’s metrics. Since then, the company has sought to strike the right balance between revenue growth and profitability to woo investors.

Lightspeed’s strategic review shortly followed founder Dasilva’s return as CEO in February 2024 in response to shareholder feedback. Lightspeed board chair Patrick Pichette, who led the board committee overseeing the review, said in a statement that Lightspeed received a high level of interest and had extensive acquisition discussions with several potential suitors before deciding to remain a public company.

RELATED: How Dax Dasilva plans to get Lightspeed to $1 billion in revenue

When Dasilva joined The BetaKit Podcast last year, he promised that fiscal 2025 would be the year that Lightspeed became “a profitability story” and surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue.

Dasilva said that in the 12 months since he returned as CEO, Lightspeed has accelerated its software growth, improved payments penetration, established “a solid foundation for profitability,” maintained a strong balance sheet, and focused on areas where the company is confident that it can win.

Lightspeed had extensive acquisition discussions with several potential suitors before deciding to remain a public company.

Lightspeed laid off 200 employees, or approximately seven percent of its staff, in December as part of its second restructuring of 2024.

During fiscal Q3 2025, for the three months ending Dec. 31, 2024, Lightspeed generated $280 million in revenue, a 17 percent rise year-over-year at the low end of the $280-million to $285-million range it forecast in fiscal Q2.

Lightspeed’s net loss in fiscal Q3 was $26.6 million, down from $40.2 million during the same period last year. The company also grew its adjusted EBITDA to $16.6 million, up from $3.6 million year-over-year and ahead of its previous forecast of $14 million. Lightspeed held $661.6 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of fiscal Q3.

These results put Lightspeed on track to surpass its latest outlook for fiscal 2025. The company now expects to post revenue growth of approximately 20 percent and adjusted EBITDA of over $53 million in fiscal 2025.

Feature image courtesy Lightspeed Commerce.

The post Lightspeed to stay public company after strategic review first appeared on BetaKit.

The University of Waterloo is going to open a new research laboratory for artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain supported by a $1-million USD ($1.4 million CAD) donation from product-development company Interop Labs. 

Dubbed the GENESIS Lab, which stands for “Generative AI for Secure, Interconnected Systems,” the new laboratory will be located inside the university’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. According to Interop Labs, the new space aims to foster collaboration between academia and industry working at the intersection of AI and blockchain. 

Interop was founded by CEO and University of Waterloo associate professor Sergey Gorbunov in 2021, who is also the initial developer of the Axelar Web3 interoperability network. Axelar is a platform that allows applications to communicate with each other across different blockchain infrastructures. It raised a $35-million USD Series B round at a $1-billion valuation in 2022. 

“Superior capabilities powered by AI, coupled with global distribution and payments rails offered by blockchain systems, demand new attention to how systems are built and used,” Gorbunov said in a statement. “Waterloo is uniquely positioned to address these challenges, given its amazing talent, open innovation principles and track record.”

RELATED: University of Waterloo’s Velocity moves out of the Garage & into the Arena

The lab will look to attract research talent to the university by offering industry seminars and postgraduate scholarships, as well as 12 PhD fellowships and six undergraduate fellowships administered by the student-run organization Waterloo Blockchain. The non-profit university club provides an environment for students to learn about Web3 development, on-chain analytics, and research.

Interop said the new facility follows a similar initiative at Stanford University this past December. The school struck a partnership with Eliza Labs to help researchers study how AI agents can transform digital currency systems. The partnership uses Eliza Labs’ open-source autonomous agent development framework to research how AI agents can establish trust, co-ordinate actions, and make decisions within decentralized financial systems.

Feature image courtesy Waterloo Blockchain.

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Calgary-based healthtech startup RetinaLogik has closed $1.1 million CAD in convertible note financing and secured a Class II medical device licence from Health Canada.

Now, armed with regulatory approval and fresh capital for its portable eye test product, RetinaLogik has set its sights on accelerating its North American expansion.

RetinaLogik co-founder and CEO Abdullah Sarhan described Class II approval as a “major milestone” that will aid the company’s expansion into more applications and markets.

CEO says approval will aid startup’s expansion into more applications and markets.

In an exclusive interview with BetaKit, Sarhan said this certification opens the door for RetinaLogik to move beyond just screening and into diagnostics and monitoring. He also expects it to make RetinaLogik’s path to growing internationally “smoother.”

RetinaLogik classified this round as an extension to the startup’s initial, $783,000 pre-seed round last summer. It was co-led by Spring Impact Capital and the University of Calgary’s UCeed with support from fellow existing backers Startup TNT and HaloHealth, plus new investors ScaleGood Fund, Local Investing YYC, Mount Rundle Club, and undisclosed angels.

This brings RetinaLogik’s total dilutive financing to just over $2 million. The startup has also secured nearly $1.6 million in non-dilutive capital, including $270,000 in grant funding from Alberta Innovates in July 2024. RetinaLogik closed its pre-seed extension in December and secured its certification from Health Canada that same month after about a year of legwork.

Founded in 2021 by Sarhan and COO Julia St.Amand, RetinaLogik aims to increase access to vision care and improve clinic efficiency with its flagship eye test product, which leverages virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and existing hardware.

RetinaLogik’s platform helps eye care professionals in optometry and ophthalmology clinics collect and analyze visual field data using a portable VR headset and advanced analytics software. While wearing RetinaLogik’s device, patients are guided through a tutorial in their preferred language and then various vision tests. According to the company, this means tests can be completed from anywhere inside a clinic without supervision, and specialists can view the results remotely.

“Current [eye testing] equipment in clinics [is] not built for efficiency,” Sarhan claimed, noting that existing devices require lots of maintenance, technician support, and in some cases, dedicated rooms. “We are trying to replace or do the majority of those exams on [VR] instead.”

RELATED: Fuelled by new funding, RetinaLogik wants to prevent vision loss with AI and VR

According to the CEO, the flexibility of RetinaLogik’s device is particularly important because it enables eye care professionals to conduct more eye exams more cost-effectively.

“Over the past two years, the RetinaLogik team has built a groundbreaking VR platform that delivers unparalleled clinical reliability for functional eye exams,” UCeed Funds operating partner Nikhil Bedi said in a statement. “Their innovative approach—administering multiple sequential exams without intervention from technicians and at unprecedented speed—represents a transformative step forward in the future of eye care.”

Before this milestone, RetinaLogik’s device was already cleared for screening in Canada. According to Sarhan, Class II approval enables it to be used for monitoring and diagnostics. In turn, he said this will allow the startup to provide eye care clinics with better analytics to help them make more informed decisions while trying to detect conditions like glaucoma.

Since announcing its initial pre-seed financing last summer, Sarhan said RetinaLogik has been working to expand its presence in eye care clinics across Canada and the United States (US).

RELATED: University of Calgary’s “venture philanthropy fund” UCeed targets pre-seed funding gap

During this time, Sarhan said the company has also registered with the US Food and Drug Administration—which clears it for screening and monitoring—published additional studies, and developed more eye exams.

RetinaLogik plans to use its latest financing to continue improving its platform and help accelerate its expansion in Canada and the US, where it has already begun developing a presence.

Today, RetinaLogik offers five types of screening exams, including visual acuity—measuring how well someone can identify visual details from a specific distance—and colour vision. Sarhan said the startup plans to double the number of exams it provides with this capital. To support these goals, the company intends to grow its now more than 10-person team.

CORRECTION (02/06/25): This story has been updated to clarify that tests using RetinaLogik’s tech can be conducted without supervision.

Feature image courtesy RetinaLogik.

The post RetinaLogik ready to execute on vision with $1.1-million financing, Health Canada Class II approval first appeared on BetaKit.

Saskatoon-based Rayhawk Technologies has closed a $3-million CAD seed round for its autonomous rail car loading technology. 

The all-equity round was led by Emmertech, an AgTech fund created by Conexus Venture Capital in 2021, with participation from an undisclosed number of individuals connected to the founders and the company, Rayhawk CFO Matt Petrow told BetaKit in an email statement. The company said it will use the funding to further the commercialization of its technology. 

Petrow told BetaKit the company’s board was restructured as part of the round, and will be composed of himself, CEO Tom Boehm, Emmertech managing partner Kyle Scott, and two independent seats yet to be filled.  

Founded in 2020, Rayhawk’s proprietary technology uses sensors on a crane-like structure to automate the opening, inspecting, closing, and sealing of cargo railcar lids. The company says its technology can run all day, every day and prevents people from having to work in hazardous environments on top of railcars, averting the risks of falls, crush points, and extreme weather. 

Railways carry a large amount of Canada’s raw goods like grains, ores, and food across the country. According to Statistics Canada, railcars carried more than 30.7 million metric tonnes of goods in the country in November 2024, 7.5 million of which were iron ores, concentrates, and coal.

RELATED: Emmertech closes $60 million to grow “dominant” Canadian AgTech companies

According to Petrow, Rayhawk has installations deployed with two different customers in Saskatchewan – one in the mining sector and another in grain handling. The company said it would use its new funding to scale its operations to meet customer demand, with a focus on grain terminals, food processing plants, port facilities, and mining sites.

“We see great potential for Rayhawk to redefine industry standards and, based on my own personal experience flipping rail car lids at a grain terminal, to make a real, positive impact in the industry,” Emmertech managing partner Scott said in a statement. 

Petrow said that the round is Rayhawk’s first-ever external equity round, with the company receiving $350,000 in debt financing from BDC in 2023 and a $450,000 grant in 2022 from Innovation Saskatchewan’s SAIF. In a statement, Warren Kaeding, the minister responsible for the provincial agency, said Rayhawk proves that the province can be a leader in developing and producing solutions that transform key industries like agriculture and mining.

Innovation Saskatchewan is an anchor investor in Rayhawk’s lead investor Emmertech, having contributed $15 million to its AgTech fund. The fund closed in 2021 with the aim of fuelling early-stage investment in the AgTech sector and making Canada a “dominant” player on the global stage.

In early 2024, Conexus transitioned the fund’s leadership to a new entity created by Emmertech’s management team to oversee its day-to-day operations, but remained the fund’s general partner. Emmertech has invested in companies such as Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. farm management software startup IntelliCulture and mushroom-picking robot startup 4AG Robotics.

UPDATE (02/06/2024): This story has been updated with information and commentary from Rayhawk CFO Matt Petrow.

Feature image courtesy Rayhawk Technologies.

The post Emmertech leads Rayhawk seed round to automate dangerous rail car loading work first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based textile manufacturer SRTX is cutting 40 percent of its workforce in anticipation of proposed United States (US) tariffs that CEO Katherine Homuth says would impose a 41-percent duty on some product exports to the US.

“The impending US tariff changes and delays in closing the final portion of our fundraise have led to tremendous financial uncertainty.”

Katherine Homuth
SRTX

In a Substack post on Feb. 5, the day after US president Donald Trump announced a 30-day pause on the tariffs, Homuth wrote she was placing roughly 40 percent of SRTX’s 350 employees and full-time contractors on temporary layoff for up to six months. She said the cuts would allow SRTX to continue production and sales “at forecasted levels for 2025”  with a minimum of personnel. 

“With 85 [percent] of our sales in the US, and tens of millions invested in our Canadian factory, the impending US tariff changes and delays in closing the final portion of our fundraise have led to tremendous financial uncertainty,” Homuth wrote. 

Homuth confirmed SRTX workers were placed on a temporary layoff. If the layoff period exceeds six months in Québec, then the employer must pay severance. 

RELATED: Deputy Chief Trade Commissioner on tariffs: Canada “not out of the woods yet”

SRTX is headquartered in Montréal, with a 300,000-sq.ft. factory in the municipality of Pointe-Claire, Que. According to Homuth, the proposed 25-percent tariffs on Canadian imports would slap a 16-percent additional tax on its shipments to US retailers and a total 41-percent tax on consumer orders. 

Though SRTX manufactures its products in Canada, it does not meet the “Made in Canada” requirements under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement because around nine percent of its raw materials are imported, Homuth said.

The US is set to eliminate the “de minimis” exemption as part of its proposed tariffs on Canadian imports. This exemption allows each person to ship up to $800 worth of goods into the US duty-free each day. Fast-fashion giants such as Temu and Shein rely on this exemption for direct-to-consumer (D2C) shipments.

For SRTX, eliminating the exemption would trigger a 41-percent tax on these D2C orders: the 16-percent duty plus the new 25-percent tariff on Canadian imports. Homuth told BetaKit that she learned about the potential cost of these tariffs on Sunday. 

SRTX, which makes the Sheertex brand of pantyhose marketed as “the world’s strongest tights” using a polymer used in bulletproof fabric, recently secured $70 million CAD in convertible note financing to grow its vertically integrated manufacturing in Québec, anchored by provincial investment agency Investissement Québec.

Sheertex makes its pantyhose out of a uniquely durable polymer called ultrahigh-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), which has been called a ballistic-grade “super material” several times stronger than steel wire.

RELATED: SRTX’s Katherine Homuth wants to solve for everything 

In addition to its rip-resistant tights, SRTX sells two B2B products: Cortex, a software-based manufacturing solution, and Watertex, a patent-pending water-repellent fabric.

The layoffs come as the SRTX founder has been vocal on social media about her fundraising journey, sharing its hurdles and soliciting community feedback. Homuth has said that the company must raise $23 million USD in equity by the end of Q1 to finance its operations as it works towards fulfilling wholesale orders before it receives payment for them later this year. 

Homuth told BetaKit that SRTX was looking to close the remaining financing by the end of February, but that the US tariff announcement “uprooted that plan” as the company is now rushing to send product to the US and bring in US yarns within the tariff-free 30-day window. SRTX would then only need to worry about the 25-percent tariff rather than the 16-percent duty should they be imposed, Homuth said. 

Eighty-five percent of SRTX’s export market is in the US, which the company was able to achieve through tens of millions of dollars in marketing and collaboration with US retail partners, Homuth said. Pivoting its focus to Europe would be impossible without more funding, she added. 

Homuth said on The BetaKit Podcast ahead of Trump’s official tariff announcement that Canadian startups should “have a plan A through D,” adding that the “uncertainty” presents the biggest challenge.

Feature image courtesy SRTX.

The post SRTX temporarily lays off 40 percent of staff ahead of US tariff “worst-case scenario” first appeared on BetaKit.

Aaron Fowler, Deputy Chief Trade Commissioner with Global Affairs Canada, told hundreds of business leaders concerned about the United States (US) tariff threat that Canada requires an economic diversification strategy in a video call yesterday.  

Fowler clarified that tariffs only affect physical goods crossing the border, and do not apply to digital services such as subscriptions.

Fowler has worked in the Canada-US trade space at Global Affairs Canada for nearly 20 years, with experience acting as Canada’s chief negotiator for the dairy provisions of The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) and as the executive director of tariffs when the first Trump administration hit Canada with duties on steel and aluminum. 

The conversation took place on a call organized by the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the US had agreed to a 30-day pause of its threatened tariff measures. Fowler provided insight into Canada’s tariff preparation, clarified their impact, and spoke to how Canada could improve its economic resilience. 

“I don’t think that we are going to get through the woods on this for the duration of this administration,” Fowler said, “because of the nature of how they like to operate, which is to create a certain amount of chaos and instability in otherwise stable systems, and see what fruit they can shake out of the trees.” 

RELATED: US pauses tariffs on Canada as two countries work through new border commitments

Fowler said a lot of work is happening to mitigate the impacts of the trade crisis by creating a business-friendly operating environment in Canada and re-evaluating whether certain programs need to be expanded or adapted. He also said the next 30 days need to be spent wisely on concocting a diversification strategy that makes Canada less reliant on the US, both as a market and as a source of supply. 

“Canada enjoys amongst the greatest access to global markets of any country in the world,” Fowler claimed. “We have a suite of 15 [free trade agreements] with 50 countries that are not the United States, representing about 1.5 billion consumers around the world and countries with GDP that accounts for about two-thirds of the world’s total economic output.”

When answering attendee questions, Fowler clarified that tariffs only affect physical goods crossing the border, not digital services such as subscriptions. However, Fowler added the caveat that how tariffs apply is an administrative decision of the United States. 

While speaking of ways Canada can reduce its historic reliance on the US, Fowler said it will be a challenge for Canada to persuade international investors that the country continues to have an “excellent value proposition.” He pointed to the country’s stable operating environment, low political risk, highly educated workforce, and duty-free access to 50 countries as selling points.

The federal government also has a strong suite of supports that help Canadian businesses reach international markets, which up to this point have been very focused on the US, Fowler said. Now that the world is “a bit of a different place,” he explained that Canada will analyze whether its resources are allocated effectively or if they are adequately capitalized to provide the level of support Canadian businesses will need. 

When asked if Canada should reassess the reliability of the US as a stable trading partner, Fowler said that the Government of Canada is “not presently advising Canadian companies not to do business in the United States.” 

“[CCI] members can read the newspaper,” Fowler said. “They understand that these are very fluid times, and they will have to reach their own conclusions as to whether they want to maintain the exposure to the United States that they currently have, or if they want to find ways of diversifying their own operations.” 

Feature image courtesy Government of Canada. 

The post Deputy Chief Trade Commissioner on tariffs: Canada “not out of the woods yet” first appeared on BetaKit.

Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, has led an all-equity round in Toronto-based advertising platform StackAdapt that values the company near $2.5-billion USD. 

Intrepid Growth Partners, along with four undisclosed investors, also participated in the round. Launched by ex-Canada Pension Plan Investment Board leader Mark Machin last year, Intrepid said the round marks its first-ever investment. 

StackAdapt signalled its intention to go public when it hired CFO Cassandra Hudson in Sept. 2024. 

According to The Globe and Mail, the round was mostly secondary as new investors purchased stakes from existing investors at a valuation of roughly $2.5-billion USD. The Globe and Mail also reported that StackAdapt is expected to surpass $500-million USD in revenue and $125-million USD in operating earnings this year. StackAdapt confirmed to BetaKit that the valuation, revenue, and earnings numbers are “within range,” but declined to confirm any secondary component. 

StackAdapt said the round comes as it looks to scale its research and development efforts, increase its innovation capacity, and expand its global presence, but declined to disclose to BetaKit how it would use the capital.

The round marks yet another Canadian tech company holding a large secondary round in the past year—joining Wealthsimple, Clio, and Safe Software—in lieu of an initial public offering.

When BetaKit asked StackAdapt if it is looking to go public, a company spokesperson said it’s “within the realm of possibility in the short to medium term,” but the company is still focused on building as a private entity for now.

RELATED: Clio’s record-breaking funding round explains 2024’s public market exodus

StackAdapt previously signalled its intent to go public this past September when it tapped Cassandra Hudson as its new CFO. The company cited the former EngageSmart CFO’s experience in growing technology companies, guiding their strategic acquisitions, and taking them public. 

This week’s fundraise follows a previously undisclosed $300-million USD ($429-million CAD) investment made by Summit Partners in 2022 at a valuation of $1-billion USD. StackAdapt also confirmed to BetaKit that the 2022 round valued the company “within the range” of what has been reported but declined to confirm the secondary component. 

Founded in 2014 by CEO Vitaly Pecherskiy, CTO Yang Han, and Ildar Shar, StackAdapt says it currently has a global team of more than 1,300 employees across 19 global markets. The company claims its demand-side advertising platform is used by thousands of brands and agencies around the world to help plan, execute, and gather insights from advertising campaigns.  

Feature image courtesy StackAdapt via LinkedIn. 

The post Teachers’ Venture Growth leads round valuing StackAdapt near $2.5-billion USD first appeared on BetaKit.

With elections looming, a group of Canadian technology leaders has teamed up to launch a new platform for entrepreneurs to share policy ideas with the help of experts and artificial intelligence (AI).

Build Canada bills itself as “a platform of bold ideas for growth, innovation, and prosperity” proposed by successful Canadian entrepreneurs with deep knowledge in relevant areas.

The initiative is led by a collection of Canadian tech workers, including Ben Parry, Daniel Debow, Lucy Hargreaves, and Melody Kuo. Parry, who writes the Skillful Notes newsletter, is a former Ritual employee and Restaurant Brands International director; Debow is the co-founder of Rypple and an ex-Shopify VP; Hargreaves is former chief of staff to the associate finance minister and current VP at Patch; Kuo worked product roles at Uber and CloudKitchens.

28 Canadian tech entrepreneurs are listed as supporters, including Wealthsimple’s Michael Katchen, Shopify’s Tobi Lütke, and SRTX’s Katherine Homuth.

The policy platform lists 28 Canadian tech entrepreneurs as supporters on its website. This group includes Wind Mobile founder and Globalive founder and chair Anthony Lacavera, Koho founder and CEO Daniel Eberhard, Cohere co-founder and CTO Ivan Zhang, SRTX founder and CEO Katherine Homuth, Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Michael Katchen, Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke, and Jet Cooper co-founder and BetaKit chair Satish Kanwar.

In an interview with BetaKit, Debow said the supporters named on Build Canada’s site include Canadian tech entrepreneurs that either already have or intend to introduce policy memos in the coming weeks, and he expects this group’s ranks to expand over time. Policy recommendations will focus on priorities like boosting Canadian exports, increasing productivity, and tax reforms.

Build Canada’s team intends to take big policy ideas suggested by Canadian tech entrepreneurs, using a combination of humans and AI tools—including a custom large language model workflow—to research and draft memos, with final review from policy experts before publication. “It’s an experiment in how we could be doing things,” Debow said.

Debow declined to name the policy experts overseeing this work, noting only that they are a group of people with experience in government for multiple political parties who “know how the policy machine works.”

The first four policy pieces Build Canada has published include memos by League founder and CEO Michael Serbinis on expanding health record access and Passage founder and CEO—and ApplyBoard co-founder—Martin Basiri on immigration reform. Build Canada plans to share more memos on a weekly basis.

The Logic first reported on the efforts behind Build Canada earlier this month while charting the many Canadian tech leaders who have begun courting a potential future Conservative federal government after souring on the Liberals and their failed innovation strategy. This group includes Debow’s former boss, Lütke, who has recently shared Conservative videos on X and criticized Canada’s tariff response. For his part, Conservative leader Pierre Polievre has publicly praised Lütke and Shopify.

RELATED: A requiem for the feds’ (failed) innovation strategy

As the threat of United States (US) tariffs looms, Canadian tech leaders frustrated by the Liberal government and the country’s longstanding productivity woes are eager for new avenues to organize and address these issues. Debow said that the group behind Build Canada wanted to do “something beyond yelling at each other in chat rooms and tweeting.”

South of the border, tech leaders like Elon Musk have cozied up to Republicans and US President Donald Trump in the hopes of gaining access to power and policy levers. Since Trump took office, Musk has rapidly consolidated control over large swaths of the US government as Democrats have raised alarms about conflicts of interest and a lack of congressional approval.

Debow claimed that Build Canada was not inspired by its Silicon Valley peers, and argued that many involved with Build Canada have a long history of engaging with Canadian policy ideas.

He noted that it is difficult for politicians to take high-level ideas and turn them into policies that can be implemented, so Build Canada set out to introduce them “in a way that [they] can be consumed by the policy process.”

Build Canada’s launch comes weeks after the Council of Canadian Innovators announced a new think tank focused on advancing innovation policy and promoting economic nationalism. Several of the listed Build Canada supporters are also leaders of CCI member companies.

RELATED: CCI launches Balsillie-backed innovation policy institute Canadian SHIELD

Debow does not see Build Canada as competitive with CCI’s new policy institute as it has shorter-term goals. “This is about a particular election cycle,” Debow said. “This is about rapidly getting ideas out there so that people can debate and discuss them.” 

“We welcome constructive engagement by our members and wider industry with public policy issues, especially on topics related to Canada’s prosperity,” CCI president Benjamin Bergen told BetaKit.

At the moment, Build Canada’s work is geared largely towards the parties writing policies ahead of the federal election later this year, but Debow also sees potential for the platform to play a role in sharing policy ideas at the provincial level (Ontario has an election slated for the end of this month).

The Build Canada site states that it is not a lobbying group, and does not represent “any special interest groups.” The organization claims to be non-partisan, noting that its builders and volunteers support various parties, and its proposals are available to all.

Following the publication of this story, Build Canada has added Shopify president Harley Finkelstein to its supporter list and Ana Curic as a team member. Curic is a senior consultant and registered lobbyist at Ottawa-based government relations firm Maple Leaf Strategies.

Feature image courtesy of the Build Canada website.

The post Canadian tech leaders launch Build Canada for AI-refined policy ideas from entrepreneurs first appeared on BetaKit.

MaRS Discovery District has appointed Grace Lee Reynolds as its new permanent CEO, letting her shed the interim label before she even officially takes the role. 

Following the surprise resignation of CEO Alison Nankivell in December, MaRS announced that Nankivell would continue to serve as its leader until Feb. 5, 2025, at which point Lee Reynolds would take on the job in an interim capacity. Instead, Lee Reynolds, who has over a decade of  experience at the Toronto-based innovation hub in roles such as head of development and CFO, has been tapped for the permanent position. 

“As we look ahead, we are confident that Graceʼs leadership will help MaRS strengthen its position as a unified, agile innovation hub that fuels venture growth, fosters commercialization, and accelerates Ontario and Canadaʼs global competitiveness,ˮ MaRS board chair Annette Verschuren said in a statement. 

MaRS outlined Lee Reynolds’s strategic priorities as CEO, which include enhancing support systems to “increase the odds of success” for science and technology ventures, co-space planning, and expanded funding models. 

MaRS added that support for science and technology ventures includes providing infrastructure, expertise, and resources to help these companies scale, while its co-space planning aims to bring together researchers, startups, and private partners through a collaborative hub at Torontoʼs Discovery District. Finally, Lee Reynolds is looking to expand MaRS’ funding models by growing private-sector partnership and courting philanthropic capital. 

RELATED: Alison Nankivell departs MaRS for Export Development Canada

“The work we do with ventures, our strong public-private partnerships, and the power of our community and place are among our greatest strengths,” Lee Reynolds said in a statement. “As we look to the future, MaRS will continue to provide the space, connections and expertise that ventures need to scale.ˮ

Growing MaRS’s private-sector partnerships was a significant focus of Lee Reynolds’s predecessor’s goals as well. In an October 2024 interview with BetaKit following staff cuts, Nankivell said she was trying to reset MaRS’ business model, which included a target to achieve a 50/50 split between public and private funding over “the next few years.”

In addition to Lee Reynolds, MaRS is adding Helen Angus and Andrew Joyner as board members. 

Angus previously served as Ontarioʼs Deputy Minister of Health, MaRS said in a statement, pointing to her experience in healthcare, public policy, and government relations. MaRS added that Joyner is a managing director at Tricon Residential, where he leads the Canadian rental housing portfolio of the real estate company, and brings a background in private equity and real estate investment.

“Helen and Andrew bring invaluable expertise in public-private collaboration, emerging technologies, and scaling organizations,ˮ MaRS board member Claudette McGowan said in a statement. “Their insights will help guide MaRS as we enter this next phase of impact and growth.ˮ

Feature image courtesy MaRS.

The post MaRS appoints Grace Lee Reynolds as permanent CEO, adds board members  first appeared on BetaKit.

With cyberattacks on the rise, businesses are turning to insurance as a line of defence. But a new study by TELUS reveals that when it comes to this newer form of insurance, expectations aren’t meeting reality.

TELUS’ Canadian Cyber Insurance Study, which surveyed over 500 businesses, found that more than 70 percent of respondents that have cyber insurance reported receiving payouts smaller than expected after filing a claim, and nearly one-quarter reported receiving no payout at all.

“There’s a collaboration that needs to happen between insurers and customers in a way you don’t see with other forms of insurance.”

Martin Bélanger, Vice President of Technical Sales at TELUS

Martin Bélanger, Vice President of Technical Sales at TELUS, explained that this expectation gap stems partly from companies not understanding which incidents or recovery costs their policies should cover. Compounding the issue is the fact that cyber insurance is still a relatively nascent industry, and coverage varies widely between providers.

“Home insurance has been around for decades, so insurers and policy holders know what to protect, but we’re not there yet with cyber insurance,” Bélanger said.

One of the biggest challenges for businesses navigating cyber insurance is underestimating the full cost of a data incident, according to Bélanger. Whether it’s a data breach, where sensitive information is stolen, or a denial-of-service attack, many organizations lack the experience in handling large-scale events, which often leads to policies with insufficient reimbursement limits or narrow coverage.

TELUS’s study found that major cyber incidents—the kind that lead to insurance claims—cost businesses that file a claim an average of $6.5 million each, but the costs associated with these incidents run well beyond technical fixes.

“There’s the fact that your business will be out of operation for any number of days or weeks,” Bélanger noted. “There’s an investigating cost, a mitigating cost, and recovery costs you need to add to the breach. And if you don’t pay to fix the issue, you can be sure the hackers will be back.”

The myth of ‘set it and forget it’

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make, according to Bélanger, is treating cyber insurance as a one-stop solution.

Insurance companies typically require businesses to meet rigorous security standards, which can be difficult to maintain as organizations grow. Falling out of step with these standards can result in reduced payouts—or no payout at all.

This is where many companies stumble. Insurance companies typically require businesses to strengthen their processes and controls before finalizing a policy, according to the study. Failure to meet these requirements could result in the insurer voiding the policy or excluding certain aspects from coverage. Proactive businesses, however, can benefit by starting the insurance conversation early.

TELUS’s research found that insurance payouts, on average, cover only 60 percent of a cyberattack’s costs. To bridge that gap, Bélanger recommends outsourcing cybersecurity to a managed services provider that can ensure compliance and help prevent attacks altogether.

“Businesses want the best price for the level of coverage they need,” says Bélanger. “To do that, you need to have the best posture in cybersecurity as possible, which involves investing in your technology, making sure you have the right processes, the right patch management processes and that your people are getting trained on a regular basis.”

For businesses looking to close the gap between expectations and reality, Bélanger recommends starting with three areas: people, processes, and technology. A thorough assessment of these areas can reveal vulnerabilities that need addressing before approaching an insurer.

A managed security provider, such as TELUS, can conduct these assessments, identify risks, build a roadmap to improving security, and continuously monitor systems and servers to block any suspicious activity from breaching the network. According to Bélanger, they can also help lower insurance premiums. 

“One of our customers was able to challenge their premium because of the assessment we did,” Bélanger says. “The company showed them the third-party assessment of their posture, which was better than the questionnaire the insurer used, and their premium and deductible went down.”

Bélanger said companies that already have a policy and are worried about whether they’re compliant should consider a managed security services arrangement, where a provider can oversee any security needs and make sure the company’s cyber practices and insurance policy are aligned. 

When preparing to speak with a potential insurer, Bélanger suggests clarifying key details, such as confirming whether the policy protects sensitive data, the type of support provided during an incident, your responsibilities after an event, and the maximum coverage available. It’s also important to ask if the policy includes coverage for multiple incidents within a year.

“The delineation of what’s your responsibility and what’s their responsibility has to be clearly laid out in the contract,” Bélanger added. “That’s often overlooked in insurance policies.”

A two-way street

Once a policy is in place, Bélanger said businesses should keep insurers informed about any upgrades to their security systems, adding that  proactive measures can lead to better rates during renewal.

“There’s a collaboration that needs to happen between insurers and customers in a way you don’t see with other forms of insurance,” Bélanger said. “Make sure they know what you’re doing and where you’re investing. Building that relationship is critical.”

Bélanger said cyber insurance is ultimately about balance: businesses need confidence that their coverage will protect them when it counts, while insurers must set realistic boundaries to manage risk.

“At TELUS, we want to help Canadian organizations have a better posture and be more proactive, so there are fewer incidents and then fewer payouts from insurers,” he said. “If we can do that, then maybe hackers will focus elsewhere because they know we’re protecting our business better than anywhere else.”

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Download the TELUS Canadian Cyber Insurance Study to get more insights on how Canadian companies are using cyber insurance. 

All images provided by TELUS.

The post A reality check on cyber insurance first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Waabi has teamed up with one of its investors, Swedish automaker Volvo, to build and commercialize self-driving trucks.

As part of this long-term strategic partnership, Waabi and Volvo Autonomous Solutions plan to vertically integrate Waabi’s virtual driver system, the Waabi Driver, into Volvo’s autonomous truck, the Volvo VNL Autonomous. These Waabi-powered Volvo trucks will be manufactured at Volvo’s New River Valley, Virginia factory as they prepare to hit the road for testing this year.

In an interview with BetaKit, Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun described the deal as “a massive step forward” for the AV startup. “It’s the last piece that we needed in order to really have a solution that can scale,” the Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) leader said.

“It’s the last piece that we needed in order to really have a solution that can scale.”

To start, Waabi has set its sights on long-haul trucking, where it sees room to help address the industry’s labour shortages, safety concerns, and supply chain issues. Waabi currently has commercial operations with humans aboard on public roads in Texas.

Urtasun previously told BetaKit that following Waabi’s $275-million CAD Series B round last year, Waabi had the tech, team, partners, and cash necessary to take the drivers out of its vehicles, achieve Level 4 autonomy, and start bringing completely autonomous trucks to market in 2025.

According to Urtasun, there are two main components required to realize self-driving trucking at scale. The first is the tech to drive those trucks, which Waabi has developed. The second, she said, is the ability to vertically integrate this tech with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) into a purpose-built truck with redundant systems, because retrofitting existing vehicles to be driven by robots is not a viable path to bringing a robust, safe, and scalable product to market.

The long-term strategic partnership with Volvo gives Waabi the latter component. Volvo represents Waabi’s “first big go-to-market partner.” Urtasun said Waabi decided to work with Volvo given its engineering strength and safety leadership. “Together, we will push the envelope of the future of self-driving trucks,” she added.

“Waabi is at the forefront of developing self-driving technologies leveraging the full power of AI,” Volvo Autonomous Solutions chief product officer Shahrukh Kazmi said in a statement. “We are excited to integrate Waabi’s cutting-edge technology into our autonomous truck platform and work together to jointly develop a safe, efficient, and scalable autonomous transport solution.”

RELATED: Waabi fuels up to launch fully driverless trucks in 2025 with $275-million CAD Series B

Volvo Group Venture Capital became an investor in Waabi in January 2023 and later participated in the AV startup’s Series B financing in June 2024. Since Volvo’s initial investment in Waabi, the two firms have been working together to establish the technical and commercial foundation for today’s agreement. 

During this time, they have been developing the pieces necessary to make Waabi Driver compatible with the Volvo VNL Autonomous, from harnesses to cooling, power, and interfaces, as well as their go-to-market strategy, Urtasun said. 

The latter includes a “driver-as-a-service” business model where Waabi and Volvo sell trucks to carriers and shippers with private routes and charge them on a per-mile basis. Urtasun said Volvo also intends to prove this tech and operate a fleet of these trucks themselves, making Volvo a customer as well as a partner.

This deal is not exclusive, and Urtasun said that Waabi intends to partner with other OEMs “in the near future.” Waabi has partnered with other investors before, including backer Uber’s logistics arm Uber Freight and chip giant Nvidia. In addition to Volvo, two other investors linked to automotive OEMs also sit on Waabi’s cap table: Porsche SE and Scania Invest. Meanwhile, Volvo has also been working with AV company and fellow Waabi backer Aurora to build self-driving trucks.

RELATED: Volvo backs Waabi to accelerate driverless trucks commercialization

Waabi has raised over $389 million in total funding from a group that also includes BDC Capital, Export Development Canada, G2 Venture Partners, HarbourVest Partners, Incharge Capital Partners, IKEA’s Ingka Investments, Khosla Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Radical Ventures, and AI experts like Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, and Sanja Fidler.

Though that is a sizable sum, it pales in comparison to what others have spent developing self-driving tech to date. AVs have historically been cost-intensive to develop, difficult to scale, and created safety concerns. Years of limited progress on self-driving development, dangerous incidents, and tough economic conditions have fuelled what Urtasun previously described to BetaKit as a “winter of AV” where big players and billions in value were wiped out.

Waabi is betting on “next-generation AV 2.0,” a strategy that involves prioritizing generative AI in an end-to-end AV system that requires less road testing and comes with its own challenges. Waabi’s simulator, Waabi World, and generative AI have enabled the startup to virtually train Waabi Driver before it hits the road in an approach that Urtasun has argued is far cheaper, safer, and more scalable than traditional road testing-first development strategies.

Urtasun described GM’s recent shutdown of Cruise as another example of this and one that makes her more confident in Waabi’s strategy. She credited Alphabet-owned Waymo’s recent progress for helping fuel more positive sentiment about AVs but still expects more consolidation across the industry going forward.

Feature image courtesy Waabi.

The post Waabi inks partnership with investor Volvo to develop and deploy self-driving trucks first appeared on BetaKit.

The Canada-US trade war has a 30-day détente. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that US tariffs on Canada would be paused for at least 30 days after multiple discussions with US President Donald Trump today. 

Following a second phone call with President Trump this afternoon, Trudeau announced new commitments to securing the Canada-US border, including appointing a “Fentanyl Czar,” listing drug cartels as “terrorists,”  and launching a Canada-US Joint Strike Force to crack down on “organized crime, fentanyl, and money laundering.” 

“Make no mistake, Canada and Ontario continue to stare down the threat of tariffs.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford

Canada also pledged $200 million toward a “new intelligence directive” to target organized crime and fentanyl. 

Trudeau reiterated Canada’s rollout of a $1.3-billion border plan for bolstered border security resources including helicopters, technology, and staff, as well as “enhanced coordination with our American partners.” 

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a statement on X that the province will also pause its “retaliatory measures” in response.

RELATED: Shopify CEO commits to ‘buy local’ features for Shop app after criticizing Canada’s tariff response

“If President Trump proceeds with tariffs, we won’t hesitate to remove American products off LCBO shelves or ban American companies from provincial procurement,” Ford said. 

“Make no mistake, Canada and Ontario continue to stare down the threat of tariffs. Whether it’s tomorrow, in a month or a year from now when we’re renegotiating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, President Trump will continue to use the threat of tariffs to get what he wants.”

Ford added that Canada is already feeling the impact of the proposed tariffs. In response, Ford mentioned projects that have already been paused or put in jeopardy, appearing to directly reference Ontario’s contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which he announced he would cancel earlier today as part of a broader ban on US contracts.

“The 30-day pause on U.S. tariffs represents a reprieve for the Canadian economy, but the threat remains just as clear and present,” Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), said in a statement. “This aggression was never just about border security and fentanyl, and we can count on Donald Trump to come back demanding more concessions from us later, backed by the same old threats.” 

Bergen said CCI was heartened by Canadian business leaders and politicians taking a “unified approach” to supporting homegrown businesses. He added that Canada should take the next 30 days to build up “economic resilience” and develop policies to respond to US economic threats.

On Feb. 1, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to implement 25-percent tariffs on virtually all Canadian goods and 10-percent tariffs on Canadian energy starting Tuesday. The move follows Trump’s repeated tariff threats over what the White House claimed was Canada’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal crossings into the US.

In response, the Canadian government responded by imposing 25-percent tariffs on $155 billion of American goods, with tariffs on the first $30 billion that were set to take effect on Tuesday. The rest would follow after a 21-day public comment period. 

In a post on Truth Social, President Trump said he was “very pleased with this initial outcome” of today’s conversations and confirmed that the proposed tariffs would be paused for 30 days “to see whether or not a final economic deal with Canada can be structured.” He reiterated that increased security to the Canada-US border would reduce the flow of fentanyl into the US. 

According to the Canadian government, less than one percent of fentanyl smuggled into the United States crosses through the Canadian border. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that the volume of illegal drugs seized at the US-Canada border has declined since 2022.

Feature image courtesy Justin Trudeau via Flickr.

The post US pauses tariffs on Canada as two countries work through new border commitments first appeared on BetaKit.

The Firehood, an angel network that focuses on supporting women in the technology sector, and ventureLAB, Ontario’s hardtech and AI incubator, have appointed new leaders this week.

The Firehood tapped Theresa Evanoff to be its new executive director as it looks to expand its presence in international markets. According to The Firehood, Evanoff has “a proven track record” of building innovation ecosystems, citing her role in launching two international accelerators: German Accelerator in Southeast Asia and the accelerator program at analytics firm Moody’s. 

The Firehood said Evanoff’s international expertise supports its international mission as it looks to connect and invest in women-led startups worldwide. Evanoff will officially assume her role next week. 

“By leveraging Theresa’s global expertise and the collective experience of our incredible community, we are not only expanding our reach but also deepening our impact,” Firehood co-founder Danielle Graham said in a statement. “Together, we will build bridges across borders, connect with exceptional women entrepreneurs worldwide, and unlock a new era of growth and opportunity for the entire Firehood ecosystem.”

RELATED: Firestarter program goes national with funding from BDC Thrive Lab

The Firehood was founded in 2021 by entrepreneurs and investors Graham and Claudette McGowan to address the barriers faced by women in Canada’s tech industry. Specifically, the organization looks to provide founders access to networks, training leadership opportunities, and capital. The Firehood claims its angel investors have collectively invested over $8 million in more than 35 women-led companies since its inception. 

Meanwhile, ventureLAB has appointed Nima Khadem Mohtaram to become its first-ever head of medtech initiatives. Khadem Mohtaram is “uniquely positioned” for the role, VentureLAB said in a statement, citing his more than 15 years of experience in the life sciences and medical technology fields including his service as ventureLAB’s medical device advisor since 2022. 

VentureLab said Khadem Mohtaram is tasked with building a “cohesive and collaborative ecosystem” that supports entrepreneurs developing and scaling medtech solutions. 

“Nima’s expertise will strengthen ventureLAB’s efforts to develop transformative solutions that will ultimately create jobs, retain talent and build a globally competitive ecosystem bringing more to Canada,” ventureLAb CEO Hugh Chow said in a statement. 

Since its inception in 2011, ventureLAB has received $17.3 million in funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario to aid Canadian hardware startups in fundraising, talent retention, technology commercialization, and customer acquisition.

Feature image by Alex Riehl for BetaKit. Images courtesy Theresa Evanoff and Nima Khadem Mohtaram via LinkedIn. 

The post Startup support networks ventureLAB and The Firehood appoint new leaders first appeared on BetaKit.

Ontario will ban American companies from provincial contracts and cancel its $100 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink in response to the United States (US) enacting tariffs on Canadian energy and goods, Premier Doug Ford announced this morning. 

Starlink is the satellite internet constellation subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, which provides internet access through thousands of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. The province inked the contract with Starlink this past November to provide 15,000 homes and businesses in rural, remote, northern communities with high-speed internet access by June 2025. 

Following publication, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that US tariffs on Canada would be paused for at least 30 days. Ford said that the province will also pause its “retaliatory measures” in response.

“Make no mistake, Canada and Ontario continue to stare down the threat of tariffs,” Ford said.

“Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy.” 

Musk has become an integral part of the new White House, heading the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” that has gutted  American agencies such as the US Agency for International Development and gained access to the Treasury Department’s payments system. 

Musk’s proximity to the White House has opened up calls to target his businesses directly as part of the burgeoning trade war between Canada and the US, including Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland proposing direct tariffs on Tesla electric vehicles. With the cancellation of the Starlink contract, Ford is following suit. 

“Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,” Ford said. “Canada didn’t start this fight with the U.S., but you better believe we’re ready to win it.”

Additionally, Ford claimed that the provincial government and its agencies spend $30 billion on procurement every year, meaning US-based businesses will lose out on tens of billions of dollars in new revenues.

As Ford declared his province would cease working with Starlink, Québec Premier François Legault said he did not plan to cancel its existing contract with SpaceX to supply Starlink terminals to remote regions. The Montreal Gazette reported that a new government contract to install Starlink in Québec courthouses is still in the works.

On Feb. 1, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to implement 25-percent tariffs on virtually all Canadian goods and 10-percent tariffs on Canadian energy starting Tuesday. In response, the Canadian government imposed 25-percent tariffs on $155 billion of American goods, with tariffs on the first $30 billion taking effect on Tuesday and the rest to follow after a 21-day public comment period. The Canadian government is also considering its own non-tariff measures, which could similarly target Canada’s procurement of American contracts. 

RELATED: Federal government’s massive $2 billion CAD loan to Telesat sparks Elon Musk debate between ministers

Ontario’s Starlink contract has garnered criticism since its inception, including from Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas, who called the deal a “donation-investment” after it was signed. The contract covered the cost of equipment and installation fees, as well as an agreement of guaranteed service, for the cost of $6,677 per recipient, while a standard Starlink installation kit is $500 at retailers such as Costco. Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie called on Ford to rip up the “sweetheart deal” on Jan. 22 as tariff threats were heating up.

“Why did Doug cozy up to Elon in the first place?” Crombie said in a statement. “This is a destructive man child who proudly styles his leadership after a dictator, and is championing the 25% tariff on Canada.” 

This isn’t the first time Musk’s Starlink has been in the crosshairs of Canadian procurement conversations. In September 2024, Ottawa-based satellite company Telesat secured a $2.14-billion CAD loan from the Canadian government and a $400 million loan from the Québec government to complete a competing LEO high-speed satellite internet network. 

The price tag sparked discussion online with some, including Conservative MP Michael Barrett, criticizing the move, suggesting that funding to bring internet to Canada’s rural areas could have been given to Elon Musk’s Starlink instead. Musk chimed into the conversation, claiming in an X post that it would take Starlink “less than half that amount” to bring high-speed internet to Canadian households.

“We won’t outsource our national security & we’ll have the network to protect Canada and the Arctic,” Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne said in an X post at the time. 

UPDATE (02/04/2024): This story has been updated to note that Ontario’s retaliatory measures have been paused alongside the US tariff response, and that Québec has a Starlink contract of its own.

Feature image courtesy Doug Ford via X.

The post Ontario to cancel $100-million Starlink contract in response to US tariff threat first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based FLiiP has closed a $4.4-million seed round to bring its all-in-one fitness business software solution to more gym owners in North America and Europe.  

“We come with industry expertise that we share on top of the software.”

Oss Ouahdi
FLiiP

The all-equity, all-primary round, which closed earlier this month, was led by St. Louis, Mo.-based Cultivation Capital with participation from Montréal-based Boreal Ventures and angel investors Jim Texier and Florent Cailliau.

Cultivation Capital general partner Timothy Stern is joining FLiiP’s board along with Boreal Ventures managing director David Charbonneau.

FLiiP offers a comprehensive software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for fitness business management teams. It especially caters to multi-location commercial gyms that offer group classes for functional training, yoga and pilates, martial arts, or boxing. 

The platform began as a tool for founder and CEO David Bourbonnière to manage his own gym, Club Athlétique SENS, in Saint-Basile-Le-Grand, Que. Juggling multiple software programs left Bourbonnière struggling to focus on customer satisfaction, he said. The owner created an initial version of the program in 2015 and shared it with local gym owners, but only began scaling it as a venture in 2020 after securing his first angel investment. 

“FLiiP is focused on helping ambitious fitness leaders build thriving businesses with a platform thatʼs as intuitive as it is powerful,” Bourbonnière said in a statement.

The platform aims to “address the full lifecycle of a customer,” according to chief growth officer Oss Ouahdi, who formerly worked as head of go-to-market strategy at Lightspeed. FLiiP’s features include customer relationship management, embedded payments processing and internal payroll, and loyalty tools to retain existing customers. The company also claims the platform can track customer review data and churn rates, to assess who might be the right target for a well-timed promotion. 

RELATED: Montréal-founded FightCamp launches Peloton-style boxing lessons in Canada

Ouahdi said that multiple team members other than Bourbonnière are former gym managers, including their head of product and some of the customer success team. “We come with industry expertise that we share on top of the software,” he said. 

FLiiP plans to use the funding to expand further into the United States and enhance its product with artificial intelligence integrations to allow gym managers to quickly compile customer data trends through reports. 

The fitness industry took a serious hit with the onset of the pandemic in 2020: Its Canadian revenue declined by over 30 percent year-over-year according to a market research report by RunRepeat. Though it has received a boost from the virtual health and wellness sector, the industry has not returned to its former high. It saw a negative annual compounded growth rate over the past five years, according to Blake McDonald, president of the fitness chain Orangetheory Canada.

Ouahdi told BetaKit that around 2020, private equity firms buying up smaller fitness tech providers created consolidation in the space.

“It sucked out innovation from the category, because now there aren’t that many players,” Ouahdi said. “As soon as there was a disruptive, innovative, smaller player in the market, they were exposed right away to a hostile acquisition.”

The available tech tools became an amalgamation of different acquired products and did not suit the needs of gym owners, he said.

Ouahdi said FLiiP can address this gap in the market, but knows it has competition. He pointed to California-based Mindbody as a main competitor, but said that FLiiP can serve its gym managers best because it sticks to one vertical, without veering into wellness or adjacent categories. 

Client businesses in over 10 countries in North America and Europe use FLiiP’s platform, the company said, including Iron Bodyfit and Blackburn Athletics. FLiiP wants to quadruple its growth and aims to double its team of 30 over the next two years, but declined to share its annual recurring revenue or valuation.

Feature image courtesy Victor Freitas via Unsplash.

The post FLiiP raises $4.4 million in seed financing to grow fitness industry management software first appeared on BetaKit.

The dumbest trade war in history has begun.

It’s early days, and when you play dumb games, you are apt to win dumb prizes, but I’m encouraged by the spine and toughness shown so far by my fellow Canadians. 

One might hope it wouldn’t require threats to our national sovereignty, but calls amongst Canadian tech to diversify trade, eliminate economic fragility, and be our own solution to procurement problems are welcome changes to the malaise of 2024. It takes a village to beat back a bully, I guess.

But I promised a distraction, so here it is: a major international report on AI safety was released this week, chaired by Canadian AI godfather Yoshua Bengio.

Focused on the risks of general-purpose AI, the report is notable for several reasons, including the fact that it’s already out of date: the majority of it was drafted before Open AI’s o3 model was released, demonstrating breakthroughs in abstract reasoning that Bengio himself thought were out of reach.

The difficulty of keeping up with AI permeates the 298-page report, which notes the pace and unpredictability of AI advancements pose an ‘evidence dilemma’ for policymakers. Acting too soon on limited evidence might be as perilous as waiting to act. 

Sharing the report on LinkedIn, Bengio said: “A central conclusion of the Report is that even the short-term future of general-purpose AI is remarkably uncertain. Both very positive and very negative outcomes are possible. Therefore, much depends on how societies and governments act.”

Depending on societies and governments to act in their best interest right now sounds like another dumb game, but the report nails one key finding. “AI does not happen to us: choices made by people determine its future.”

Sounds relevant for more than just AI.

Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

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Shopify CEO commits to ‘buy local’ features for Shop app after criticizing Canada’s tariff response

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has pledged to roll out “buy local features” to the Shop app after criticizing the Canadian government’s decision to impose retaliatory tariffs on US imports.

Prior to announcing the Shop app changes, Shopify’s CEO publicly denounced the federal government’s decision in a post on X, writing that he was “disappointed” with both Trump’s decision to impose tariffs and Canada’s reciprocation.

Lütke said Shopify would be “unaffected” by the tariffs, but that Canadian small businesses on the platform are “not so lucky.”

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Federal government delays implementation of capital gains inclusion rate increase to 2026

The federal government is deferring the controversial capital gains tax rate changes announced in last year’s budget from June 25, 2024 to Jan. 1, 2026.

Announced by Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc Friday morning, the new effective date likely places responsibility for legislating the tax changes on the next government.

While the new effective date provides certainty to Canadians for this year, many Canadian tech leaders bemoaned the “wasted time” on the policy’s prolonged implementation. 

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Cohere leaders think DeepSeek proves their point about AI innovation

Artificial intelligence tech stocks plunged in the United States this week after Chinese AI company DeepSeek released its latest large-language model (LLM) that is comparable in many ways to other consumer-facing models, while developed at a fraction of the cost. 

Canada’s best-capitalized LLM developer, Cohere, thinks the media firestorm surrounding the launch of DeepSeek proves its point that efficiency is just as good of a predictor of innovation as eye-watering amounts of capital.

“People have been chasing the wrong rabbit in LLM development, thinking more compute is going to always lead to breakthroughs,” Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst said in a statement to BetaKit. “But now folks are coming around to our point of view: innovation and efficiency, not excessive compute, is the key.”

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How Calgary-based startup Knead tackled the NFL draft’s food waste with software

Calgary-based Knead Technologies already embarked on its mission to curb food waste by deploying its software solution at the 2024 NFL Draft. Now, it has closed an $800,000 pre-seed round to connect food waste donors with food rescue organizations through its white-label app.

Pitching itself as the “Uber for food waste,” Knead sells a customizable software-as-a-service solution for non-profit organizations that redistribute food donations, such as food banks, emergency shelters, and soup kitchens. 

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Majority of Canadian IT workers say they’d consider relocating to the US: survey

A survey by Winnipeg-based nonprofit tech skills school ComIT has found that nearly 64 percent of Canadian IT workers would go to the United States for a similar job if an opportunity arose.

Respondents cited the most frustrating part of their jobs as understaffing and high turnover, according to a combined 28 percent of respondents. Other frustrating factors include a lack of concern for employee well-being, outdated tech infrastructure, and issues with underqualified or poor management. 

In an email statement, ComIT executive director Pablo Listingart told BetaKit that the survey’s goal was to show the pains tech workers are going through, and the repercussions of those pains. 

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Boardy partners with Diversio in effort to make its AI more inclusive following email backlash

Canadian-led Boardy has struck an ongoing partnership with Toronto-based workplace inclusivity training platform Diversio after a marketing attempt went awry last week. The startup’s unsolicited AI-generated emails critiquing users’ physical features faced swift backlash, particularly from women.

Boardy CEO Andrew D’Souza told BetaKit in an interview that he spoke with Diversio founder and CEO Laura McGee about the paradigm shift that comes with companies representing themselves with an AI persona.

“Obviously, there’s a human team involved and people behind the scenes, but the primary interface ends up being Boardy,” D’Souza said. “As we enter into that, we’re starting to think about how you make sure Boardy adheres to a set of values that are intentional.”

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Why Canadian commerce startups are building “live shopping” into their marketing plans

As TikTok and Instagram continue to prove the power of video commerce, Toronto beauty brand Three Ships has embedded live shopping events directly into their own retail site.

Three Ships first tested a live shopping event in 2021, with a pre-sale for a product launch held during the pandemic.

“It was so chaotic,” Three Ships co-founder Connie Lo recounted at TechTO’s recent Commerce Toronto event. “We got a $20 Amazon tripod and we used my iPhone. We had one customer service person manning the questions that were coming in. And we did $20,000 in one hour.”

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Weekly Canadian Deals & Dollars

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• SF – Canadian-led Nue raises $28.8M CAD Series A led by Inovia
• NY – Canadian-founded Clay becomes unicorn in $57.5M CAD round
• VAN – Mangrove Lithium secures $50.4M CAD for lithium refinery
• CGY/TOR – OneVest raises $29M CAD Series B for US expansion
• SSK – Conexus Venture Capital invests in Offstreet’s $2.4M round
• KW – VueReal raises $58.4M CAD to boost semiconductor builds
• GUE – Feds and Ontario back $1.1B auto manufacturing investment
• MTL – Optable raises $28.8M CAD to fuel US growth
• MTL – Nuvei acquires Japanese subsidiary of Paywiser
• MTL – Plutera Capital acquires HardBacon’s assets
• HFX – Sound Blade secures $23.8M CAD Series A round

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The BetaKit Podcast – Why Alistair Croll wants Canadian startups to be more evil

“ Subversiveness is a way of changing the system. And I think what we’re seeing right now is that all systems are changing.”

Entrepreneur and Startupfest founding partner Alistair Croll has co-authored Just Evil Enough: The Subversive Marketing Handbook. Why are Canadian companies so bad with their go-to-market execution and is now really the time to be preaching subversion and disagreeableness? Let’s dig in.

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The BetaKit Quiz — This week: Nuvei is big in Japan, AI’s Sputnik moment, and the Uber for what?

Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Test your knowledge with The BetaKit Quiz for Jan. 31, 2025.​

Feature image “Kick-off / Deep Learning “ by Jeremy Barande is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The post An AI report to distract you from tariffs first appeared on BetaKit.

Shopify has debuted new “buy local features” in its Shop app, following a pledge from CEO Tobi Lütke alongside criticisms of the Canadian government’s decision to impose retaliatory tariffs on United States (US) imports.

In Canada, a new “Sells from Canada” filter allows users to opt to see products that are “shipped from sellers located in Canada,” according to the Shop app’s AI assistant. Shop app users in Canada received a push notification encouraging them to “easily find your favorite Canadian brands.”

Shopify confirmed to BetaKit that the region-specific feature is now available in “all countries supported by Shopify Payments,” which include the US but not Mexico. Lütke originally said the features would be rolling out in Canada, the United States, and Mexico to start, adding the update would be available either the night of Feb. 2 or on Feb. 3, based on App Store review. 

Lütke announced the features in an X post on Feb. 2, the day after Canada announced its in-kind response to the US tariffs on Canadian goods. The burgeoning trade war prompted nationwide calls to support and buy Canadian goods, including those on social media asking for Shopify and Lütke to introduce buy-local features.

Trade War 

On Feb. 1, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to implement 25-percent tariffs on virtually all Canadian goods and 10-percent tariffs on Canadian energy starting Tuesday. The move follows Trump’s repeated tariff threats over what the White House claimed was Canada’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal crossings into the US. 

In response, the Canadian government responded by imposing 25-percent tariffs on $155 billion of American goods, with tariffs on the first $30 billion taking effect on Tuesday and the rest to follow after a 21-day public comment period.  

Prior to announcing the Shop app changes, Shopify’s CEO publicly denounced the federal government’s decision in a post on X, writing that he was “disappointed” with both Trump’s decision to impose tariffs and Canada’s reciprocation. 

“I love Canada and want it to thrive. I built Canada’s biggest tech company here because I know it’s a special place,” Lütke wrote.

RELATED: Trudeau’s tariff team taps Canadian tech to get tough on Trump

“Canada thrives when it works with America together. Win by helping America win. Trump believes that Canada has not held its side of the bargain, and he set terms to prove that we still work together: get the borders under control and crack down on fentanyl dens.” 

In a fact sheet following the announcement, the White House said the tariffs are a consequence of the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs” crossing the Canadian border into the United States. 

Despite Canada’s recent proposal to invest $1.3 billion CAD into border security, which includes Black Hawk helicopter patrols by the RCMP, Trump told reporters at a press conference Jan. 31 that nothing could be done to stop the tariff threat. 

According to the Canadian government, less than one percent of fentanyl smuggled into the United States crosses through the Canadian border. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that the volume of illegal drugs seized at the US-Canada border has declined since 2022. 

In a Truth Social post today, President Trump made no mention of drugs or illegal migration measures. The president continued to threaten Canadian sovereignty, however, repeating claims that Canada should become “our cherished 51st state.”

Deep Impact

In another social media post on X, Lütke said Shopify would be “unaffected” by the tariffs, but that Canadian small businesses on the platform are “not so lucky.”  

“America will shrug it off. Canada will decline. It’s simply the wrong choice in a possibility space where much better options would have been available,” Lütke wrote. 

“Alongside price impacts and shocks to the supply chain, the substantial recession that is likely to follow will impact nearly all firms.”

Robert Gillezeau
University of Toronto

Robert Gillezeau, an assistant professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto, told BetaKit in an email statement that it is “extremely unlikely” that Shopify would be unaffected by the introduction of tariffs, noting a resulting slowdown in economic activity and sales on both sides of the border. 

“Alongside price impacts and shocks to the supply chain, the substantial recession that is likely to follow will impact nearly all firms,” Gillezeau told BetaKit. 

Gillezeau also disagreed with Lütke’s statement that retaliatory tariffs were the wrong choice for Canada. 

“For whatever reason, Mr. Lütke appears to be undermining Canada,” Gillezeau said. “His decision to align with the Trump administration, even in the face of this reckless and economically illiterate attack on our country, puts us all at greater risk.” 

Shopify and Lütke did not respond to media requests regarding Gillezeau’s comments or the CEO’s claim that tariffs will not impact Canada’s largest tech company.

Lütke and Shopify have previously criticized the Canadian government’s handling of issues that directly impact its clients’ businesses, such as the Canada Post strike in November. In an open letter ahead of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, Shopify claimed that Canada Post had an “effective government monopoly” on delivering to P.O. boxes, and called on the federal government to “do whatever is necessary” to get striking Canada Post workers back to work. 

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

Feature image courtesy Mauricio J Calero for BetaKit.

Update (02/04/25): This article has been updated following Shopify’s rollout of the “buy local” features.

The post Shopify CEO commits to ‘buy local’ features for Shop app after criticizing Canada’s tariff response first appeared on BetaKit.

How much evil is … enough?

In 2025, that’s a particularly dark question, but on this episode of The BetaKit Podcast, we’re going to try and keep it light. Today we’re talking to Alistair Croll: entrepreneur, event and community organizer, and co-author of Just Evil Enough: The Subversive Marketing Handbook alongside X’s Emily Ross.

“ Subversiveness is a way of changing the system. And I think what we’re seeing right now is that all systems are changing.”

Alistair Croll

The book argues that the standard rules for go-to-market strategies need to be bent (or rewritten) to win the attention economy. I’m wondering if that might be a Pyrrhic victory. But I’m also wondering why Canadian startups are just so bad at this kind of stuff.

Croll offers two reasons, noting a lack of Canadian “disagreeableness” and an unwillingness to subvert current systems to achieve desired outcomes. Both criticisms should broadly ring true to most consumers of this podcast, and Croll backs it up with personal anecdotes and a brief history lesson on free throws in the NBA.

Jumping from the 1960s NBA to the present day prompts the question of whether “disagreeableness” and “subversion” are concepts we should be uncritically promoting in 2025. That conversation takes us to a lot of interesting places, including an overview of what’s motivating the existential and market responses to China’s DeepSeek LLM.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

But it isn’t entirely uncritical. Croll notes his new book has a chapter dedicated to being too evil, and as he explains, he’s fighting for the user, not the system.

So just how evil should Canadian tech companies be?

Let’s dig in.

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The BetaKit Podcast is presented by The BetaKit Newsletter: BetaKit’s flagship newsletter.

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Your inbox deserves better, and so do you. Stay informed on all things Canadian tech by signing up for The BetaKit Newsletter today.

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Edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy Alistair Croll.

The post Why Alistair Croll wants Canadian startups to be more evil first appeared on BetaKit.

Vancouver-based Mangrove Lithium has closed $35-million USD ($50.4-million CAD) in strategic financing to start construction on its new lithium refining plant.

Participants in the round include new investors Mitsubishi, Asahi Kasei, provincial innovation agency InBC, Orion Industrial Ventures, and Export Development Canada. The round was also supported by some of Mangrove’s existing investors, such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BMW i Ventures, and BDC Capital.

Mangrove claims its new plant will be North America’s first electrochemical lithium refining facility, and aims to enhance the lithium supply chain and bolster regional energy security, especially as China weighs export restrictions on critical minerals like lithium. Mangrove added the plant is slated to be operational later this year and will produce enough battery-grade materials to power approximately 25,000 electric vehicles (EVs) each year.

“Establishing North America’s first electrochemical lithium refining facility marks a key milestone in securing the continent’s battery supply chain,” Mangrove CEO Saad Dara said in a statement. “Our Delta plant will help meet the growing demand for battery-grade lithium while enhancing energy independence amid rising geopolitical uncertainties.”

RELATED: Deep Sky secures $40-million USD grant from Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Catalyst

Mangrove claims the facility will be built around its “breakthrough” electrochemical process that significantly cuts production costs and the carbon footprint of battery-grade lithium.

Mangrove was founded in 2013 and spun out from a research group led by David Wilkinson, Canada Research Chair in clean energy and electrochemical technologies at the University of British Columbia’s engineering school. The company’s tech directly converts raw lithium from brines, hard rocks, clays, and direct extractions into lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate, which can then be turned into battery-grade lithium. Mangrove also refines lithium hydroxide from recycled batteries. 

The startup secured a $10-million USD ($12.6-million CAD, at the time) Series A round in November 2021 from BDC Capital as well as Breakthrough, a climate solution-focused funding platform founded by Bill Gates. In May 2022, Breakthrough returned to invest in another financing round led by BMW i Ventures. 

Feature image by Possessed Photography via Unsplash.

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Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Louie Martinez.

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The federal government is deferring the controversial capital gains tax rate changes announced in last year’s budget from June 25, 2024 to Jan. 1, 2026. 

Announced by Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc this morning, the new effective date likely places responsibility for legislating the tax changes on the next formed government. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has committed to kicking off an early election in March, following the end of the current Parliamentary prorogation. The federal government is required to dissolve and start a no-longer-than 51-day election cycle on Oct. 20, 2025. 

“Providing real certainty to Canadians would be to admit once and for all that this was a mistake and move on.”  

Ben Bergen
CCI

In a statement, LeBlanc said the deferral will provide certainty to individual Canadians and business owners heading into tax season. 

“Given the current context, our government felt that it was the responsible thing to do,” LeBlanc said. “I look forward to further conversations with Canadians on how we can ensure Canada’s fiscal policy encourages robust and sustained economic activity in every region of our country.”

The statement from the Department of Finance continued to defend the unresolved tax changes, reiterating that the policy would increase the lifetime capital gains exemption to $1.25 million, while the new Canadian entrepreneurs’ incentive would reduce the inclusion rate to one-third on a lifetime maximum of $2 million in eligible capital gains. 

In each case, the Department of Finance said Canadians with eligible capital gains below $2.25 million, and entrepreneurs, would “pay less tax and be better off.”

In a statement to BetaKit, Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) president Ben Bergen agreed the decision would provide certainty to Canadians, but said the government is still leaving entrepreneurs and investors in limbo by refusing to admit they were wrong.

RELATED: Liberal leadership candidates signal party pivot on capital gains tax rate changes

“CCI has been explaining that this tax hike is bad policy, and harms Canada’s innovation economy since the day the budget was announced, and thousands of innovators signed our open letter calling on the government to reverse course,” Bergen said. “Providing real certainty to Canadians would be to admit once and for all that this was a mistake and move on.”  

Kim Furlong, CEO of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA), echoed Bergen, saying the deferral is welcome but doesn’t address the underlying issue of prolonged uncertainty. 

“Over the short term, this will help ease some cashflow and administrative pressure on Canada’s growth engines,” Furlong said in a LinkedIn post. “Extending the timeline only prolongs hesitation at a time when Canada should be strengthening our investment climate.”

Many Canadian tech leaders shared frustration with the “wasted time” on the issue, including Borrowell CEO Andrew Graham, CleanTech North managing director Bryan Watson, and Maverix Private Equity founder John Ruffolo. 

“Countless hours have already been spent (not to mention accounting software being updated for it I am sure!) dealing with this travesty of execution,” Watson said. “On top of that wasted time, I know of many financings that were slowed or shuttered because of the uncertainty around this topic.” 

The Government of Canada proposed raising the inclusion rate on capital gains—which include profits from the sale of assets like stock or property—from one-half to two-thirds last April. The changes were originally set to take effect in June 2024, but were notably absent from the Liberals’ motion to introduce the budget to the House of Commons. 

The proposed changes drew significant criticism from Canadian tech leaders, exacerbated by the ongoing failure to actually make the policy into law. With Parliament prorogued, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) had been moving forward under the assumption that the changes would come into effect. Earlier this week, tax law firm Thorsteinssons LLP and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation filed separate legal challenges challenging the CRA’s decision to continue enforcing the policy despite the lack of legislation. 

RELATED: A requiem for the feds’ (failed) innovation strategy

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, who also actively campaigned against the capital gains tax rate changes, said in a statement that his organization will lobby to enact legislation that would allow the tax authority no more than six months to pass legislation, and make Parliamentary prorogation automatically return tax rates to previous levels if legislation is not passed, similar to the United Kingdom.

“This experience highlights the need for Canada to introduce rules guiding provisional authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to collect taxes,” he said.

The policy punt follows key federal leaders signalling this month that they would review or abandon the policy. This includes Liberal leadership hopefuls such as former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who initially championed the policy, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, and former House Leader Karina Gould. The Liberal Party’s pivot followed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre definitively announcing he would reverse the changes earlier this month. 

In a statement from Conservative shadow ministers Jasraj Singh Hallan (finance), and Adam Chambers (revenue), the Opposition decried the “chaos” it says was created by the CRA collecting the tax without passing legislation and while Parliament was prorogued. 

“This has created months of uncertainty and a tax-filing nightmare for working Canadians across our country,” the statement reads. “Conservatives have consistently warned that this tax hike would be catastrophic for the Liberals’ already weak and failing economy.”

Feature image courtesy The Correctional Service of Canada via X.

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Canadian-led Boardy has struck an ongoing partnership with Toronto-based workplace inclusivity training platform Diversio after a marketing attempt went awry last week. The startup’s unsolicited artificial intelligence (AI)-generated emails critiquing users’ physical features faced swift backlash, particularly from women.

Boardy, which calls itself an “AI superconnector,” converses with users over LinkedIn messaging or phone calls, suggesting possible connections and then facilitating them by email. Meanwhile, Diversio aims to help workplaces be more inclusive by tracking, analyzing, and providing suggestions to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

“Our natural evolution is teaching AI how to be inclusive.”

Laura McGee

Boardy CEO Andrew D’Souza told BetaKit in an interview that he spoke with Diversio founder and CEO Laura McGee, whom he has known for the better part of a decade, about the paradigm shift that comes with companies representing themselves with an AI persona. 

“Obviously, there’s a human team involved and people behind the scenes, but the primary interface ends up being Boardy,” D’Souza said. “As we enter into that, we’re starting to think about how you make sure Boardy adheres to a set of values that are intentional.”

RELATED: Your “mouth commands attention”: Boardy CEO apologizes after emphatic negative response to Trump-themed marketing miss

On the morning of Jan. 20, D’Souza posted on LinkedIn that users of his AI networking tool Boardy should check their inbox “for a fun surprise,” which turned out to be a critique of the recipient’s appearance based on their LinkedIn photo written in the style of Donald Trump. But the campaign was met with an immediate and significant negative reaction, particularly from women. 

D’Souza issued an apology later that day and, when asked if anyone had pushed back against the idea internally, said he didn’t listen. “I didn’t totally understand what they were warning me about.”

In addition to the Diversio partnership, D’Souza has put together an advisory group of 25 female users who will help test future campaigns, and committed to hiring new employees to add perspectives to the team. 

“The email was 100-percent my call, and I’m undertaking some personal coaching to ensure I’m making decisions from a more grounded place going forward,” D’Souza told BetaKit. 

D’Souza and his team will now benefit from Diversio’s training program, featuring a trainer who will share more than 100 Diversio courses on inclusive content in the workplace, including with Boardy itself. 

McGee told BetaKit that there will be some “under the hood” work to train the AI to be more inclusive but, much like humans, AI picks up on the values in the training environment it’s raised in. Similar to how the company’s trainers work with individuals, Diversio will perform reinforcement learning by sharing the courses and learnings with the model that powers Boardy. D’Souza claimed that Boardy learns from every conversation it’s a part of. 

RELATED: Diversio acquires CCDI Consulting to expand its workplace-inclusion services

“Diversio trains humans on how to be inclusive and how to use AI, our natural evolution is teaching AI how to be inclusive,” McGee said. 

The duo stressed that this is a continuous partnership between the two companies, not a “one and done.” As Boardy grows, takes in new data, or improves its model, the pair will do more fine-tuning.  

“These are going to be topics that a lot of AI companies are going to have to navigate and figure out, and we’re sort of at the forefront of it,” D’Souza said. “Over the course of this year, I think we’ll start to see how different AI personas learn to interact with people in different ways, and how to make sure those interactions remain positive and authentic.”

While Boardy is technically an American company, D’Souza, who co-founded and sits on the board of Toronto-based FinTech unicorn Clearco, said half of the Boardy team is in Canada. McGee said that she is excited that two Canadian companies are exploring this new area of AI. 

“I think we are a country where we hold ethics and values,” McGee said. “I’m personally excited to be working with another company to pilot the efforts, and then hopefully we can both take it with us and help bring some of those values to our global clients.”

Feature image courtesy Boardy.

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Halifax-based medtech startup Sound Blade has secured $16.5 million USD ($23.8 million CAD) in Series A funding to develop its handheld device for eliminating liver tumours non-invasively.

Montréal-based Lumira Ventures and New York, NY-based Amzak Health led the round, with additional backing from Invest Nova Scotia.

Sound Blade said it would use the funding to expand its team and accelerate the development of its technology for eventual use in the clinic.

Sound Blade has developed a handheld ultrasound device it says can target and destroy cancerous and benign liver tumours. The non-invasive technique, called histotripsy, uses ultrasound waves to precisely eliminate tumours and leave the surrounding tissue intact. Ultrasound waves permeate the skin and create bubbles in the tumour, which collapse so quickly that they liquefy the tissue.

The Canadian Cancer Society estimated that in 2024, 4,700 Canadians would be diagnosed with liver cancer and 3,700 would succumb to the disease. Compared to surgery or radiation, Histotripsy leads to “less blood loss, fewer complications, reduced recovery time, and decreased chance of infection,” according to Sound Blade.

RELATED: Doctor-led Oxford Cancer Analytics closes $16-million CAD Series A to improve early lung cancer detection

Dr. Tony Natale, partner at Amzak Health, said Sound Blade’s handheld device has “truly disruptive potential.” 

The company said it would use the funding to expand its team and accelerate the development of its technology for eventual use in the clinic. BetaKit has reached out to Sound Blade for clarity on what stage the company is at in the regulatory process. 

Sound Blade’s funding round comes after another challenging year for healthtech funding in Canada, according to a recent report by Vancouver-based Pender Ventures. Venture backing in the sector hit $700 million CAD, an 18-percent drop from the year before. 

This also marks Lumira Ventures’ second investment into histotripsy, following its investment into Michigan-based HistoSonic, whose device has received approval for “de novo” classification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

Feature image courtesy Unsplash.

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Winnipeg-based nonprofit tech skills school ComIT has found that nearly 64 percent of Canadian IT workers would go to the United States (US) for a similar job if an opportunity arose.

The finding comes from ComIT’s 2025 General IT survey, which asked 600 Canadian IT professionals their thoughts on the country’s IT landscape. Surveyed positions include system administrators, software developers and engineers, network engineers and administrators, IT support, and cybersecurity specialists. 

More than half of respondents were located in Ontario.

Respondents cited the most frustrating part of their jobs as understaffing and high turnover, according to a combined 28 percent of respondents. Other frustrating factors include a lack of concern for employee well-being, outdated tech infrastructure, and issues with underqualified or poor management. 

In an email statement, ComIT executive director Pablo Listingart told BetaKit that the survey’s goal was to show the pains tech workers are going through, and the repercussions of those pains. 

“When we talk about people willing to move to the US for work, it is also showing us that the outcome of the past couple of years of uncertainty is generating, or will generate, a flow of tech workers to the south, contrary to what we’ve been trying to do in Canada before the current layoffs and uncertainty started,” Listingart said. 

RELATED: Saskatchewan tech sector employment doubled over four-year period: report

According to a recent report from The Logic, salaries for US-based tech workers greatly exceed compensation for comparable roles in Canadian cities, and the difference more than makes up for the US’s cost of living. For example, the salary of a Toronto engineer averaged $106,000 in 2023, while a San Francisco engineer averaged $260,000, which more than offsets San Francisco’s doubled rent costs. 

According to 33 percent of ComIT’s survey respondents, the Canadian IT landscape is missing more tech hubs outside of major cities, while 42 percent believe Canada needs more talent development, such as training. That training does not include upskilling opportunities, however, as nearly 85 percent said there is enough of that in the tech field. 

ComIT is a registered charitable organization that provides free technology and professional skills training across North America. Listingart said that ComIT primarily trains software developers, but also provides training in DevOps, testing, and UX design, which ComIT tried to reflect in its poll. 

More than half of respondents were located in Ontario, around 14 percent in Québec, 10 percent in British Colombia, and less than that in all the other provinces. No one was surveyed in Prince Edward Island or the territories. 

Feature image courtesy Ilya Pavlov via Unsplash.

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Kitchener-Waterloo’s VueReal, which aims to transform semiconductor fabrication through its proprietary microprinting technology, has closed $40.5 million USD ($58.4 million CAD) in Series C funding.

This all-primary, all-equity financing closed in December and came entirely from existing investors. Export Development Canada (EDC) led with participation from Cycle Capital, BDC Capital’s Cleantech Practice, and TDK Ventures. It comes nearly three years after VueReal’s $14.4-million USD Series B.

“We think that giving people access to this will open a lot of applications in the hardware domain that [weren’t] possible before.”

In a statement, VueReal founder and CEO Reza Chaji described the startup’s latest funding as “a testament to our partners’ confidence in our technology and vision.”

Founded in 2016, VueReal has set its sights on improving the yield, efficiency, reliability, and cost of microLED and micro semiconductor manufacturing through its microprinting solution, which is designed to help other companies build these products.

VueReal plans to use its Series C capital to scale its microLED lighting and display production capabilities and help partners integrate its MicroSolid Printing platform into commercial production lines around the world. In an interview with BetaKit, Chaji said the 60-person company aims to nearly double the size of its workforce by the end of 2026.

EDC is joining VueReal’s board and Samsung Ventures is leaving as part of this round, which brings the company’s total equity funding to $73.3 million USD. VueReal has also secured approximately $30 million USD in non-dilutive capital to date.

Chaji declined to disclose VueReal’s valuation or confirm whether the startup’s Series C financing was an up, down, or flat round relative to the company’s Series B. He noted that VueReal has kept the round open in the hopes of bringing on some additional capital from new investors with experience helping semiconductor and green manufacturing firms scale.

“As a lead investor, EDC recognizes VueReal as a pioneer shaping the future of the global microLED market,” EDC vice-president of investments and mid-market lending Lissa Bjerkelund said in a statement. “VueReal’s cutting-edge technology and commitment to establishing a world-class production platform are pivotal in unlocking the vast potential of microLED and other micro semiconductor innovations across industries.”

One of the challenges in the semiconductor space, Chaji said, is efficiently integrating devices like microLEDs and microsensors into surfaces to create products. He noted that making microLED displays today is expensive given the yield, throughput, and material costs.

RELATED: Microprinting tech firm VueReal closes $14.4-million USD Series B

According to Chaji, VueReal has developed a microprinting tech platform and process that can do this more efficiently, increase the yield and throughput, and reduce the cost of materials. In the microLED space, VueReal is currently working to help build displays and lighting for automotive applications and moving toward consumer electronics.

“We think that giving people access to this will open a lot of applications in the hardware domain that [weren’t] possible before,” Chaji said.

VueReal has partnered with microLED suppliers and foundries to outsource the production of its cartridges and microLEDS in the hopes of helping the company scale up faster and with fewer capital requirements on its own facilities.

Down the road, VueReal plans involve working to enable the integration of sensors for biometrics, security, and other potential use cases.

Feature image courtesy VueReal.

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BetaKit is proud to present Changemakers, an AWS Startups series spotlighting Canadian tech companies solving complex global challenges. Read part three here.

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Clinical documentation has always been a pain point for healthcare practitioners, often consuming hours of their time. 

Last year, Vancouver-based Jane App wanted to tackle that frustration head-on. Having already streamlined operations for over 190,000 practitioners through its practice management software, the team wanted to go a step further.

“Our goal is simple: help the helpers.”

Rafe Hatfield, Jane

With a mandate to simplify operations for healthcare providers across over 100 specialties, such as physiotherapists, psychologists, chiropractors and more, the startup took aim at a problem it knew was top of mind for clients.

Transcribing notes and collecting information while treating clients and patients is a labour-intensive process, and according to Raj Paul, who leads Jane’s new artificial intelligence team, many practitioners have no choice but to bring their work home to keep up. 

The company has been quietly launching an AI-powered clinical scribe, Voice-to-Chart, built with a unique set of AI principles in mind, to let Jane practitioners swap notetaking for more eye contact, better patient care, and more connection in sessions. 

Jane practitioners can record sessions in a way that is compliant with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

These sessions are recorded within Jane’s platform—collecting patient consent as they do so. Session recordings are then securely processed into pre-designed smart charts; speeding up note creation for any needs imaginable, from a standard diagnosis to a custom treatment plan, all from the conversation. These charts can then be reviewed, edited as needed by practitioners, signed, and stored securely for client record keeping.

For Rafe Hatfield, Director of Engineering at Jane, Voice-to-Chart is just one way Jane is looking to continue improving how the company enables customers to run their practices better so they can focus on patient care. 

“Our goal is simple: help the helpers,” Hatfield said. 

Jane aims to help allied health clinics overcome their toughest challenges. But to overcome the challenges in delivering this new tool, the Jane team turned to AWS.

The heavy lifting

Jane’s journey began as a straightforward response to a common problem: healthcare providers are buried under admin. Co-founder and co-CEO Alison Taylor knew this problem first-hand after running her own multidisciplinary clinic and struggling with the software options available to manage tasks like online booking, charting, and billing. She turned to her eventual co-founder and co-CEO Trevor Johnston, with a simple ask to build something better.

That ‘something better’ became Jane App, a platform designed to make clinic operations so much easier so practitioners can focus on caring for patients and clients. 

But bringing that solution to thousands of clinics globally came with a big challenge: keeping sensitive health data secure and in compliance with local laws.

“Compliance is a really big part of our field, and regionality is very important to us,” Hatfield said. “We need to ensure data is not crossing borders, and AWS gives us the regionality around the world for the various areas that we’re approaching.”

In healthcare, this precision is critical. Jane needs to securely store data in specific regions to meet regulations, like PIPEDA in Canada, HIPAA in the United States, PCI for payment processing, and SOC 2 certification for data storage and processing. According to Hatfield, much of that “heavy lifting” is handled by AWS.

“We manage healthcare data, and we are the processors of that data for our customers,” Hatfield said. “The security side of things is vitally important to us, and most of that comes almost out-of-the-box with AWS.”

Breaking unfamiliar ground

As Jane expanded to serve new regions, a new challenge arose. Supporting a mix of solo practitioners and larger clinics required its technology to handle more complexity without sacrificing performance. 

Hosting on AWS keeps Jane operational, even during outages. By leveraging multiple data centers within a region, otherwise known as an availability zone, Jane’s servers stay operational even if one location experiences a failure.

“We can’t overstate how valuable that has been to us,” Hatfield said. 

Scaling also means tackling unfamiliar technical challenges. For example, when Jane decided to restructure its infrastructure with AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service—which helps run and scale containerized applications—the team found itself without the necessary in-house expertise.

AWS offered training and experts to support the restructuring, and even vetted some of Jane’s project specs and solutions. 

“The help that we get from the technical side of AWS to help us to take those steps, look at what we have, and help us make the right decisions as we move forward, has always been excellent,” Hatfield said. 

New tools for old problems

Initially, Jane turned to Azure to build Voice-to-Chart, but later switched to AWS to take advantage of more support.

After moving to the Claude large language models hosted on AWS’s Bedrock system, Paul described the process as relatively smooth so far.

Demand for, and usage of, this feature validates the charting challenges clinics face. Even before being made available to Jane clinics, Voice-to-Chart generated a waitlist of hundreds of clinics. Early adopters of Voice-to-Chart are also reducing their charting time by up to 75 percent. 

“Not only do users trust it, but we’ve actually seen them endorsing it to their colleagues, so it’s been a huge time saver to them,” Paul said. 

Just the first step

Last year, Jane quietly hit a significant milestone: $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Taylor has said that reaching the next milestone of $250 million in ARR feels more accessible. “Once you hit a certain path it feels like you just keep doing more of the same,” she added.

Hatfield said the startup is still very focused on how it can serve allied healthcare providers better. “The growth we’ve had in the last year has been great, but it’s really just a first step into the sort of scale that we want to be working at,” Hatfield added.

Among its top priorities are expanding deeper into large markets like the US. The startup is also focused on refining its platform to support larger, more complex clinics and updating its infrastructure to handle larger volumes of data. As these challenges intensify, Hatfield expects AWS will help keep the ground steady for Jane.

“Making sure we’ve got the right platform in place to help us do that vertical and horizontal scaling is key to making sure we can hit those goals,” he said.

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Learn more about how to join AWS Activate, the leading startup program backed by the most trusted cloud platform.

Feature image courtesy BetaKit / Jane App.

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Canada’s best-capitalized large-language model (LLM) developer, Cohere, thinks the media firestorm surrounding the launch of the latest chatbot app from Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek proves its point that efficiency is just as good of a predictor of innovation as eye-watering amounts of capital. 

“Innovation and efficiency, not excessive compute, is the key.”

Nick Frosst
Cohere

“People have been chasing the wrong rabbit in LLM development, thinking more compute is going to always lead to breakthroughs,” Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst said in a statement to BetaKit. “But now folks are coming around to our point of view: innovation and efficiency, not excessive compute, is the key.”

DeepSeek’s latest LLM product, released on Jan. 20, runs on older chip technology, is free to use, and is comparable in many ways to other consumer-facing models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT—but it appears to have been developed for a fraction of the cost. As a result, US AI tech stocks plunged this week, prompting Canadian AI leaders to consider how domestic companies with limited resources can compete on the world stage.

“It’s not about unlimited resources but about smart, efficient solutions,” Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez said in a statement to The Canadian Press. “We’ve believed this for a long time, but it’s finally hitting home across the industry.”

Cohere is among the most funded Canadian AI companies, having secured $500 million USD in financing at a $5.5-billion valuation last year ($687 million at $7.6 billion CAD), not to mention the $240 million CAD committed by the federal government towards a Cohere data centre. In comparison, Meta plans to spend up to $65 billion USD on AI infrastructure this year.

RELATED: Cohere Series D hits $500 million USD raised at $5.5-billion valuation

The latest iteration of DeepSeek’s model, DeepSeek R1, exceeds or is on par with the performance of OpenAI’s GPT-4o in coding and quantitative reasoning, according to the independent comparison tool Artificial Analysis. Meanwhile, the company claims it was built using a fraction of OpenAI’s capital—according to DeepSeek, just $5.6 million USD. The massive sell-off of tech stocks after this came to light wiped billions in value from key American AI chip companies such as Nvidia.

DeepSeek’s assertion has been met with industry skepticism that it spent so little to develop the model. It has also sparked existential dread that AI innovation may not require the level of capital some AI giants have raised. 

In a post on X, Gomez said that the people who think DeepSeek built this model with under $6 million are wrong, but those who think Big Tech companies were humiliated by their massive AI investments have a point.

The Canadian AI value chain

Julien Billot, CEO of the federally funded innovation hub Scale AI, told BetaKit that DeepSeek’s achievement is an indication that Canadian companies still have “room to play” in the AI space, despite the dominance of American incumbents. Billot noted Cohere as an example of a Canadian company worthy of support. “That’s our best bet to exist in this AI market,” he said. 

However, he added, the Canadian government and private investors need to be smart about their investments by controlling and retaining as much of the AI value chain as they can within Canada.

Canada ranks fourth globally in terms of generative AI companies per capita, according to a Deloitte report. In addition to Cohere’s $500 million USD, Canadian autonomous driving firm Waabi raised $275 million CAD and text-to-image generator Ideogram raised $80 million USD in 2024, while Toronto-based Radical Ventures closed an $800-million USD fund for AI startups. 

RELATED: In 2024, Canada struggled to find its place in the global AI race

DeepSeek disrupted Silicon Valley’s narrative that bigger investments will necessarily lead to better products, Billot said. He added this is a good thing for competition, particularly in Canada, since Canadian VC funding does not match the levels of capital raised by the likes of Anthropic or OpenAI. OpenAI was estimated to spend up to $7 billion USD on AI training and inference in 2024 to power ChatGPT, according to reporting from The Information.

“The best way to control our destiny is to own as much as we can of the value share in AI,” Billot said in an interview with BetaKit. 

In contrast to the statements of Cohere’s CEO, Billot emphasized that achieving that goal will require domestic investment in yet more compute. He said supporting Canadian startups and building local demand for AI infrastructure and applications will contribute to a healthy AI value chain within the country, from semiconductor chips to software applications. Solutions include building Canadian data centres and creating more Canadian intellectual property (IP), he said.

“The best way to control our destiny is to own as much as we can of the value share in AI.”

Julien Billot
Scale AI

Billot called specifically for increased government spending on AI infrastructure, such as an extension of its $2-billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy.

French private-equity firm Jolt Capital, which recently invested in the Montreal-based semiconductor IP company Dolphin Semiconductor, countered the narrative that “America owns AI” in a LinkedIn post.  

“DeepSeek AI’s feat reminds us that brute force and hundreds of billions thrown at a challenge are not always the smartest way,” the company stated, adding that Jolt Capital plans to fund non-US AI startups who “keep their hubris under control.”

Intense energy

DeepSeek’s model is apparently less energy-intensive than American incumbent models, indicating a pathway forward for mitigating the energy consumption costs of AI and its associated infrastructure. 

According to a brand-new international AI safety report chaired by Mila Research Institute co-founder and AI scientist Yoshua Bengio, carbon emissions and water usage are serious safety concerns surrounding LLMs because of the huge amounts of energy consumed by data centres. Data centres are projected to become the fifth-largest consumer of electricity in the world by 2026, according to an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate.

However, Sasha Luccioni, AI and climate lead at New York-based Hugging Face, noted that DeepSeek’s environmental impact could climb as its usage increases, despite taking less energy to train. 

Billot said that Scale AI told the federal government it would be willing to fund efforts for Canadian companies to lower their energy consumption for software. “The race for energy is a big thing,” Billot said. “Having more energy-efficient software is really critical for the industry.”

With files from Josh Scott. Feature image courtesy Web Summit via Flickr.

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Canadian-led, San Francisco-based Nue has raised a $20-million USD ($28.8-million CAD) Series A round for its revenue lifecycle management platform. 

The all-equity round was led by Montréal-based venture firm Inovia Capital, who will gain a board seat, with participation from Bluefish Capital, NextWorld Capital, NJP Ventures, Operator Stack Fund, and Toronto-based Information Venture Partners. 

Inovia partner Karamdeep Nijjar says Nue is “perfectly positioned” to lead the revenue lifecycle management category.

Information Venture Partners led Nue’s $6-million USD seed round in June 2022, and also returned for its $9-million USD seed extension round in May 2023. Nue said in a statement that it has raised $40 million USD to date. 

Nue’s revenue lifecycle management software aims to help companies build, manage, and keep track of quotes, customer lifecycles, billing, and revenue.

In addition to Nue’s Canadian backers and 12 Canadian employees, CEO Mark Walker studied at Western University and currently lives in Canada. 

While the software is built on top of Salesforce’s own customer relationship management and Configure, Price and Quote (CPQ) platform, Walker, in a statement, said Nue is the “increasingly the go-to alternative to Salesforce CPQ.” The company says it allows businesses to transition from Salesforce CPQ to a “Salesforce-based system that is simpler and less expensive.”

RELATED: Canadian-founded Clay achieves unicorn status with $57.5-million raise

Nue claims it experienced threefold year-over-year sales growth in 2024 and secured a number of public and private companies as customers, including Procurify, Iodine, Mews, and i3 Verticals.

According to Inovia partner Karamdeep Nijjar, Nue is “perfectly positioned” to lead the revenue lifecycle management category.

“They fill a crucial gap in B2B SaaS by enabling innovation in pricing, packaging, and revenue operations,” Nijjar said in a statement. “We’re excited to support the team as they reshape this rapidly expanding market.”

Nue said its recent growth and funding will allow it to capture a “major share” of the CPQ and billing markets over the next three to four years, and plans to develop its revenue lifecycle platform, grow its team, and expand globally. 

Feature image courtesy Campaign Creators via Unsplash.

The post Canadian-led Nue raises $28.8-million Series A round led by Inovia first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based payments company Nuvei has bolstered its foothold in the Asia-Pacific region by acquiring the Japanese subsidiary of British payments company Paywiser. 

Nuvei says it has more than 200 on-the-ground staff in the Asia-Pacific region.

The acquisition includes an acquiring licence granted by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which Nuvei says enables the launch of its direct acquiring capabilities across all major card schemes, like Mastercard and Visa, in Japan. Nuvei added the licence extends its direct connectivity with alternative payment methods in the country.

In a statement, Nuvei CEO Phil Fayer called Japan one of the pre-eminent e-commerce markets globally. 

“This expansion aligns with our strategic priorities to continue growing our global footprint, offer localized payments experiences on a global scale, and enable our customers to get closer to their customers through payments,” Fayer said. “With our modular payments technology and extensive local expertise, we’re well positioned to help businesses of all sizes accelerate their growth within this dynamic ecosystem.”

The company’s new Tokyo headquarters joins its collection of offices located in China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore, with more than 200 on-the-ground staff in the Asia-Pacific region, Nuvei said in a statement. 

RELATED: Nuvei posts revenue growth in final earnings as go-private deal gets green light

Nuvei made headway in the region last year after it gained a licence to offer domestic money transfer, cross-border money transfer, and merchant acquisition services in Singapore. The company followed that up in October by expanding its European partnership with Japan’s only international payment brand, JCB, to include Singapore and Hong Kong. The expanded partnership allows businesses in those jurisdictions to accept payments by JCB credit and debit cards through a Nuvei integration. 

Founded by Fayer in 2003, Nuvei provides tech-enabled payment solutions such as card issuing, banking, and fraud management to merchants and partners operating in the gambling, online retail, financial services, and travel sectors. Last year, the once-publicly traded company went private in a $6.3-billion USD ($9.1 billion CAD) deal with American private equity firm Advent International. 

Feature image courtesy Nuvei.

The post Big in Japan: Nuvei acquires Paywiser’s Japanese subsidiary in Asia-Pacific market push first appeared on BetaKit.

Calgary and Toronto-based FinTech startup OneVest has secured nearly $29 million CAD ($20 million USD) in Series B funding to scale its presence south of the border.

The wealth management software company’s all-equity, all-primary round, which closed earlier this month, was led by Salesforce Ventures. Fellow new United States (US) corporate venture capital investors Allianz Life Ventures and TIAA Ventures supported the financing. Returning backers included Canada’s OMERS Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, and Luge Capital, and American firms Fin Capital and Pivot Investment Partners.

OneVest plans to use the new capital to fuel its product development plans and continued US expansion, where it sees “a tremendous opportunity to be a leader.” The now 80-person startup plans to hire approximately 100 employees over the next 12 months.

“OneVest aims to be the leading wealth management platform in North America, and eventually globally.”

“OneVest aims to be the leading wealth management platform in North America, and eventually globally,” OneVest co-founder and CEO Amar Ahluwalia told BetaKit. “We can’t get there without investing in people and product development to make it happen. The additional funding gives us the ability to really accelerate our growth and continue to develop market-leading features for our customers.”

Ahluwalia said the startup’s Series B investors bring a combination of “strategic alignment, industry expertise, and ecosystem access that are crucial to OneVest’s evolution.”

“We’re investing in OneVest because there is a compelling market opportunity in wealth management tech and OneVest is leading the charge through their end-to-end wealth management platform,” Salesforce Ventures senior associate Zak Kokosa told BetaKit. “We believe in the founding team and have been impressed by their conviction in their long-term vision, their thoughtful approach to product design, and deep domain expertise.”

Founded in 2021 by Ahluwalia, COO Jakob Pizzera, and CTO Nathan Di Lucca, OneVest offers an end-to-end wealth management platform. Aimed at helping financial institutions fill gaps in their process, OneVest’s modular software spans client onboarding, portfolio management, and analytics. 

OneVest’s focus is on large financial services firms like banks, registered investment advisors, wealth management firms, asset managers, insurance companies, broker-dealers, and credit unions. Its customers include ATB, Wellington-Altus, Picton Mahoney Asset Management, Westwood Wealth Management, and Addenda Capital, as well as some fellow Canadian FinTech companies like Neo Financial and Manzil.

OneVest competes and partners with a number of large enterprise software providers, including Envestnet, InvestCloud, CGI, Orion, SS&C, and Broadridge. “Our superpower is having the ability to truly provide modular and configurable solutions,” which Ahluwalia claimed is industry leading.

“In a market dominated by legacy solutions that are slow to innovate and may take years to implement, OneVest’s platform stands out,” Kokosa said. “Its highly configurable workflows cover the entire client lifecycle—from initial onboarding to ongoing management—ensuring a seamless and efficient experience.”

RELATED: Manzil launches Halal wealth management solution following acquisition of Canadian Islamic Wealth

There were no changes to OneVest’s board of directors as part of its Series B, which brings the company’s total funding to $53 million CAD. This figure includes a $17-million CAD Series A from 2023, a $5-million CAD seed round in 2022 and a $2.1-million CAD pre-seed in 2021.

Ahluwalia declined to share OneVest’s latest valuation but claimed that the startup’s Series B was a “substantial up round” relative to its Series A financing.

Many OneVest customers already use Salesforce. Going forward, the two companies plan to implement a platform integration to unify the client-advisor experience.

Strategic partnerships with Salesforce Financial Services Cloud and other players, including BlackRock and Vanguard, will also be a focus for OneVest. Asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard already list their pre-constructed model portfolios on OneVest’s marketplace, where advisors using OneVest can access them directly.

OneVest has also been exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance decision-making and client engagement and working to expand its offerings in alternative investments. 

Over the coming months, OneVest intends to launch new AI tools to help advisors do their day-to-day jobs, automate back and middle office manual tasks, and detect signals and anomalies in data, and bring the broad functionality it offers for more traditional security types and asset classes (like equities, exchange-traded funds, and mutual funds) to alternative investments (such as private equity, real estate, and art).

Feature image courtesy OneVest.

The post OneVest closes $29-million CAD Series B led by Salesforce Ventures to fuel US expansion first appeared on BetaKit.

Saskatoon and Regina-based Conexus Venture Capital (CVC) has re-entered the province’s venture capital (VC) scene with an investment into Offstreet’s $2.4-million seed round, its first capital deployment in just under two years. 

“We don’t have [Big Tech] here, so you can find super talented people. This gives us an unfair advantage in attracting talent.”

Matt Fahlman
Offstreet

This marks the VC firm’s first investment through its $30-million target Fund II, which held its first close last May and focuses on early-stage Saskatchewan-based tech startups. Conexus Credit Union, of which CVC is a venture offshoot, is the fund’s first limited partner.

CVC told BetaKit that it had a “very successful second close” since then but declined to say how much additional capital had been raised. Fund II is slated to hold its final close later this year, the firm said. 

The deal marks the Regina-based parking management software startup’s second round of seed financing. Offstreet closed a $1.2-million seed round in 2023, led by an undisclosed group of investors. The new all-equity, all-primary round brings its total funding raised to just under $4 million. 

Founded in 2016 by University of Regina graduates Matt Fahlman and Kyle Smyth, Offstreet makes licence plate-based parking validation software. The service allows parking managers to manage paid parking exemptions at ungated lots and garages, while drivers can use an app to validate their parking spots. 

RELATED: Conexus Venture Capital launches its second $30-million fund to back Saskatchewan tech startups

The software solution eliminates headaches for parking managers when dealing with employees or guests who shouldn’t have to pay for parking spots, the startup says. 

Some of Offstreet’s clients include large universities, healthcare centres, and parking lot managers like Indigo, Parkwell, and Impark. 

Offstreet said the funds will be used to accelerate product development, expand market reach, and add 10 to 15 new hires to their current team of 25 employees. The startup’s main goal is to land more major US universities as clients by addressing more of their parking management needs. It already counts San Jose State University and the University of Miami as users. 

Fahlman, Offstreet’s CEO, wrote in an email to BetaKit that “all fundraising processes are challenging to some extent,” but that theirs was “pretty straightforward” given the startup’s long-standing relationship with the CVC team. 

However, Offstreet’s successful fundraising is a rarity given the low levels of VC investment in Saskatchewan throughout 2024. 

Saskatchewan saw relatively low VC fundraising activity last year, with only $3 million invested in Saskatchewan-based companies across six deals for the first three quarters of 2024, according to a report from the Canadian Venture Capital Association. Though it mirrored a wider trend in Canada, Saskatchewan’s deal value represented only 0.046 percent of all VC funding in the country during the same period, beating only Manitoba and Prince Edward Island. 

RELATED: Saskatchewan tech sector employment doubled over four-year period: report

CVC managing director Jordan McFarlen said that the lack of capital is the main issue, rather than a lack of high-quality deal opportunities. He added that CVC’s Fund II, along with its ability to bring in other investors, will play a key role in boosting deal activity in Saskatchewan. 

“The [Sask.] startup ecosystem is immature, specifically in Regina,” Fahlman told BetaKit. “There’s not a ton of people you can reach out to for guidance. Most of my mentors are from out of province.”

But for Fahlman, the flipside of the region’s immaturity means that startups can scoop up high-quality talent. Employment in Saskatchewan’s tech sector more than doubled from 2019 to 2023, and is on track to triple by 2030, according to a report from Innovation Saskatchewan. 

“We don’t have [Big Tech] here, so you can find super talented people,” Fahlman said. “This gives us an unfair advantage in attracting talent.”

Feature image courtesy Conexus Venture Capital.

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As TikTok and Instagram continue to prove the power of video commerce, Toronto beauty brand Three Ships has embedded live shopping events directly into their own retail site.

Live shopping is like Twitch meets the Shopping Network: retail-focused livestreams gaining traction as a low-cost, high-reward marketing approach for commerce and direct-to-consumer brands looking to drive community and conversion.

“I do think it’s easier to get into than most people realize,” said Three Ships co-founder Connie Lo. “You probably only need two or three hours to figure out the platform and run a test live.”

“They don’t trust Hollywood, high-production static produced content. It’s got to be authentic and real.”

Lo described her company’s embrace of the tactic at TechTO’s recent Commerce Toronto event, where she chronicled her path from making handmade beauty products in her kitchen to a recent collaboration with Disney. Lo was part of a lineup of retail-focused founders that included Shopify’s Daniel Debow, and SRTX founder Katherine Homuth, who recently described her efforts to modernize Canadian manufacturing on The BetaKit Podcast.

Three Ships first tested a live shopping event in 2021, with a pre-sale for a product launch held during the pandemic.

“It was so chaotic,” Lo recounted. “We got a $20 Amazon tripod and we used my iPhone. We had one customer service person manning the questions that were coming in. And we did $20,000 in one hour.”

Trey Geiger of video commerce company Firework joined Lo at the event, describing what he sees as an industry-wide shift toward shoppable short videos. 

“Firework isn’t here to compete with TikTok,” said Geiger. “But we think there’s a really interesting opportunity to make websites for brands that are less of a traditional wall of text, by putting video into the path to purchase.”

Both Geiger and Lo advised founders to differentiate how they use video on social platforms and their own sites.

Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are tools for brand building and reaching new customers, said Lo, and tend to feature videos that are short and trend-focused. By contrast, videos on company websites should be longer form and educational.

“When someone lands on our website, we think of that more as a warm lead,” said Lo.

Many live shopping events offer exclusive pre-sales, bundles, or exclusive guest speakers, making consumers feel as though they are getting something special for tuning in.

And, most importantly, these videos do not require high production values.

There are no fancy backdrops in Three Ships’ live shopping events. Lo and her co-founder often have printed notes on their laps, and Lo’s dog is occasionally heard in the background.

“You don’t need a big budget or experience,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve ever invested more than $100.”

Live shopping events are now a fundamental part of her company’s marketing strategy, built into the co-founders’ schedules and Three Ship’s product rollouts.

And while these events may seem casual, Geiger said that low-budget, relatable setups are increasingly popular with audiences than polished, high-production videos.

“That’s what consumers want,” said Geiger. “They don’t trust Hollywood, high-production static produced content. It’s got to be authentic and real.”

Feature image courtesy Sean Pollock for TechTO. Check out the full calendar of TechTO events here.

The post Why Canadian commerce startups are building “live shopping” into their marketing plans first appeared on BetaKit.

The second-largest auto parts manufacturer in Canada, Guelph-based Linamar Corporation, has announced a $1.1-billion investment into domestic green auto manufacturing with the backing of the federal and Ontario governments. 

“It’s a win for the economy, the environment and Canadian jobs, cementing our country’s position as a leader in the EV supply chain.”

François-Philippe Champagne

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) committed up to $169.4 million through its Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF). The Ontario government will provide a grant of over $100 million through Invest Ontario. 

Linamar’s Innovation Driving Green Technology Project aims to develop a variety of technologies to power hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs), including powertrain solutions, hydrogen fuel cell technology, and a new semiconductor packaging method to reduce the charging time for EV batteries. 

“Linamar’s groundbreaking project will drive innovation in EV parts and semiconductor manufacturing,” François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said in a statement. “It’s a win for the economy, the environment, and Canadian jobs, cementing our country’s position as a leader in the EV supply chain.”

The investment is expected to add 2,300 jobs in Ontario’s automotive industry. The project will be deployed at Linamar’s Ontario facilities Guelph, Salford, Welland, and Windsor.

RELATED: To survive tariffs, Canadian startups need plans “A through D”

The government-backed investment comes as US President Donald Trump threatens to levy 25-percent tariffs on Canadian imports as early as Feb. 1, which are expected to directly impact Canada’s auto industry. 

“At a time when we face a new administration in the White House and the potential threat of tariffs on Canadian goods, this investment will create good-paying jobs, strengthen our homegrown electric vehicle supply chain and accelerate the production of Ontario-made EVs,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a statement. 

That’s not the only Trump-related policy change that could impact EV supply chains in Canada. The US president revoked a 2021 commitment to ensuring that half of all vehicles sold in the US would be zero-emissions by 2030. Trump has also indicated he would repeal a consumer tax credit for EVs.

Some Canadian EV incentive programs are also in jeopardy. Canada’s Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program, which gave buyers up to $5,000, was suspended this month. Québec announced it would temporarily pause an equivalent program starting this February due to a lack of funds. 

Despite the uncertainty of incentives, EV sales are expected to grow steadily within the next decade, following the Canadian government’s pledge to hit 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. Zero-emission vehicles reached record sales in Canada in Q3 2024, accounting for more than 15 percent of new vehicle registrations, according to data from Statistics Canada. 

Part of the SIF investment will go towards developing semiconductor technology, in line with the initiative’s SIF Semiconductor Challenge Callout which asked Canadian companies to develop ideas to help make the country a critical global supplier of semiconductor technology. 

The investment continues ISED’s interest in semiconductor manufacturing and commercialization. The government agency invested $120 million into the creation of the Fabrication of Integrated Components for the Internet’s Edge (FABrIC) network to spur semiconductor innovation last summer.

Feature image courtesy Linamar Corporation.

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Toronto is home to a growing number of global companies, drawn to the city by Canada’s high calibre of engineering talent. 

Among those companies is Intuit, whose products include TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp.

“Working at Intuit offers the ability to impact approximately 100 million customers. It’s been 23 years and I still get excited about that.”

Greg Coulombe, Intuit

A global company with 18,800 employees and approximately 100 million customers worldwide, Intuit was founded in 1983 and has been in Canada since 1993. Intuit moved into its new Canadian headquarters in Toronto in 2022.

As Intuit’s Director of Product Development, Tax Foundations, Greg Coulombe oversees a team of local engineers focused on the company’s Canadian tax products, AI adoption, and data innovation.

BetaKit sat down with Coulombe to talk about cultivating innovation, the impact of AI, and the advice he gave his daughter as she completes a computer science degree and potentially pursues a career in tech.

A different mindset

When it comes to hiring tech roles, Intuit isn’t just looking for coders. According to Coulombe, it’s looking for creators.

While technical skills are tablestakes, he said what sets Intuit’s team apart is their ability to assume an entrepreneurial mindset, which means critically assessing the value and purpose behind their work.

“I would like our technologists to stop and say: ‘I’m not sure that makes any sense. Why would our customers want this? Why are we doing that?’” Coulombe said.

Innovation requires intentional culture, especially in large organizations where established processes can stifle creativity. Coulombe knows this tension well. At Intuit, making mistakes aren’t just tolerated, they’re encouraged, he said.

“We’re trying to create a culture where it’s OK to break boundaries and make mistakes,” he said, adding that teams are often encouraged to work cross functionally to break down silos, cut through red tape, and keep things moving.

According to Coulombe, a key element of Intuit’s innovation culture is its Global Engineering Days, a bi-annual, five-day, internal “code-a-thon” where employees from all locations collaborate on self-chosen projects.

“It’s my favourite two weeks of the year,” Coulombe said. “On the last day of the event, I get to walk around and see all the amazing innovations. It really creates passion and excitement about what our technologists are going to bring to the table.” 

Close to 7,500 participants across 13 Intuit locations in the United States, Canada, Israel, and India participated in the most recent GED. Coulombe noted that over the years, hundreds of GED projects across multiple disciplines have made their way into Intuit products as new features or into the company’s development environment as productivity-enhancing tools. 

The chance to impact millions

AI is messy. It’s powerful, exciting, and frustrating all at once—a tool with incredible potential that refuses to fit neatly into a box. For Coulombe, the challenge lies in navigating that chaos.

“What I find challenging and struggle with as a leader and as a technologist is the fundamental uncertainty that AI brings into the system,” he said. “How do we take this cool stuff and make it actually work properly? That’s a very interesting challenge.”

Coulombe believes the main draw of working at Intuit lies in the opportunity to impact global users of its tax software.

“Working at Intuit offers the ability to impact approximately 100 million customers,” he said. “It’s been 23 years and I still get excited about that. It comes with a lot of responsibility, which is scary sometimes, but the potential to impact so many people’s lives is really cool. Where can you impact 100 million people with the work that you do? That’s rare.”

Letting the builders build

Many companies hire senior engineers for their management skills. At Intuit, the approach is different, according to Coulombe. Senior engineers are encouraged to spend less time managing and more time building.

“It’s not that we don’t want them to be leaders, but once they progress as an engineer, they could be doing more people facilitation and start to step away from the technology,” he said. “We’re strategically trying to pivot back to having our most valuable technical contributors doing more of the technical work and leading by example. We have managers. Let the builders build.”

Tech’s next generation is levelling up

The expectations for new graduates entering the tech industry have skyrocketed. Coulombe explained that a computer science degree is no longer enough to stand out. Companies now expect candidates to bring tangible experience to the table—whether through internships, open-source contributions, or personal projects.

“It’s quite humbling to see how high the current expectations are for interns and new grads,” he added. “Companies expect them to have done material work. I think internships are critical because they build that valuable experience. You have to be working with a professor, making open source contributions or working on personal projects to distinguish yourself from the rank and file. It’s a very competitive market.”

Coulombe has seen this shift in expectations firsthand through his daughter, a computer science student who initially resisted his advice to get involved outside the classroom.

“I connected her to some recruiters and they told her the same thing,” he said. “She came back to me and said, ‘You know, Dad, I think I should actually work on some side projects.’” 

With expectations higher than ever, Coulombe believes that today’s graduates are rising to the challenge.

“Overall, I think the calibre of incoming talent that we have now is just incredible,” he said. “If I compared myself 25 years ago to the people coming in now, I wouldn’t get the job.”

---

Explore open roles and opportunities on Intuit Canada’s career site.

All photos provided by Intuit.

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Calgary-based Knead Technologies already embarked on its mission to curb food waste by deploying its software solution at the 2024 NFL Draft. Now, it has closed an $800,000 pre-seed round to connect food waste donors with food rescue organizations through its white-label app.

“The curse of food waste is that it happens at every stage.”

Lourdes Juan
Knead Technologies

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) Capital’s Thrive Lab cut the largest cheque in the all-equity, all-primary round, which closed at the end of December, with participation from ScaleGood and the University of Calgary’s UCeed Social Impact Fund.  Knead also previously received an undisclosed amount of non-dilutive support from the Canadian Food Innovation Network and Sustainable Development Technology Canada. The company says it raised the money at a $3.5-million valuation.

Pitching itself as the “Uber for food waste,” Knead sells a customizable software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for non-profit organizations that redistribute food donations, such as food banks, emergency shelters, and soup kitchens. Organizations must register as food recipients, then Knead matches them with local food donors. Organizations can onboard their own volunteers or employees, depending on their model, and match them to appropriate food pick-up and delivery routes. 

According to Knead, the company’s platform has facilitated the redistribution of over 2 million pounds of surplus food—which it says is about equivalent to 1.67 million meals and 236 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. 

Detroit-based community organization Metro Food Rescue deployed Knead’s platform to help pick up and redistribute 100,000 pounds of food from vendors at the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit last spring, which hosted more than 775,000 people. The Canadian company is also working with community organizations in Phoenix, Ariz. 

Founded in 2022, Knead is the platform that its co-founder and CEO, Lourdes Juan, says she could have used 13 years ago when she founded the Leftovers Foundation, a food rescue non-profit. “Logistics for food rescue is very hard and there was no software to help,” she said. 

RELATED: BDC’s Thrive Lab announces 25 co-investment partners

A six-time founder of diverse ventures, including a spa and a mobile grocery store, Juan said she was inspired to get into food rescue when she redistributed over 200 pounds of bread from a local bakery to a food bank. That’s also where Knead got its name, she said. 

Knead wants to be the software solution that allows leftover food to get from place to place efficiently. The company wants to make things simple for food rescue organizations, which the company says currently “rely on a jumble of different platforms that can complicate logistics.”

Canada wastes a staggering proportion of usable food, with a recent Loblaw-funded report by food rescue charity Second Harvest estimating that 41 percent of wasted food every year could be redirected to people who cannot afford it. This wasted food also accounts for roughly 25.7 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

“The curse of food waste is that it happens at every stage,” Juan said in an interview with BetaKit. Knead aims to reduce it by selling its SaaS platform to food rescue organizations, which can onboard their own volunteers or employees. The goal is to improve pick-up and delivery logistics and move products before they spoil. 

Knead’s team will use the pre-seed financing to improve its software platform with analytics and potential artificial intelligence (AI) integration, land more clients in the US, and build more partnerships with municipalities, environmental organizations, and corporate partners.

Juan said that if the team decides to add AI features to streamline administrative tasks, it would be co-deployed with a carbon-credit verification option for customers.

“We don’t know the full extent of the environmental impacts of AI so we have to get to a point where we are confident that if we integrated it, the net benefits in terms of food rescued would be positive overall,” Juan said.

Several early-stage ventures have attempted to tackle the scourge of food waste in Canada. Toronto-based Flashfood allows customers to purchase food close to its expiry date at a discount, with integrations in several chain grocery stores nationwide. Montréal-based Bopaq is tackling food waste through catering with hardware containers, which it then washes and reuses. Meanwhile, Toronto-based Genecis is turning food waste into bioplastics.

RELATED: The51 holds $51-million final close for Food and AgTech Fund amid challenging venture market

Knead is the first Alberta-based company to receive support from Thrive Lab’s $35-million envelope dedicated to women founders. Sévrine Labelle, managing director of Thrive Lab, told BetaKit that the organization’s investment was due to the “clear growth potential as well as the social and environmental impact of this woman-led company.”

Juan said that she was thrilled that Knead’s cap table also believes in “changing the world through business” in the context of souring sentiment on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in tech.  

Raising this first pre-seed round was an 18-month “uphill battle,” she said, especially as a woman of colour. A recent Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub report noted that only four percent of total venture capital (VC) dollars go to women founders in Canada.

Juan said that though social impact-oriented ventures take political will, Knead is in a unique position due to its universal mission. 

“Food waste is non-partisan,” she said. “We can make a huge change without having to convince anyone that no one should go to bed hungry and that food-insecure households should be a priority.” 

Feature image courtesy Knead Technologies.

The post How Calgary-based startup Knead tackled the NFL draft’s food waste with software first appeared on BetaKit.

Plutera Capital has acquired the assets of fellow Montréal company Hardbacon, including the Hardbacon.ca domain, following the FinTech startup’s shutdown last year.

Hardbacon offered a free budgeting app and generated revenue through lead generation and affiliate marketing for financial products. As BetaKit reported, Hardbacon closed down in 2024, laying off the remainder of its employees with the intent of filing for bankruptcy after most of the company’s Google traffic vanished following some updates to the search giant’s algorithm.

“We’re focused on restructuring and transforming Hardbacon into a flagship platform that sets a new standard for financial tools and resources in Canada.”

The financial terms of this deal, which marks Plutera’s first acquisition, were not disclosed. Plutera’s plans appear to involve retaining the Hardbacon brand.

“As our first site, we’re focused on restructuring and transforming Hardbacon into a flagship platform that sets a new standard for financial tools and resources in Canada,” Plutera wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the deal.

According to its LinkedIn page, Plutera operates affiliate marketing platforms that connect consumers with financial products and services. LinkedIn indicates Plutera is led by president David Szemerda and vice-president Mathieu Laliberte, who also lead Montréal performance marketing agency ODM World.

“Through the acquisition of Hardbacon.ca, we recognized an exceptional opportunity to revitalize a Canadian platform with a rich history in the financial space,” Szemerda told BetaKit. “Our goal is to guide Hardbacon.ca back to its former glory and beyond, leveraging its legacy to deliver even greater value to its audience.”

Szemerda said that Plutera was launched in late 2024 following the acquisition of Hardbacon’s assets, adding that the company aims to position itself “as a leading super affiliate in the financial sector.”

“Although I’m not involved in Hardbacon’s relaunch, I’m happy that the assets were bought out of bankruptcy and that the Plutera Capital team wants to keep the brand alive,” HardBacon co-founder and former CEO Julien Brault wrote in a LinkedIn post. “I wish them the best.”

RELATED: Hardbacon to file for bankruptcy after Google search changes crush affiliate business

Brault, a former book publisher and business and tech journalist, co-founded Hardbacon back in 2017 as a platform for retail investors to analyze and manage their portfolios. After struggling to monetize the app via subscriptions, in 2020, the startup pivoted to focusing exclusively on a component it already offered—budgeting—and layering on financial product comparison tools and educational personal finance content to draw consumers in.

From 2020 on, Hardbacon offered its budgeting app for free and generated revenue through lead generation and affiliate marketing via search engine optimization (SEO) for financial institutions, collecting a fee for connecting consumers with products like credit cards, bank accounts, and insurance. It also hosted sponsored content. 

Hardbacon had raised approximately $3 million CAD from about 2,000 individual investors via crowdfunding.

In September 2023, Google implemented some updates designed to combat spam that led to a steep decline in hits to Hardbacon’s website, a blow from which Brault previously told BetaKit that the search engine optimization (SEO)-reliant company was never able to recover.

Last year, Brault expressed his hope that Hardbacon’s tech and content would live on in some capacity. His wish now appears to have been granted through the Plutera deal.

Feature image courtesy Hardbacon.

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Canadian-founded, New York, NY-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Clay has officially secured unicorn status after raising a $40-million USD ($57.5-million CAD) funding round at a $1.25-billion USD valuation.  

The company, which makes software that automates customer research, is more than doubling its valuation less than a year after raising its $46-million USD ($63 million CAD) Series B round at a $500-million USD valuation. The latest funding round was led by Meritech Capital, which also led the Series B round last July, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, BoxGroup, and Boldstart Ventures, Clay said in a LinkedIn post announcing the latest raise. 

Clay claims its roughly 100-person team is serving more than 5,000 customers, including OpenAI, Canva, and Anthropic,.

In a blog post announcing the raise, Clay co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin added that the funding from Clay’s Series B “remains untouched,” but the momentum from the company’s 6x growth in 2024 prompted its existing investors to “double down.”

The funding announcement came one day after Clay made its first-ever acquisition, absorbing New York-based workflow automation platform Avenue for an undisclosed amount. 

Clay was launched in 2017 by two McGill University graduates and repeat entrepreneurs, Amin and Nicolae Rusan, looking to make computer programming more accessible. Rusan, who has since left the company, is Canadian, while Amin—who is originally from Egypt—came to Canada to attend McGill before moving to the United States (US). 

RELATED: Canadian-founded, New York-based AI startup Clay closes $63-million CAD Series B

In late 2021, Clay began focusing on automating sales and marketing for businesses and brought in head of operations Varun Anand as co-founder. The company now largely competes against the manual customer research and personalized outreach that sales and marketing teams conduct. 

Clay claims its platform combines more than 100 integrations and AI agents to help teams find data, from contact information to intent signals, and instantly apply that data across a team’s entire tech stack, from customer relationship managers to data warehouses to email sequencers. Clay says its roughly 100-person team is serving more than 5,000 customers, including software and AI giants like OpenAI, Canva, Anthropic, Ramp, and Rippling.

San Francisco-based Maple VC, led by Canadian-raised general partner Andre Charoo, is Clay’s only Canadian investor. The early-stage venture capital firm, which focuses on Canadian entrepreneurs building in the US, wrote its first cheque into Clay back in 2017 through its first fund. Clay marks Maple’s first Unicorn, Charoo told BetaKit in an email statement. 

“We are incredibly proud to be part of an 8-year journey from the very beginning when Clay was just an idea,” Charoo said. “It is also proof of Maple’s strategy that backing founders from Canadian universities lead us to the most cutting-edge opportunities.”

Feature image courtesy Clay.

The post Canadian-founded Clay achieves unicorn status with $57.5-million raise first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based Optable has raised $20-million USD ($28.8-million CAD) in funding to fuel its growth in the United States. 

The round was led by Telus Global Ventures with participation from many returning investors, including Hearst Ventures, Brightspark Ventures, Desjardins Capital, Deloitte Ventures, and AsterX, the corporate venture arm of Quebecor.

“Their impressive growth and partnerships with industry leaders demonstrate the value and potential of their solution.” 

Terry Doyle
Telus Global Ventures

The company is classifying the round as a Series A extension and it included $6 million USD in venture debt, according to The Logic. BetaKit has reached out to Optable for more details on the round but did not hear back by press time. 

Founded in 2020 by CEO Yves Poiré, chief strategy officer Vlad Stesin, and chief product officer Bosko Milekic, Optable uses data clean rooms, a kind of software that allows advertisers to aggregate, anonymize, and compare user data, allowing companies to see how their advertising campaigns are performing. 

The founding trio exited their previous venture AdGear in a 2016 sale to Samsung. Its tech stack eventually became a founding block of Samsung Ads Canada.

Poiré said in a statement that 2024 was a defining year for Optable, and that this latest funding will allow it to keep building the tools its partners need.

“In 2025, we’re expanding our focus to work with innovative publishers, media companies and platforms, helping them make their data actionable and impactful,” Poiré said. 

RELATED: Optable raises $26 million CAD to help companies improve advertising campaigns

Telus Global Ventures managing partner Terry Doyle said in a statement that the Optable team has shown “a keen ability” to tackle the challenges online publishers face today. 

“Their impressive growth and partnerships with industry leaders demonstrate the value and potential of their solution, helping publishers to cut through the complexity, adapt to change, and find real opportunities for growth,” Doyle said. 

Optable said some of its customers include creator monetization platform Raptive, The Globe and Mail, and media company Hearst, the parent company of Optable backer Hearst Ventures.

The company last raised a $20-million USD ($26-million CAD at the time) Series A round in 2023 with many of the same backers—though not Telus Global Ventures—after raising a $3.6-million USD ($4.3-million CAD) seed round in 2021. The company has raised approximately $61.8 million CAD to date. 

Feature image by Austin Distel via Unsplash.

The post Optable raises $28.8 million to grow data management solution in United States first appeared on BetaKit.

I forced SRTX’s Katherine Homuth to talk tariffs with me this week.

The CEO and founder explained on The BetaKit Podcast how the desire to solve one problem (great tights) led her to attempt tackling every problem related to modern textile manufacturing in North America. It’s a compelling story, and one that stands in stark contrast to recent conversations about productivity and ambition in Canadian tech. Give it a listen!

But we happened to record on the day of US President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, so I had to take the tariff opportunity. Consider it The BetaKit Podcast Tariff Tax.

The long-threatened response to an imagined trade imbalance could emerge on Feb. 1 or after April 1, depending on whether you listen to Trump or his officials. Sunday evening, President Trump signed emergency 25 percent tariffs on Colombia for blocking US military deportation flights, so all timelines are fungible. So are the details.

“The biggest challenge for an entrepreneur right now is the uncertainty,” Homuth told me. She noted that startups have a variety of options available to them, from increasing prices, to prioritizing European markets, or setting up US operations to capitalize on lower tax rates.

“ Because we don’t know when it would hit, how it would hit, who it would hit, you can’t actually act on any of these different things. So you basically have to have a plan A through D.”

Planning for all scenarios will be time-consuming, costly, and chaotic. Assuming a four-year term, the tariff pain might also be temporary. Which led to Homuth’s final tip: “ Remember you’re building a business for the long term, not a business for just four years.”

Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

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Shopify quietly kills Indigenous entrepreneurship program Build Native

Multiple websites related to Shopify’s Equitable Commerce programs are no longer active following the recent departures of the company’s Equitable Commerce and Build Native leads, BetaKit has learned.

Pages for the Build Native with Shopify, Empowered by Shopify, and Social Impact programs are no longer live on Shopify’s site. The Internet Wayback Machine indexed archived versions of these pages as recently as Jan. 18.

The removal of the Canadian e-commerce giant’s equity programs follows the quiet changes to its Acceptable Use Policy to allow for hateful content in November 2024.

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Amazon to close all Québec facilities, hand over delivery to third parties

Retail giant Amazon is retreating from Québec, a move that will see 1,700 part-time and full-time employees, as well as 250 seasonal workers, laid off over the next two months.

The company said it will continue to deliver orders to customers in Québec through third-party distributors, similar to how it operated in 2020.

In an open letter to Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he will review Canada’s business relationship with the company following its decision. 

Champagne added that it is not too late to reconsider the decision, and that he would welcome the opportunity to further discuss the matter. 

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Liberal leadership candidates signal party pivot on capital gains tax rate changes

Candidates vying for the Liberal leadership race are reversing course on the party’s controversial capital gains tax rate changes announced in last year’s budget. 

Former Finance Minster Chrystia Freeland’s team confirmed this week that she would not go forward with the policy she once championed, while notable candidates such as former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and former House Leader Karina Gould indicated plans to review the policy. 

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Paper looks to rebound from turbulent 2024 with new CEO Martina Tam

Embattled edtech startup Paper has appointed Silicon Valley edtech veteran Martina Tam as CEO following a whirlwind 2024. 

Tam brings experience from various San Francisco-based tech companies, including early education platform Brightwheel, where she served as the chief operating officer and interim chief growth officer.

Last year, Paper lost both of its co-founders, laid off 45 percent of its head office staff, and cut the entirety of its Canadian tutor workforce. 

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​Your “mouth commands attention”: Boardy CEO apologizes after emphatic negative response to Trump-themed marketing miss

Boardy CEO Andrew D’Souza has issued an apology after his new artificial intelligence networking tool commented on the appearances of its users in the style of US President Donald Trump. 

While D’Souza encouraged users to post their results with the hashtag #MakeLinkedInFunAgain, the campaign was met with immediate and significant negative reaction, particularly from women. 

When asked if anyone internally pushed back on the marketing mistake, D’Souza was transparent that he didn’t listen. “I didn’t totally understand what they were warning me about,” he wrote.

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Xanadu claims networking breakthrough with new photonic quantum computer Aurora

Toronto-based quantum computing company Xanadu claims it has solved one of the key challenges facing the industry with its newly unveiled photonic quantum computer, Aurora. 

Aurora, which builds on Xanadu’s previous X8 and Borealis systems, consists of four modular and independent server racks that are photonically interconnected and networked together.

“The two big challenges remaining for the industry are the improved performance of the quantum computer (error correction and fault tolerance) and scalability (networking),” Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook said in a statement. “Xanadu has now solved scalability.”

Canada’s quantum sector got a big boost in general this week, as more than 100 quantum projects received nearly $80-million in combined federal funding. 

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Shopify president calls Montréal “the most entrepreneurial city on the planet” at North Star event

At HEC Montréal, just across the street from Shopify’s office, more than 300 members of the local tech ecosystem gathered to glean insights from different stages of the entrepreneurial journey.

The first edition of North Star, a new Montréal-based event series, kicked off with a panel of student founders running early-stage ventures, followed by a roundtable of established CEOs providing career insights, and capped off with a fireside chat between Economakis and Shopify president Harley Finkelstein.

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Leaders from Clio, Certn, Humi and others talk M&A at TechExit.io

A wave of exits and acquisitions in the first few weeks of 2025 is signalling continued heat in Canada’s tech sector.

For those navigating M&A this year, TechExit.io offers a rare opportunity to dive into the world of mergers, acquisitions, and strategic growth. Set for Feb. 25, 2025 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, this one-day event has become a key stop on the M&A circuit. BetaKit is once again a proud media partner of TechExit.io.

Tickets for TechExit.io are on sale now, and BetaKit readers can snag 20 percent off with the code BETAKIT20.

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FEATURED STORIES FROM OUR PARTNERS

When Tracey McGillivray’s 82-year-old father began struggling to stand after falls, she saw a problem waiting to be solved. Teaming up with engineer Liam Maaskant, they developed a walker with an integrated elevating seat, and over five years, refined it from rough prototypes into a near-market-ready product.

Halifax-based Axtion is part of a wave of Atlantic Canada startups funding their early work through grants and bootstrapping instead of venture capital. Talis Apud-Martinez of Emera ideaHUB believes this ecosystem allows startups to scale without having to give up equity.

Read more about how these startups are getting creative about growth.

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Weekly Canadian Deals & Dollars

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• VAN – Moment Energy secures $21.5M CAD Series A round
• TOR – AstraZeneca invests $820M CAD to grow Ontario footprint
• TOR – MolecuLight raises $39.5M CAD for bacteria-detecting device
• TOR – Basetwo closes $16.5M CAD Series A round
• TOR – DMZ receives $3.5M for new housing innovation accelerator
• TOR – Street Context acquired by BlueMatrix
• MTL – QueerTech launches new accelerator for 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs
• MTL – Novacap raises $1.43B CAD for digital infrastructure fund

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The BetaKit Podcast — Katherine Homuth wants to solve for everything

“This is worth the pain of attempting to figure out how to do it. But attempting to figure out how to do it required us to basically rethink everything about that traditional outsourcing model.”

Katherine Homuth, founder and CEO of SRTX, the maker of Sheertex, explains how attempting to solve one problem with tights led her company to attempt solving for all problems related to modern North American textile manufacturing.

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The BetaKit Quiz — This week: Boardy’s blunder, Xanadu’s quantum breakthrough, and Paper turns the page

Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Test your knowledge with The BetaKit Quiz for Jan. 24, 2025.

Feature image by Daniel Torok.

The post To survive tariffs, Canadian startups need plans “A through D” first appeared on BetaKit.

Katherine Homuth originally thought Sheertex was going to be easy.

In search of the perfect pair of tights (or at least a pair that wouldn’t run), she assumed she’d be able to globally source superior materials, design a cool brand, launch a Kickstarter, drop-ship and go.

Homuth found the superior material, an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene strong enough for bulletproof vests. However, the polymer was an order of magnitude more expensive than nylon.

“This is worth the pain of attempting to figure out how to do it. But attempting to figure out how to do it required us to basically rethink everything about that traditional outsourcing model.”

Using such materials would require in-sourcing the material science, and the manufacturing technology and software, all while vertically integrating as much of the supply chain as possible to drive cost out of the process. “We can’t have labour be one of our core costs,” she told me.

The goal is to have the company’s only true cost be the energy used to produce, something which Homuth believes is not only possible, but a prospect that Canada is uniquely positioned to deliver. It just requires a 21st-century approach to manufacturing.

So as Sheerly Genius became Sheertex and Sheertex became SRTX, the materials and manufacturing B Corp launch pad for its founder’s long-term vision, Homuth has accumulated more and more problems as necessary components to her ultimate solution.

It’s a riveting journey Homuth takes us on this episode of The BetaKit Podcast, and one that stands in stark contrast to current conversations about productivity and ambition in Canadian tech.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

Throughout it all, Homuth has been on a parallel personal journey: a repeat founder, author, and investor trying to find her voice again in the face of a skeptical investor environment and “really mean” internet. Recently, Homuth has been very online, regularly posting about her company’s opportunities and obstacles. On the podcast, she explains why choosing to do so felt like “ripping off a Band-Aid.” 

After discovering that it wasn’t going to be easy, Katherine Homuth decided to do it anyway. How’s that going?

Let’s dig in.

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The BetaKit Podcast is presented by BetaKit’s Innovation Leaders Program.

BetaKit Innovation Leaders are driving Canada’s innovation economy. By partnering with BetaKit, you can help support the journalism that keeps Canada’s tech sector in focus.

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The BetaKit Podcast is edited by Darian MacDonald. Recorded at the AmberMac Media studio.

The post SRTX’s Katherine Homuth wants to solve for everything first appeared on BetaKit.

At HEC Montréal, just across the street from Shopify’s office, more than 300 members of the local tech ecosystem gathered to glean insights from different stages of the entrepreneurial journey. 

“You’re all in, but you’re planning on a marathon, not a sprint. And so that means you’ve got to take care of yourself and the people around you.”

Joann de Zegher
PemPem

The first edition of North Star, a new Montréal-based event series, was organized by a group including Nectarios Economakis, partner at Amiral Ventures, Head of Zinnia Canada Ian Jeffrey, Gabriel Sundaram, co-founder of Attain, and Éléonore Jarry, partner at Brightspark Ventures, alongside McGill Ventures and HEC Montréal’s incubator La base entrepreneuriale, led by Théo Corboliou. 

The evening kicked off with a panel of student founders running early-stage ventures, followed by a roundtable of established CEOs providing career insights. It ended with a fireside chat between Economakis and Shopify president Harley Finkelstein.

The audience was filled with nearly 60 percent founders and startup team members, according to the North Star organizers, representing 97 startups. Supporting partners included Startupfest and Stay22, a travel tech startup run by panellist Andrew Lockhead. Stay22’s head of product, Laura Di Constanzo, also unveiled the Montréal Startup Guide, a new website that centralizes Montréal startup community events and resources. 

The founder panel, moderated by Sundaram, included Stay22 founder and CEO Andrew Lockhead, Coral co-founder and former Dialogue CPO Anna Chif, Nesto co-founder and CEO Malik Yacoubi, and PemPem founder and CEO Joann de Zegher. 

RELATED: Montréal tech marks year’s successes and struggles at sixth Startup Community Awards

On stage, they highlighted different approaches to success—knowing when to pivot, Lockhead said, was a key skill he learned when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Stay22’s revenue dropped by 90 percent. Another skill, according to Chif and Yacoubi, was obsessing over the right details.

“At Dialogue, we became the largest telemedicine company in Canada,” Chif said. “And I think part of it was because we were obsessed with the user experience.”

In response to an audience question about balancing obsession with mental health, de Zegher said to surround oneself with co-workers who will break up the grind.

“You’re all in, but you’re planning on a marathon, not a sprint,” de Zegher said. “And so that means you’ve got to take care of yourself and the people around you.”

The student panel made it clear that passion, and obsession, were in no short supply in Montréal tech. Two out of four student panellists were transforming lab-created ideas into ventures—Dr. Roseline Olory, founder and CEO of BrainInnov, is developing an early screening tool for lung cancer, while Le Thuy Duong Nguyen, founder and CEO of unbIAsed.Rx, is building a platform to identify biases in drug prescriptions. They both raised the challenges of pivoting from research to a business mindset, especially for women in male-dominated fields.

Anthony Azrak, co-founder of artificial intelligence (AI) software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform OpenSesame, called out the low levels of capital circulating in the province and blamed it on university policies making it difficult for students to start ventures.

“At [the University of] Waterloo, you can take a semester off to start a business,” Azrak said. “Why can’t we do that in Québec?”

Azrak and Woo Park, operations lead at NationGraph, admitted they were both leaving Montréal to continue working at their respective startups. 

RELATED: Harley Finkelstein wants Canadian entrepreneurs to ignore the “bullshit”

In a fireside chat, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein presented himself as Montréal tech’s cheerleader, calling it “the most entrepreneurial city in the world.” He encouraged the audience to build in Canada, and create a country of “HQs” and “acquirers, not acquirees.” 

He referenced his previous comment from Elevate Fest in October, where he called Canada’s lack of ambition the 600-pound beaver in the room. At North Star, he acknowledged some of the backlash his comments roused at the time, including that structural barriers were disincentivizing entrepreneurship in Canada. 

“I’m not saying that it’s the most perfect environment for entrepreneurs in Canada,” Finkelstein said. “What I’m saying is, who fucking cares?”

The sentiment matched Finkelstein’s appearance on The BetaKit Podcast last September, when he encouraged entrepreneurs to build companies with a global mindset without using Canadian identity as an excuse for poor performance. 

Some younger founders BetaKit spoke with after the event said that though they appreciated Finkelstein’s insistence that most successful people have pasts “littered with failure,” they wished they had a better picture of what failure looks like.

Unfortunately, no time was allotted for audience questions and Finkelstein did not make himself available to the media.

Feature image courtesy Eva Blue Photography.

The post Shopify president calls Montréal “the most entrepreneurial city on the planet” at North Star event first appeared on BetaKit.

Candidates vying for the Liberal leadership race are reversing course on the party’s controversial capital gains tax rate changes announced in last year’s budget. 

Former Finance Minster Chrystia Freeland’s team confirmed this week that she would not go forward with the policy she once championed, while notable candidates such as former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and former House Leader Karina Gould indicated plans to review the policy. 

The leadership hopefuls revealed their stances on the policy one week after Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre committed to scrapping it if he is able to form government after this year’s federal election. 

“We need to change our policies and make a lot of changes to prepare to succeed in this moment.”

The Government of Canada proposed raising the inclusion rate on capital gains—which include profits from the sale of assets like stock or property—from one-half to two-thirds last April. The changes were originally set to take effect in June 2024, but were curiously absent from the Liberals’ motion to introduce the budget to the House of Commons. 

The proposed changes drew significant criticism from Canadian tech leaders, and the government has yet to actually make the policy into law. With Parliament prorogued, the Canada Revenue Agency is moving forward under the assumption that the changes will come into effect. 

Carney’s deputy campaign manager, Marie-Pascale Des Rosiers, told BetaKit in an email statement that Carney believes making Canada the strongest economy in the G7 will require comprehensive tax changes and tax cuts. 

“Since the policy was introduced in last year’s budget, Mark Carney has been clear that it sent the wrong signal at the wrong time to the builders and innovators who make it possible to grow our economy,” Des Rosiers said. “He believes that wealth inequality is one of the most urgent issues of our time, but growth that isn’t created can’t be shared.”

Des Rosiers added that steps like those are best made as part of broad tax reform and indicated Carney plans to make his own announcements on such steps soon.

Gould took a similar approach, saying in a scrum this week that she didn’t believe Trudeau’s Liberals implemented the changes in the right way.

“We didn’t have all the right options on the table,” Gould said in French. “I’m having good conversations with tech leaders and others who are affected by this, and I think we should change this program, but I’ll have more to say in the coming days.”

RELATED: Pierre Poilievre pledges to scrap capital gains tax changes under Conservative government

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Freeland’s campaign told BetaKit that the candidate would not move forward with the legislation to increase the capital gains inclusion rate. In a media scrum this week, Freeland attributed her changed stance to the economic uncertainty caused by United States President Donald Trump. 

“We need to change our policies and make a lot of changes to prepare to succeed in this moment,” Freeland said in French. “I am the person who can and will do it.” 

Council of Canadian Innovators president Ben Bergen said in an X post that Freeland’s reversal is “a welcome and necessary course correction,” a sentiment echoed by president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Dan Kelly. Both interest groups heavily criticized the policy after it was introduced in the 2024 budget. 

BetaKit reached out to other declared Liberal leadership candidates, including Nepean MP Chandra Arya, businessman Frank Baylis, Sydney—Victoria MP Jaime Battiste, and former Brampton MP Ruby Dhalla, for their stance on the capital gains tax rate changes but did not hear back by press time. 

Carney, Freeland, and Gould are the only candidates to have endorsements from Liberal caucus members as of publication. So far, Carney has 43 endorsements, Freeland has 26, and Gould has two, according to the CBC. 

With files from Madison McLauchlan.

Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 4.0.

The post Liberal leadership candidates signal party pivot on capital gains tax rate changes first appeared on BetaKit.

Feature image courtesy Reforge.

The post Boardy’s blunder, Xanadu’s quantum breakthrough, and Paper turns the page first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne said he will review the country’s business relationship with Amazon following the company’s decision to pull out of Québec. Earlier this week, the retail giant announced it would close seven operation sites and cut roughly 1,900 jobs in Québec, including 250 recently-unionized warehouse jobs, over the next two months.

In an open letter posted to X and addressed to Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy, Champagne said the company’s decision is inconsistent with its expressed interest in being a leader and strategic partner within Canada’s industrial economy.

“In recent years, the various business units of Amazon … have sought to partner with Canadian businesses, small and large, and with government,” the letter reads. “The decision [to pull out of Québec] is not one that will instill confidence, and it raises questions about your commitment to Canada and your Canadian partners.” 

“You will undoubtedly understand that such action calls for a review of the business relationship that exists between Amazon and the Government of Canada,” the letter continues.

RELATED: Amazon to close all Québec facilities, hand over delivery to third parties

Champagne added that it is not too late to reconsider the decision, and that he welcomes the opportunity to further discuss the matter. 

The affected sites in Québec include three delivery stations, two sorting centres, one fulfillment centre, and an extra-large (AMXL) delivery station.  

Québec was the only province in Canada with a unionized Amazon workplace. The Conféderation des syndicats nationaux (CSN) filed an application to represent roughly 250 employees at a warehouse in Laval, Que., last spring, but no official collective agreement was in place yet. 

Amazon denied that its decision to pull out of Québec was tied to the unionization. Amazon spokesperson Barabara Agrait said that the move follows “a recent review of Québec operations” in the province and that the “decision wasn’t made lightly.” BetaKit reached out and did not receive any additional information. 

With files from Madison McLauchlan.  

Feature image courtesy François-Philippe Champagne via LinkedIn. 

The post Innovation Minister says Canada will review business relationship with Amazon following Québec retreat first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based medtech company MolecuLight has secured $27.5 million USD ($39.5 million CAD) in financing to expand its global footprint and introduce new features to its wound bacteria-detecting devices.   

London, UK-based investment firm Hayfin Capital Management was the sole investor. MolecuLight did not respond to a request for comment about the financing breakdown, including primary and secondary capital or debt and equity components to the round.

Hayfin was majority-owned by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation up until 2024, when Arctos Partners helped the investment firm buy out a majority stake, according to its website. The firm has approximately 32 billion euros ($48 billion CAD) in assets under management. 

The funding will help MolecuLight develop new features, such as thermal imaging and 3D wound visualization.

MolecuLight makes handheld, portable devices that use fluorescent light to identify and measure bacterial presence in wounds and surgical sites. 

“This investment will enable us to accelerate our goal of improving how wounds are treated worldwide,” MolecuLight CEO Anil Amlani said in a statement. 

Amlani added that the funding will allow MolecuLight to offer its wound management devices to more patients and healthcare professionals and help it develop new features, such as thermal imaging and 3D wound visualization.

The medtech startup most recently raised an $11.7-million CAD Series C round in August 2024, led by Crown corporation Export Development Canada, bringing its total funding to at least $60 million CAD, not including the undisclosed amount of funding from BDC Capital and iGan Ventures in 2022. 

RELATED: MolecuLight closes $11.7 million in Series C financing for market expansion

The startup says its two handheld devices, the MolecuLight i:X and the MolecuLightDX, can both help assess wounds, clean and remove unhealthy tissue, and evaluate treatment effectiveness by measuring bacterial presence at every stage. The DX can integrate data into electronic medical records and comes equipped with an administrator workflow. 

Using a MolecuLight device for wound treatment can shorten healing times, reduce the use of unnecessary antibiotics, and avoid complications related to infection, the company claims, without touching the patient’s skin. 

The company also manufactures accessories for MolecuLight devices, such as wound stickers and a portable dark environment to increase the visibility of the fluorescent imaging. 

MolecuLight was founded in 2012 by Ralph DaCosta, a Toronto-based research scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Health Canada authorized the sale of MolecuLight’s device in 2015, and the US Food and Drug Administration followed suit in 2019.

Competitors in the wound management care space include Toronto-based Swift Medical, which has started integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its software program to assess and treat wounds.

Feature image courtesy MolecuLight.

The post Wound care device maker MolecuLight secures $39.5 million CAD from UK-based Hayfin first appeared on BetaKit.

British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is investing $820-million CAD in Canada to support its move into a larger office in the Greater Toronto Area. 

AstraZeneca said the investment will create more than high-value 700 jobs across all areas of its business, and contribute to its goal of bringing 20 new medicines to patients around the world by 2030, eight of which have already been launched. 

Premier Doug Ford announced that the Government of Ontario is contributing a $16.1-million CAD grant through Invest Ontario to support the company’s expansion effort, adding that the new jobs would strengthen Ontario’s position as a global leader in life sciences and innovation. 

“This investment is a reflection of […] our strong belief in Canada’s potential as a global hub for life sciences innovation.” 

Pascal Soriot
AstraZeneca

The expanded operations will strengthen AstraZeneca’s research and capabilities and enhance clinical trial design in oncology, immunology, and infectious diseases by leveraging artificial intelligence, computational pathology, and digital health technologies, Invest Ontario said in a statement.

Invest Ontario added that it also provided AstraZeneca with site selection services, market intelligence, and immigration support to streamline the investment process.

“This investment is a reflection of our growing clinical pipeline, our strong belief in Canada’s potential as a global hub for life sciences innovation, and the value of public-private collaboration with the Ontario government,” AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a statement. 

Ontario has been looking to establish itself as a global biomanufacturing and life sciences hub, evidenced by the launch of the second phase of its life sciences strategy this past October. The phase, which includes $146 million in provincial spending commitments, has set an anchor goal of growing the province’s biomanufacturing and life sciences holding 85,000 high-value jobs by 2030.

RELATED: Fusion Pharmaceuticals to be acquired by AstraZeneca for more than $2 billion USD

AstraZeneca said it has created more than 1,200 jobs and invested more than $1.3-billion CAD in Canada since 2023. The pharmaceutical company also acquired Hamilton-based biopharmaceutical precision oncology firm Fusion Pharmaceuticals for $3-billion CAD last June. 

“We believe the diverse talent pool together with the network of world-class universities, hospitals, and research centres will help us bring new medicines to Canadians and patients worldwide,” Soriot said. 

Feature image courtesy AstraZeneca via LinkedIn.

The post AstraZeneca to invest $820-million CAD in Ontario facilities expansion first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based Street Context has been acquired by fellow market intelligence platform BlueMatrix for an undisclosed amount. 

Both firms provide offerings meant to centralize and manage communications and intelligence around investments and the capital markets. The combined company will integrate authoring, financial data, and consumption analytics into a unified platform, BlueMatrix said in a statement, adding that this will help financial institutions to deliver more targeted communications to clients. 

“We believe the combined company has the potential to rethink and reinvent how information moves through the industry.” 

Adam Solomon
Thoma Bravo

BetaKit has reached out to BlueMatrix and Street Context for more information on the acquisition but did not hear back by press time. 

Street Context was founded in 2012 to help sell side brokerages–firms that facilitate offering securities to buyers–distribute and manage content and analysis, such as formal research and market commentary. Street Context also provides an email intelligence platform that helps brokers manage contact lists and track engagement analytics. 

“Between the two firms, we already work with almost every sell side firm in the world,” Street Context CEO Blair Livingston claimed in a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition. “Together, we’ll be able to cover information distribution across the entire sell side, across sales, trading, research, and investment banking.”

Founded in 1999, Durham, NC-based BlueMatrix makes an investment research and publishing platform that aims to help investment banks and research analysts distribute financial analysis and reports. The platform helps firms evaluate engagement and comply with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Europe’s GDPR data law, Research Information Markup Language (RIXML), and web accessibility standards. 

RELATED: California-based loan collection platform Eltropy acquires Lexop for undisclosed amount

Last January, software rollup giant Thoma Bravo completed a strategic investment in BlueMatrix, adding it to its portfolio of more than 455 companies. In a statement, Thoma Bravo partner Adam Solomon said that BlueMatrix and Street Context will be better positioned to serve clients together. 

“As a major consumer of information in the capital markets, and broader financial services industry, we understand the power of bringing the BlueMatrix and Street Context platforms together,” Solomon said. “We believe the combined company has the potential to rethink and reinvent how information moves through the industry.” 

This marks yet another acquisition of a Canadian tech company by an interventional player announced since the turn of the new year. Others include Montréal-based BrainBox AI, Toronto-based e-commerce software aggregator Carbon6 Technologies, Toronto-based HR software company Humi, and Montréal-based debt collections technology provider Lexop. 

Feature image courtesy Jakub Żerdzicki via Unsplash.

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Montréal-based nonprofit QueerTech has launched a new accelerator for Canadian entrepreneurs who identify as members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

The move follows QueerTech’s early 2024 acquisition of Toronto’s Gradient Spaces, which offered similar programming for 2SLGBTQIA+ founders.

Applications close on Fri. Jan. 24.

QueerTech has also named Virtual Gurus founder and CEO Bobbie Racette, an Indigenous, Cree-Métis, and 2SLGBTQIA+ tech entrepreneur, chair of the organization’s board of directors.

Targeted toward early-stage startups with a prototype, proof of concept, or minimum viable product, QueerTech’s 12-week QT Founders Catalyst Program will be delivered virtually with in-person networking opportunities in Toronto, Montréal, Calgary, Halifax, and Vancouver.

Through the QT Founders Catalyst Program, QueerTech hopes to help provide participating 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs with the tools, resources, mentorship, and networks to overcome barriers and scale their ventures. Applications for the program’s inaugural cohort, which is set to kick off in March, close tomorrow on Fri. Jan. 24.

QueerTech supports 2SLGBTQ+ tech workers and entrepreneurs. In a statement, QueerTech co-founder and CEO Naoufel Testaouni said that via the QT Founders Catalyst Program, the organization hopes to “create a supportive and empowering environment where 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs can flourish.”

RELATED: QueerTech acquires accelerator gradient spaces to support more 2SLGBTQIA+ tech workers

“We believe that by providing tailored resources and fostering a strong community, we can help queer founders overcome barriers and drive innovation within the tech industry,” Testaouni added.

A QueerTech spokesperson told BetaKit that the QT Founders Catalyst Program builds on the foundation laid by Gradient Spaces, whose program QueerTech sunset after last year’s deal. According to the spokesperson, the QT Founders Catalyst Program is a rebranded and significantly expanded offering with a new structure, curriculum, and mentor and funding network.

The QT Founders Catalyst Program is being financially supported by the Government of Canada via the 2SLGBTQI+ Entrepreneurship Program, which is being administered by the Canadian Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

RELATED: QueerTech report finds change is lagging for 2SLGBTQIA+ tech workers in Canada

QueerTech is among the 17 organizations selected by the Government of Canada to deliver its $8-million ecosystem fund for 2SLGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs.

Founded in 2016, QueerTech started as a meetup group in partnership with MontréalNewTech to surface and connect queer professionals within the local tech industry. The organization has claimed, since then, that it has helped over 10,000 professionals who identify as 2SLGBTQIA+ via professional development and mentorship and hosted over 125 events.

Speaking to Racette’s appointment as chair, Testaouni said in a statement that she “embodies the values and vision of QueerTech,” noting, “her leadership, insights, and unwavering commitment to inclusivity will help us take our mission to Queer the Tech Ecosystem to new heights.”

Feature image courtesy QueerTech.

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Toronto-based Basetwo has closed a $11.5 million USD ($16.5 million CAD) Series A round for its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered copilot for manufacturing engineers. 

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup is trying to solve tech inefficiencies in large-scale chemical manufacturing. Basetwo says its AI platform can cut energy consumption and costs for the mass production of pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and gas processing.

According to Gaffoor, AI models don’t understand foundational physics or chemistry, hindering AI deployment in manufacturing.

The all-equity, all-primary round was led by Paris-based firm Axa Venture Partners (AVP), with participation from Glasswing Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, Global Brain Ventures, Shimadzu Corporation, Chiyoda Corporation, and United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based angel investors. Investors from AVP and Glasswing are now on Basetwo’s board of directors. 

The financing, which closed in September, brings the company’s total amount raised to $17.5 million USD, following its 2022 seed round led by Glasswing Ventures and Argon Ventures.  

Basetwo’s AI copilot seeks to help chemical manufacturers make production more efficient. For pharmaceutical companies, this could mean identifying and setting the optimal reactor temperatures and mixing speeds when scaling up the production of new drugs.

RELATED: BrainBox AI acquired by Irish HVAC giant Trane

Thouheed Abdul Gaffoor, CEO and co-founder of Basetwo, said that most generative AI applications have focused on consumer use cases, but optimizing manufacturing through AI requires a different approach that incorporates expertise in physics and engineering. 

The biggest problem with deploying AI in manufacturing, according to Gaffoor, is that AI models don’t understand the foundations of physics and chemistry. Instead, they generate outputs based only on historical manufacturing data. 

“This is okay for problems such as classifying cats or dogs in images,” Gaffoor told BetaKit. “Still, this would be highly problematic when trying to simulate engineering problems such as chemical reactions in tanks, combustion in engines, or distillation in columns.”

Gaffoor said that Basetwo’s model combines this data with physics and chemistry principles found in engineering handbooks, chemical data tables, and equipment specification files. The approach is handy for pharmaceutical manufacturers, who may be testing new compounds and have limited data available about how they behave in mass production.

Facing global supply chain disruptions and labour shortages, Canadian companies are turning to tech to increase manufacturing efficiency, according to a recent survey from Plant and Canadian Manufacturing. Life sciences and biopharma companies are increasingly looking to integrate generative AI solutions to make R&D more effective, according to a Deloitte report, as new drug candidates have high failure rates. 

The company claims its platform optimizes engineering processes by reducing energy use and materials costs, cutting down on manufacturing cycle times, and implementing quality-control features. Basetwo declined to disclose the names of its customers but said its AI copilot has been deployed with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing firms, across North America, Europe, the UAE, and Japan. 

The funding will go towards developing the AI copilot further and introducing an autonomous control feature called AutoPilot. The company says this new layer would automatically optimize plant operations without human intervention.

Gaffoor previously founded Waterloo-based cleantech startup Emagin, which was acquired by Innovyze in 2019. He was most recently the head of AI at industrial software provider Autodesk, working alongside his brother and COO Thamjeeth Abdul Gaffoor. Along with Tawfeeq Abdul Gaffoor, three out of four of Basetwo’s co-founders are brothers, and head of pharma and chemicals Kiefer Eaton rounds out the team.

Basetwo is headquartered in Toronto, with offices in the US and the UAE. It currently has 20 employees and is looking to add at least 10 more, across product, engineering, and sales in Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary. The company also aims to triple its revenue within the next year.

“Canadian talent is on par with or surpasses that of the US, and combined with generous government [research and development] funding,” Gaffoor said, referencing tax incentives such as (Scientific Research and Experimental Development) SR&ED. “This makes Canada a highly favourable and capital-efficient market for building deep tech startups.”

Feature image courtesy Basetwo.

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When Axtion founder and CEO Tracey McGillivray’s father started falling at the age of 82, he was never hurt on the way down. Getting back up proved to be the bigger problem.

McGillivray’s mother, barely a year younger, wasn’t strong enough to help him. When no one was home, they would call 911 or plead with neighbours for assistance. McGillivray scoured the market for something simple, lightweight, and intuitive that her parents could use independently. But every option was either impractical or too cumbersome.

“Many ventures punch above their weight, because they find a way to a lot with very little funding.”

Talis Apud-Martinez, Emera ideaHUB

Seeing “a solvable problem going unsolved,” McGillivray decided to address it. She called an old acquaintance, Liam Maaskant, a mechanical engineer and former university hockey captain, and pitched her idea to join forces. Maaskant readily agreed.

Weeks later, Maaskant returned with a rough concept of a walker with an integrated elevating seat that could help users move safely from floor to standing.

The team would spend the next five years refining this concept through wooden mock-ups and bare-metal prototypes while completing their residency at the Emera ideaHUB in Dalhousie University.

This year, Halifax-based Axtion Independence Mobility is finally closing in on a market-ready device. 

But McGillivray and Maaskant’s approach to building their company has been interesting. Instead of turning to venture capital, they have leaned on grants, bootstrapping, and a network of non-dilutive supporters.

Talis Apud-Martinez, Associate Director of the Emera ideaHUB at Dalhousie University, explained that venture capital isn’t always a practical option for deep tech startups in Atlantic Canada. 

“While we are under-capitalized in this region, there is a unique set of opportunities to get started with different government and provincial entrepreneurship-focused grants. Something I never encountered as a founder in Silicon Valley,” Apud-Martinez said. 

“At the same time, many ventures punch above their weight, because they find a way to a lot with very little funding and are able to find helpful partnerships like free prototyping tools and space at the Emera ideaHUB amongst many other resources in the Atlantic Canada ecosystem,” Apud-Martinez added.

According to data from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, Atlantic Canada saw $143 million CAD in venture capital investments across 42 deals in the first three quarters of 2024—a small slice compared to provinces like Ontario or British Columbia.

For Axtion, the comparative lack of venture capital meant finding other ways to fund their early work. McGillivray started by putting up her own money, and later secured startup grants from groups like Invest Nova Scotia and Mitacs.

“We applied for everything that was out there,” McGillivray recalled. “And we were pretty successful.”

Axtion’s early prototypes reflected the team’s approach: pieced together with department store scraps, car jacks, and plywood. Though unconventional, it allowed them to refine the design without external pressure to scale too quickly.

“From the outset, our objective was to have a market-ready, cleared product, and then we would look for investment,” McGillivray said.

By the time they reached their fifth prototype—a near-market-ready model—the team had spent years gathering input from occupational therapists, patients, and industry experts. According to McGillivray, getting there took “twice as long and three times as much money” as she initially thought.

“That early phase when you need non-dilutive funding to get started is so crucial,” Apud-Martinez added.

For innovation startups in Atlantic Canada, opportunities for non-dilutive funding are surprisingly plentiful, according to Apud-Martinez. Programs like the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency provide interest-free loans and innovation grants through initiatives like the Business Development Program and the Regional Economic Growth through Innovation fund. 

The National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) also offers grants and mentorship to early-stage ventures, while provincial initiatives like Invest Nova Scotia supports startups with milestone-based grants targeting sectors like healthtech and ocean tech. Other organizations, such as Springboard Atlantic, also provide tailored support for scaling research-driven businesses.

Axtion certainly isn’t alone in its founders’ view on fundraising. Tech startups from across Atlantic Canada have foregone venture capital in their early years to fuel growth through bootstrapping and grants. 

Halifax-based healthtech software startup Curv Health, founded by Shea Balish during his PhD at Dalhousie University, raised $1.5 million in its first equity financing round in 2019. But before that, the startup was largely supported by technology licensing, research grants, and industry awards.

Another Halifax-based startup, MOC Biotechnologies, which specializes in 3D printing artificial tissues like cartilage and heart valves, relied on non-dilutive funding from organizations like NRC-IRAP to avoid early equity dilution. The startup also received support from Halifax innovation hub Volta after completing its 2021 cohort program.

For McGillivray, avoiding venture capital early on was also about keeping the company’s goals aligned. “VCs are all looking for significant returns in a fairly fixed period of time—three years, five years—they want a 10x return,” she said. This often leads to “artificially forced exits, like buyouts,” she said, which frequently benefit foreign companies.

“That actually doesn’t help the local economy,” McGillivray added. “One of our secondary objectives was to try and help the Nova Scotia economy.”

For founders like McGillivray, success means more than just a quick exit, rather it is about creating something sustainable. Apud-Martinez believes that this approach is emblematic of the Atlantic Canada playbook.

“There’s a deep commitment and desire here for people to build a company and have it be a sustainable business, generating jobs and contributing to our province’s vision and growth,” Apud-Martinez said.

---

Emera ideaHUB empowers deep tech founders to turn bold ideas into reality.

With mentorship, resources, and funding, we help innovators tackle product development and startup challenges. Ready to launch? Learn more today.

All photos provided by Emera ideaHUB.

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Montréal-based private equity firm Novacap has raised more than $1-billion USD ($1.43-billion CAD) for its first fund dedicated entirely to investing in digital infrastructure. 

New fund has already deployed capital in four companies. 

Novacap said in a statement that the new fund exceeded its fundraising target, and is backed by undisclosed existing and new institutional investors, family offices, and “high-net-worth investors” from North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

The firm added that the digital infrastructure fund complements its investments in technology, industries, and financial services. 

The new fund is looking to invest as much as $100 million into 10 regional companies that sell connectivity and data access services backed by physical assets, according to BNN Bloomberg. Novacap CEO Pascal Tremblay told BNN Bloomberg that the fund exceeded its original target of $750-million USD after two years of fundraising, and that digital infrastructure will continue to be in high demand due to the growth of artificial intelligence. 

“Our dedicated digital infrastructure team, comprised of industry veterans, investors, and entrepreneurs, has the experience to identify and source compelling investment opportunities in the lower mid-market and then help them grow and expand with our operational and strategic expertise,” Novacap senior partner, and head of the new fund, Ted Mocarski said in a statement. 

RELATED: Financial rates comparison platform Ratehub receives “major” investment from Novacap

The fund has already deployed capital in four companies, including emergency services infrastructure company INdigital, broadband network provider All West Communications, wireless digital assets developer Communications Tower Group, and data center operator H5 Data Centers. 

Founded in 1981, Novacap is one of Canada’s largest private equity firms and claims to have invested in more than 250 companies to date with more $10-billion CAD in assets under management. 

Novacap last closed a fund in 2021, securing $1.865-billion USD ($2.37-billion CAD) for its sixth technology, media and telecommunications fund and $417-million CAD for its first financial services fund. 

Image courtesy Novacap via LinkedIn.

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Canada’s quantum sector just got a big boost this week as more than 100 quantum projects are receiving nearly $80-million in combined federal funding. 

Canada’s federally funded Digital Innovation Cluster (DIGITAL) is investing $4.7-million across three commercialization projects led by autonomous farming software company Verge Ag, cybersecurity maker Quantum Bridge Technologies, and quantum computing firm Xanadu. Meanwhile, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is doling out $74-million in grants to support 107 quantum science research projects. 

NSERC claims supported projects will help train more than 500 graduates and postdoctoral fellows.

The NSERC funding was announced at Québec’s Institut National de la recherche scientifique (INRS) this week, which is hosting eight of the funded projects. NSERC said in a statement that all awarded projects will support the development of quantum technologies in areas aligned with Canada’s National Quantum Strategy.

NSERC added that the investment will help Canadian researchers establish and grow international research collaborations through joint initiatives with France’s Agence nationale de la recherche and the United States’ National Science Foundation.

“This investment strengthens our leadership position in a field that is highly strategic for Quebec and will let us continue to advance the frontiers of science and innovation in the service of society,” INRS CEO Luc-Alain Giraldeau said in a statement. 

NSERC claimed the supported projects will help train more than 500 graduates and postdoctoral fellows at post-secondary institutions across Canada.

Meanwhile, DIGITAL’s $4.7-million co-investment across three projects is supported by an additional $7.3 million in private partner contributions. 

The Quantum-Safe Critical Infrastructure Protection project from Toronto-based project leader Quantum Bridge is receiving $1.2-million from DIGITAL to commercialize a hardware and software cryptography solution that the company claims can withstand the attacks from quantum computing systems. 

RELATED: Xanadu claims networking breakthrough with new photonic quantum computer Aurora

Earlier this month, Quantum Bridge announced it officially met the standards of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program, verifying that Quantum Bridge offers clients encryption that protects against cyberattacks using quantum computers.

The Optimizing Agricultural Operations with Quantum Computing project from Verge Ag, with collaboration from D-Wave, is receiving $1.9-million from DIGITAL to model and simulate agricultural scenarios to help organizations and growers with real-time decision-making. 

After responding to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s quantum-skeptical remarks earlier this month, the formerly British Columbia-based D-Wave announced its new Leap Quantum LaunchPad program, an initiative designed to accelerate the deployment of quantum computing applications.

Finally, the Compilation Open DEsign (CODE) project from Xanadu is aiming to enable open-source access to discover new uses for quantum technologies with its $1.6-million DIGITAL contribution. This week, Xanadu claimed it figured out how to network quantum computers together, potentially solving one of the key challenges facing the industry.

Feature image courtesy INRS. 

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Retail giant Amazon is ending its operations in Québec, closing seven operation sites and cutting roughly 1,900 jobs, according to Radio-Canada. It will continue to deliver orders to customers in Québec through third-party distributors, similar to how it operated in 2020, the company said.

A total of seven operation sites near Montréal and its surrounding communities, including in Lachine, Longueuil, and Coteau-du-Lac, will be closed over the next two months. The affected sites include three delivery stations, two sorting centres, one fulfillment centre, and an extra-large (AMXL) delivery station.  

One-thousand seven hundred part-time and full-time employees, as well as 250 seasonal workers, will be laid off. Barbara Agrait, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement that the seasonal workers will be compensated until the last day of their contracts and affected employees will get up to 14 weeks’ severance pay and transitional benefits. 

Amazon denies that its decision to exit Québec was tied to the unionization of its warehouse in Laval, Que.

Québec was the only province in Canada with a unionized Amazon workplace. The Conféderation des syndicats nationaux (CSN) filed an application to represent roughly 250 employees at the DXT4 warehouse in Laval, Que., last spring. 

However, there was no official collective agreement in place. The CSN has been at the bargaining table with Amazon since July, with negotiation meetings scheduled throughout January. 

Amazon denies that its decision to pull out of Québec was tied to the unionization. Agrait said that the move follows “a recent review of Québec operations” in the province and that the “decision wasn’t made lightly.” BetaKit reached out and did not receive any additional information. 

Earlier this month, CityNews and The Canadian Press reported that at least 30 DXT4 employees were told they were being let go. CSN president Caroline Senneville called the layoffs a “retaliatory measure” on Amazon’s part, but a spokesperson for the e-commerce giant said this claim was false and the workers were hired as seasonal employees with a clear contract end date.

Radio-Canada reported that Montréal-based courier company Intelcom, which is already an Amazon subcontractor, might take over some delivery operations. 

“Amazon is one of the many clients for whom Intelcom provides last-mile logistics services in Canada and across borders,” an Intelcom spokesperson wrote in an email to BetaKit. “We value our long-standing relationship with them and look forward to continuing our collaboration to balance capacity needs in Québec.”

Québec’s minister of employment, Kateri Champagne Jourdain, told Radio-Canada that she had not yet received a notice of the mass layoffs.

“As soon as that’s done, we’ll set up the usual process,” Jourdain said in French. ”For example, a placement committee to support workers who want to move to another sector, find a job, or receive training.”

Feature image courtesy Amazon Canada.

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Toronto-based quantum computing company Xanadu claims that it has figured out how to network quantum computers together, one of the key challenges facing the industry.

Xanadu introduced its new photonic quantum computer Aurora today. Aurora, which builds on Xanadu’s previous X8 and Borealis systems, consists of four modular and independent server racks that are photonically interconnected and networked together. The new 12-qubit machine is made up of 35 photonic chips and a combined 13 kilometres of fibre optics that all operate at room temperature.

According to Xanadu, this breakthrough result, which was published in the peer-reviewed research journal Nature, “marks a pivotal milestone towards realizing utility-scale quantum computing” and constructing a quantum computer capable of solving real-world problems.

“Xanadu has now solved scalability.”

Christian Weedbrook
Xanadu

“The two big challenges remaining for the industry are the improved performance of the quantum computer (error correction and fault tolerance) and scalability (networking),” Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook said in a statement. “Xanadu has now solved scalability.”

Weedbrook claimed that in principle, Aurora could be scaled up to thousands of server racks and millions of qubits today, which would help the company realize its ultimate goal of building a quantum data centre. But instead of doing that, the CEO said Xanadu plans to focus on performance in reducing loss and being fault tolerant first as it eyes “the next major hurdle towards fault-tolerant quantum computing: optical loss.”

Last year, Weedbrook told The BetaKit Podcast that Xanadu was planning to raise $100 million to $200 million USD in late 2024 or early 2025 and hoping to secure this amount entirely from Canadian investors. He indicated that Xanadu would use this funding largely to advance its quantum computing hardware, which is challenging and expensive to develop. 

At the time, Weedbrook said that Xanadu aimed to establish a quantum data centre in 2029, a target he expects will also require another even larger financing before then.

Xanadu aims “to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere.” Founded by Weedbrook in 2016, Xanadu is working to use photons, or particles of light, to perform exceptionally fast and complex computations at room temperature quicker than traditional computers. 

According to Xanadu, the now 190-plus-person company’s photonics-based approach to quantum computing offers a few advantages, including the ability to leverage modern chip manufacturing facilities, the application of optical components developed by the existing telecommunications industry, and the use of fibre optics to network photonic chips together. 

Xanadu has raised $275 million USD in total funding to date from a group of Canadian investors that includes BDC Capital, Georgian Partners, Golden Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Radical Ventures, and Real Ventures, and foreign backers like Alumni Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Capricorn, Forward Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Tiger Global, and Tim Draper.

RELATED: Xanadu’s Christian Weedbrook is raising another $200 million to build a quantum data centre

This figure includes a $100-million USD, Georgian-led Series C round from late 2022 at a $1-billion USD valuation. According to The Globe and Mail, Silicon Valley Bank provided about $10 million USD in venture debt as part of that financing. 

That round came shortly after Xanadu hit an elusive milestone in the quantum race when its Borealis quantum computer achieved “quantum advantage,” delivering a result beyond the practical reach of a conventional computer system, as outlined in Nature.

In its Series C announcement, Xanadu indicated that the company’s next goal was to build a fault-tolerant and error-corrected quantum computer capable of scaling up to one million qubits, the level at which it said useful applications could be accessed.

Shortly afterwards, Xanadu secured an additional $30 million USD from the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund to fuel its quantum computing development and commercialization efforts.

Xanadu has partnered with a wide variety of players, including companies like Toyota to explore the use of quantum computing to advance materials science simulations, and postsecondary institutions like the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University to advance research at the intersection of quantum, cybersecurity, deep learning, and smart grids. Earlier this month, Xanadu became a founding partner of Open Quantum Design, a Kitchener-Waterloo non-profit that aims to build an open-source, full-stack quantum computer.

RELATED: D-Wave CEO says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is “dead wrong” about quantum computing

“We look at this as being at the early days of the Internet, early days of the [personal computer] revolution,” Weedbrook told The BetaKit Podcast last year. “It’s that transformative.”

Amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, Weedbrook has pitched quantum as the solution to rising data centre costs. Last year, Weedbrook argued on The BetaKit Podcast, “Quantum will have its AI moment in terms of the buzz that we see now in generative AI.”

“It’s probably one of the next key technologies that will have a lot of hype around it, some good, some bad, like any cycle of hype,” Weedbrook added.

In late 2024, investor interest in quantum computing surged, benefitting publicly traded firms in the space. This includes Canadian-founded and now United States-based D-Wave and American players like IonQ and Rigetti Computing.

This rise has been fuelled partly by recent progress announcements from quantum developers like Google. Though quantum stocks fell earlier this month after Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang expressed a more pessimistic outlook on the sector—one that D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz contested—they continue to trade far above their pre-November 2024 prices.

Feature image courtesy Xanadu.

The post Xanadu claims networking breakthrough with new photonic quantum computer Aurora first appeared on BetaKit.

Multiple websites related to Shopify’s Equitable Commerce programs are no longer active following the recent departures of the company’s Equitable Commerce and Build Native leads, BetaKit has learned.

Pages for the Build Native with Shopify, Empowered by Shopify, and Social Impact programs are no longer live on Shopify’s site. The Internet Wayback Machine indexed archived versions of these pages as recently as Jan. 18.

The Build Native program provided resources and financial incentives for Indigenous-led companies to grow their e-commerce presence.

The Build Native program provided resources and financial incentives for Indigenous-led companies to grow their e-commerce presence. Its stated goal was to build a “global support system” for Indigenous entrepreneurs. 

The program was established in June 2020 to provide Indigenous entrepreneurs with access to educational resources about e-commerce through an online platform. Shopify also provided financial support to Canadian partners such as Raven Indigenous Capital Partners and EntrepreNorth, as well as New Zealand-based organizations Te Whare Hukahuka and Rise2025.

Pow Wow Pitch, a pitch competition for Indigenous founders, was also a listed partner of the initiative. Shopify is still a Pow Wow Pitch sponsor, according to the organization’s website.

Pow Wow Pitch and EntrepreNorth both declined to comment, with the latter saying it has been “a long time since we’ve had an active partnership with Shopify.” Raven Capital did not provide comment on the Build Native partnership following outreach requests.

“We built something from the ground up”

The quiet shuttering of Build Native’s webpage comes alongside the departure of co-founder and program lead Kyle Brennan Shàwinipinesì. Multiple sources confirmed to BetaKit that the Head of Equitable Commerce, Brandon Davenport, is also no longer with the company. 

In a Jan. 20 LinkedIn post, Shàwinipinesì wrote that last week “marked [his] final days at Shopify” and that he would be moving on from his role. 

“With years of advocacy and the allyship of so many incredible people, we built something from the ground up—a mission rooted in creating opportunities for my community, helping others see their own worth, and empowering them to chase their dreams,” Shàwinipinesì wrote.

Several commenters praised Shàwinipinesì’s work on the Build Native program, with one former employee writing she was “sorry to hear Shopify is losing one of the best and brightest.” 

RELATED: “It used to be lonely being Indigenous in tech”: How one tech founder’s question led to a community of hundreds

Shopify has not responded to multiple requests for comment regarding the current status of its Build Native program or its Equitable Commerce team members. 

Build Native was not the only Shopify program geared towards uplifting racialized entrepreneurs. In 2020, the company launched Build Black, a program for Black founders to gain access to resources and education to grow their businesses. That webpage was still active at publication time. 

The initiative tied into Shopify’s $130-million pledge to help create an additional 1 million Black-owned businesses in the US by 2030 in partnership with non-profit Operation HOPE. One source familiar with the initiative speculated that 1MBB, and therefore Build Black, is still in operation due to this financial commitment.  

In June 2020, Shopify also promised donations of $500,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, $250,000 to Black Health Alliance, and $250,000 to Campaign Zero, a non-profit that analyzes inequitable policing practices in the US. 

Shopify’s Social Impact page and Empowered by Shopify, an employee-initiated directory of Black and Indigenous-owned businesses, were removed around the same time as Build Native. 

Shopify’s slow shift away from DEI

Several of these programs were launched in 2020, following the police murder of George Floyd that sparked a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. But as the political pendulum has swung the other way, a spate of large corporations have rolled back their DEI commitments, including giants such as Amazon, McDonald’s, Meta, and Walmart.

In recent years, tech leaders have followed suit, rejecting DEI and embracing “anti-woke” rhetoric. Some of the world’s most prominent tech CEOs stood beside US President Donald Trump at his inauguration before he issued a slew of anti-DEI executive orders. The timing of Shopify’s decision to shutter the Build Native program stands out in light of these political events. 

The timing of Shopify’s decision to shutter the Build Native program days before Trump’s inauguration stands out.

But Shopify’s approach to workplace inclusion and the treatment of racialized employees has been subject to internal and external controversy for some time. Former employees revealed to Business Insider in 2021 that leadership shut down internal conversations surrounding a custom Slack emoji of a noose, which was seen as a symbol of lynchings by Black employees. Around the same time, CEO Tobi Lütke reshared a Shopify-made parody rap video that many employees internally decried as racially insensitive. 

Externally, Shopify has continued to provide services to shops that advocates say promote hate, such as those run by Breitbart in 2017 and Libs of TikTok in 2022. As first reported by independent journalist Rachel Gilmore, Shopify is now powering conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ new online store. Jones was ordered in 2023 to pay $1.5 billion USD in damages after US courts found he intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.

Gilmore also first reported in November 2024 that Shopify had quietly changed its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to allow for hateful content.

The previous version of its AUP listed 10 categories of prohibited activities on Shopify platforms, including: child exploitation, harassment and threats, hateful content, illegal activities, intellectual property infringement, malicious and deceptive practices, uploading confidential information, self-harm, spam, and terrorist materials. 

Under “hateful content,” Shopify clients were previously prohibited from promoting or condoning hate or violence “against people based on race, ethnicity, colour, national origin, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, medical condition, or veteran status.” The same applied to clients using Shopify’s platform that promote or support organizations doing the same.

Now, the page states a shorter message: “There are activities we don’t allow on the platform because they breach the social contract of commerce. This means you can’t call for, or threaten, violence against specific people or groups. And you can’t sell products that facilitate intentional self-harm.”

If you are a former or current Shopify employee and have information relevant to BetaKit’s reporting, please reach out on a non-work device at [email protected] or via Signal at @madisonmcla.12.

One former employee familiar with the Equitable Commerce team’s work told BetaKit that part of the reason they left the company was due to an environment of perceived racism and a lack of understanding. Multiple racialized employees BetaKit spoke with in the summer of 2021 noted discomfort with the direction the company was heading under its leadership. The employees pointed to current Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian as a catalyst for those changes, but also noted a fear of being found outside of the “mission-based” vision set by CEO Tobi Lütke. 

Former employees BetaKit spoke to for this story referenced Nejatian’s public statements, which they characterized as “anti-Indigenous.” The Shopify COO has been an ardent defender of controversial Canadian historical figures, such as Sir John A. Macdonald, the country’s first prime minister who was also the architect of the residential school system. 

Shopify’s board of directors ranked 204th out of 215 in The Globe and Mail’s 2024 evaluation of Canada’s largest companies for their board governance practices. Despite scoring well on the diverse makeup of its board of directors, the company scored zeroes according to the ranking criteria on policies to ensure the representation of women or other diverse members.  

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

With files from Douglas Soltys. Feature image courtesy Shopify.

The post Shopify quietly kills Indigenous entrepreneurship program Build Native first appeared on BetaKit.

Boardy CEO Andrew D’Souza has issued an apology after his new artificial intelligence (AI) networking tool commented on the appearances of its users in the style of US President Donald Trump. 

On the morning of Jan. 20, inauguration day in the United States, D’Souza posted on LinkedIn that users who have used Boardy should check their inbox “for a fun surprise,” and encouraged sharing the result for the sake of making LinkedIn fun again. “Out with the cringe, in with the fun!” the post reads.

Boardy is an AI networking tool that speaks with users over LinkedIn messaging or phone calls to then connect them with other people the bot deems compatible.  

D’Souza said the mishap was “100 percent [his] call.”

The fun surprise turned out to be an email from Boardy Boardman claiming to have had a “really interesting call with someone over the weekend.” The email then includes a critique of the recipient’s appearance based on their LinkedIn photo in the style of Donald Trump. An example email posted by D’Souza can be found here.

While D’Souza encouraged users to post their results with the hashtag #MakeLinkedInFunAgain, the campaign was met with immediate and significant negative reaction, particularly from women. One prominent LinkedIn post by fractional COO Milly Barker which criticized the email blast, garnered hundreds of comments, ultimately receiving triple the amount of engagement as D’Souza’s initial post. 

In the post, which included a screenshot of the unsolicited email she received from Boardy, Barker said she was “lost for words.”

“I’m so horrified at the idea that so many people would vote for the objectification of women, for the removal of our rights and bodily autonomy, for the chance to treat so many people as second or third class citizens, only for some motherf*cking robot to shove itself into my inbox with comments about how my ‘mouth commands attention’ and that my ‘eyes sparkle,’” Barker wrote.

Many other women tech leaders took to LinkedIn to share the emails they had received or criticize the marketing attempt. Forbes noted that Boardy’s emails to women tended to comment on physical appearance, while emails to men appeared to focus on presence and expertise. 

D’Souza issued an apology in another LinkedIn post that afternoon, saying the campaign was “100 percent [his] call.” 

“I wanted to build on all the Boardy momentum from last week and totally missed the mark for a bunch of different reasons – most critically, we used AI to comment on people’s appearance, which has no place in a professional setting, and isn’t really aligned with what we’re trying to do with Boardy,” D’Souza wrote. 

When asked in the comments of his post if anyone internally pushed back on the marketing mistake, D’Souza was transparent that he didn’t listen. “I didn’t totally understand what they were warning me about,” he wrote.

That D’Souza took personal responsibility for the actions of his AI chatbot undermines the company’s recent marketing push around its fundraising. The company announced an $8 million seed round led by Creandum last week, which followed a $3 million pre-seed raise in October. D’Souza claimed the seed round was raised entirely by the AI chatbot itself, and that most of the investors in the round never spoke with a human.

Regardless, yesterday’s events are a reminder that behind every business, AI or otherwise, there is always a human accountable.

Feature image courtesy Boardy.

The post Your “mouth commands attention”: Boardy CEO apologizes after emphatic negative response to Trump-themed marketing miss first appeared on BetaKit.

Embattled edtech startup Paper has appointed Silicon Valley edtech veteran Martina Tam as CEO following a whirlwind 2024. 

Tam brings experience from various San Francisco-based tech companies, including early education platform Brightwheel where she served as the chief operating officer and interim chief growth officer. She also worked as the vice president of marketing at video teaching platform Masterclass and a senior director at event planning platform Eventbrite.

“The market has changed, and so must Paper.”

Rich Yang
Paper Executive Chairman

“Martina has scaled businesses, launched impactful solutions for customers, and delivered outstanding results—all driven by her deep commitment to making a meaningful impact,” Paper Chairman and interim CEO Rich Yang said in a blog post announcing the appointment.

Founded in 2014 to provide accessible, 24/7 tutoring and homework support to help students from any background, Paper saw rapid expansion after the COVID-19 pandemic, securing $343 million CAD ($270 million USD) in Series D capital in 2022. 

However, turbulence hit Paper in 2023 when the company laid off staff in three separate waves shortly after acquiring Readlee and MajorClarity.

The turbulence led to leadership turnover in 2024. Paper co-founder Phil Cutler was out as CEO, replaced by Yang in an interim capacity. Yang has transitioned to the executive chairman role now that the company has a permanent CEO. 

During his tenure, Yang made dramatic changes to the structure of the edtech company, cutting 45 percent of its approximately 180 head office employees and laying off its entire Canadian tutor workforce in late August. Yang said at the time that focusing on the United States market would give the company a chance to rebuild its operations and improve its financial situation.

Based on her LinkedIn profile, Tam appears to be based in the United States. BetaKit has asked Paper if Tam will relocate to Canada or operate the company remotely from the United States but did not hear back by press time. 

RELATED: Paper co-founder Roberto Cipriani steps down from day-to-day role

The mass layoff incensed the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE) and its Québec branch (SEPB-Québec), who threatened legal action against Paper for terminating the employees they had recently gained accreditation to represent. 

Just a few weeks later, Paper CTO, COO, and other co-founder Roberto Cipriani stepped down from his day-to-day role in September 2024. In an internal email, Cipriani said he was instead focusing his efforts as a board member and advisor to the company.

After an eventful 2024, Yang said in the blog post announcing Tam’s appointment that he has stabilized the company, built a foundation for future growth, and launched Paper’s new digital tutoring program GROW. 

“Beginning on my first day, I’ve repeatedly shared that post-COVID, the market has changed, and so must Paper,” Yang said. 

“With Martina at the helm and our team’s continued, unwavering commitment, my conviction has never been stronger that Paper’s best days are ahead,” Yang added. 

Feature image courtesy Reforge.

The post Paper looks to rebound from turbulent 2024 with new CEO Martina Tam first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based incubator DMZ has received $3.5 million from the federal government to establish the Centre for Housing Innovation (CHI), a new hub that will provide a training program and a housing-focused accelerator. 

The funding, which comes from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), aims to establish CHI as a central hub with two cornerstone initiatives: the Accelerator for Housing Solutions and the Training Program for Housing and Manufacturing Innovation.

DMZ said in a statement that CHI will unite innovators, developers, contractors, and municipalities to drive the development and commercialization of housing technology. The incubator has partnered with GroundBreak Ventures, the non-profit CivicAction, and federally-funded advanced manufacturing innovation cluster NGen to help scale companies and upskill industry professionals through the two CHI programs. 

According to FedDev Ontario, the Accelerator for Housing Solutions, will provide participating entrepreneurs with access to industry experts, resources, and mentorship, as well as the opportunity to develop and pilot solutions to housing supply challenges in real-world settings.

“Startups bring agility and a fresh perspective, capable of experimenting in ways that established players often can’t,” DMZ executive director Abdullah Snobar said in a statement. “By empowering these entrepreneurs and providing them with the resources to lead, we can drive meaningful change in the housing space.”

RELATED: Initiatives from R-LABS, OCI call for a tech-first approach to solving Canada’s housing challenges

Meanwhile, the Training Program for Housing and Manufacturing Innovation will focus on teaching sustainable design, regulatory compliance, and advanced manufacturing techniques to manufacturers, developers, and contractors. 

Canada has faced significant housing supply and affordability challenges in recent years which have made homeownership and even simple housing security increasingly unattainable for many Canadians. According to a November 2024 Habitat for Humanity report, “59 percent of Canadians—including 75 percent of renters—are sacrificing other basic needs such as food, clothing, living essentials, and education to afford rent or mortgage payments.” 

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has predicted that Canada needs to build an additional 3.5 million more homes between 2022 and 2030 to restore affordability to the Canadian housing market. The federal government made housing a priority in the 2024 budget, committing $8.5 billion to build 3.87 million homes by 2031. 

Some tech companies with housing-focused solutions have been scrutinized for being ineffective, or even allegedly contributing to rising rent costs. This week, British Columbia launched a short-term rental registry with annual fees to crack down on “speculators” operating on platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, with the ultimate aim of increasing housing supply.   

RELATED: Happipad has only signed 31 leases since signing $1.3-million deal with Nova Scotia last August

Sherif El Tawil, DMZ’s senior director of programs and global operations, told BetaKit in an email statement that CHI has an evaluation and due diligence process to ensure its participating startups do “not make the problem worse.”  

“Our cohorts will focus on productivity within the Canadian housing ecosystem, with special consideration given to solutions that improve sustainability and affordability, along with providing a nationwide impact at scale.” El Tawil said. “While it’s true that, in every industry, some may misuse technology, the answer isn’t to shy away from innovation.” 

“We need to ensure the design and implementation of those technologies are done thoughtfully, and do not perpetuate existing biases.” El Tawil added.

Founded in 2010, DMZ is the startup incubator of Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly known as Ryerson University. The organization offers startups mentorship, coaching, legal support, and assistance with global expansion. DMZ claims it has supported more than 1,800 startups in raising $2.78 billion in capital to date. 

UPDATE (01/21/2025): This article has been updated with commentary from DMZ senior director of programs and global operations Sherif El Tawil.

Feature image courtesy DMZ via LinkedIn.

The post Federal government provides $3.5 million for DMZ’s new Centre for Housing Innovation first appeared on BetaKit.

British Columbia (BC)-based startup Moment Energy has secured a $15-million USD ($21.5-million CAD) Series A round as it continues to load up funding for its planned gigafactory in the United States. 

A gigafactory refers to a facility designed for the production of batteries, particularly those used in electric vehicles (EVs). Moment’s new facility will be dedicated to producing battery energy storage systems from repurposed EV batteries, the company has previously said in a statement. 

The round was co-led by the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund and Voyager Ventures, with participation from In-Q-Tel, Overture Ventures, WovenEarth Ventures, Fika Ventures, MCJ, One Small Planet, Climate Capital, and Version One Ventures. In addition to supporting the gigafactory development, the startup also said it would use its Series A capital to double the size of its Vancouver headquarters and team. 

RELATED: Moment Energy secures $28.1 million CAD from US Department of Energy to establish gigafactory in Texas

Moment was awarded $20.3-million USD ($28.1-million CAD) by the United States Department of Energy to establish the gigafactory in Taylor, Texas this past October. According to Moment, once fully operational the factory will have an annual production capacity of one gigawatt hour, roughly enough electricity to supply 750,000 homes for one year.

Version One, which led Moment’s $3.5-million CAD seed round in 2021, is the only disclosed Canadian investor in the round. The round comes at a difficult time to raise capital for hard cleantech in Canada, especially at the early stage, according to a recent MaRS report. 

The report found that cleantech investment volume in Canada has steadily decreased from a peak of 101 deals in 2021 to 75 deals in 2023. The report also found that the discrepancy between the median deal size of Canadian and American companies on the Global Cleantech 100 has grown significantly in recent years, with American cleantech companies receiving double to triple the amount of capital.

RELATED: Cyclic Materials, Ionomr Innovations, Summit Nanotech among Canadian returnees to the 2025 Global Cleantech 100

Founded in 2020 by CEO Edward Chiang, COO Sumreen Rattan, CTO Gabriel Soares, and CPO Gurmesh Sidhu, Moment Energy has developed an EV battery-powered energy storage solution designed to help off-grid customers reduce diesel consumption and transition to renewable energy sources. 

The company said in a statement that it has raised $52 million USD to date, $40-million USD of which came in the last three months alone. 

Despite its funding momentum, Moment was notably cut from the 2025 Global Cleantech 100 after featuring on the list in the previous two years. This year’s list, which showcases private cleantech companies predicted to make a substantial impact on the market in the next five to 10 years, represented the first time Canada had fewer than 10 companies featured since 2015.

Feature image courtesy Moment Energy.

The post Moment Energy raises $21.5-million Series A amidst tough funding climate for cleantech hardware startups first appeared on BetaKit.

A wave of exits and acquisitions in the first few weeks of 2025 is signalling continued heat in Canada’s tech sector.

In the last month alone, BetaKit reported that Carbon6 will be acquired for over $300 million CAD, 1Password made its largest-ever acquisition, Humi was acquired for $155-million CAD, and Payfare will join Fiserv in a deal worth over $200 million CAD. These recent announcements are part of a growing appetite for consolidation in Canadian tech.

BetaKit readers can snag 20 percent off their tickets to Techexit.io with the code BETAKIT20.

For those navigating M&A this year, TechExit.io offers a rare opportunity to dive into the world of mergers, acquisitions, and strategic growth. Set for February 25, 2025 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, this one-day event has become a key stop on the M&A circuit. BetaKit is once again a proud media partner of TechExit.io.

With a sharp focus on preparing companies for acquisition and scaling strategically, TechExit.io offers actionable insights from those who’ve closed major deals and built enduring businesses. Key sessions at TechExit.io will dig into real-world stories and hard-earned lessons from leaders from across the dealmaking scene.

Jack Newton, CEO of Clio, will headline a fireside chat reflecting on the company’s $1.24-billion CAD Series F round. Newton’s journey offers a rare glimpse into what it takes to scale strategically in a competitive market. 

Also taking the stage is Greg Malpass, founder of Traction on Demand, whose path to a successful 2022 acquisition by Salesforce offers valuable lessons for founders considering their own exit strategies. 

Sessions like “Inside the Buyer Brain” will shift the focus to the acquirer’s perspective. Attendees will hear from Sarah Miller Wright of Certn, which made several acquisitions over the years, and Kevin Kliman of Humi, which has been both a buyer and, more recently, seller. Both will offer a candid look at how acquirers scout, evaluate, and close deals, as well as practical advice on positioning your company as their next target.

Maria Pacella of Pender Ventures, Krista Morgan of Edited Capital, Anush Sachdeva of RBCx, and Diraj Goel of GetFresh Ventures will share the investor’s perspective on M&A, while Jon Conlin of Fasken, Mark Longo of Osler, and Karl Sigerist of the Shaughnessy Group, among others will offer legal and advisory expertise.

As technology evolves, so too do the metrics buyers use to assess a company’s worth. TechExit.io’s 2025 program will also tackle today’s most pressing topics, such as strategies for partial exits and the role of AI in shaping company valuations.

Tickets for TechExit.io are on sale now, and BetaKit readers can snag 20 percent off with the code BETAKIT20.

The post Leaders from Clio, Certn, Humi and others talk M&A at TechExit.io first appeared on BetaKit.

‘Tis the season for stump speeches. 

I’m writing to you from my newsletter bunker shortly after former finance minister Chrystia Freeland and government House leader Karina Gould announced their candidacy for Liberal party leader. Along with Mark Carney and a host of other candidates (but not Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne), they are running for the right to become Canada’s 24th prime minister. It is generally expected they will also earn the right to immediately defend their new position in a federal election.

BetaKit isn’t a political publication but we do track where the political intersects with tech. Josh Scott and Madison McLauchlan drafted thoughtful pieces at the end of last year on the SR&ED patent box and open banking promises left in limbo while the Liberals get their leadership act together. This week, we saw a commitment from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to scrap the capital gains tax rate changes if he is given the opportunity to form government. 

Meanwhile, a political chaos agent is set to take office down south and Prime Minister Trudeau has tapped Canadian tech leaders for his tariff team to get tough on Trump. Whatever your thoughts on how that game of chicken will go, it speaks to the new era of economic nationalism brewing. On that front, my old boss Jim Balsillie thinks Canada does itself more harm than good, so he’s committed $10 million CAD to a new policy think tank.

BetaKit isn’t the place to go to for the latest on the forthcoming political horse races. But we are the home for those eager to learn about their impact on Canadian tech.

Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

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Former Plooto CEO Hamed Abbasi on trial for alleged sexual assault

Hamed Abbasi, the co-founder and former CEO of Toronto-based payments scaleup Plooto, is facing charges of sexual assault, BetaKit has learned.

According to court documents obtained by BetaKit, the alleged assault took place in Toronto in November 2023. Abbasi was arrested and charged days later with one count of sexual assault contrary to s. 271 of the Criminal Code of Canada. The Crown elected to proceed by indictment in June 2024, which means Abbasi could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

These allegations have not yet been proven in court.

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Canadian tech advocates join movement to free social media feeds from billionaire control

A group of tech entrepreneurs, scholars, and advocates, which includes celebrity signatories such as Mark Ruffalo and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, launched a fundraising campaign this week called Free Our Feeds.

The campaign hopes to establish a public service foundation to protect decentralized social networking platform Bluesky’s underlying technology from billionaire capture.

Canadians Mark Surman, president of the Mozilla Foundation, and Philippe Beaudoin, co-founder and CEO of Numeno.ai (formerly Waverly), are both custodians of the Free Our Feeds initiative. Nine custodians plan to help kickstart the foundation and register it as a non-profit in the US. 

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Tailscale hits 10,000 paid business clients after doubling customer base in 10 months

It took Toronto-based corporate virtual private network (VPN) startup Tailscale over four years to reach 5,000 paid business customers, a milestone it achieved in March 2024. 

Ten months later, Tailscale has more than doubled its corporate client base. The software unicorn recently hit 10,000 paid business customers—ranging from small firms to Fortune 500 companies—not including its hundreds of thousands of personal users.

“If you want to get rich in the gold rush, don’t go searching for gold; sell shovels … Tailscale is sort of the shovel seller for the AI world, and I think that’s pretty exciting,” Tailscale co-founder and CEO Avery Pennarun told BetaKit in an exclusive interview.

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Home hardware: Canadian founders at CES talk challenges and opportunities

Canadian companies secured some high-profile awards at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, even while most face hurdles building their solutions on home soil.

Montréal-based companies Eli Health and Haply Robotics each won Best of Innovation awards for their respective products: the Hormometer and minVerse. 

There was little doubt, however, that the Canadian tech companies exhibiting at CES still faced an uphill battle when it comes to the global tech landscape—first and foremost, with production.

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Ritual CEO, R&D team members to join Shopify

Toronto-based food ordering app Ritual’s co-founders Ray Reddy and Larry Stinson, alongside members of Ritual’s research and development team, are leaving to join e-commerce giant Shopify.

Reddy will remain on Ritual’s board of directors as an advisor, and the company will continue under new leadership, but it’s unclear who will serve as CEO in his stead. 

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Cyclic Materials, Ionomr Innovations, Summit Nanotech among Canadian returnees to the 2025 Global Cleantech 100

Nine Canadian tech companies, but few new faces, have been named to the 2025 Global Cleantech 100 list. The list showcases private cleantech companies globally that are predicted by a panel of experts to make a substantial impact on the market in the next five to 10 years.

The total number of Canadian companies on the 2025 list dropped by four from last year’s 13, and this is the first time since 2015 Canada has had fewer than 10 companies featured. Additionally, there’s only one new Canadian company on this year’s list, with eight of the nine having also been named to the 2024 Global Cleantech 100. 

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Luge Capital, Pender Ventures hire in Alberta following investments from AEC

Two venture-capital firms from opposite sides of the country are establishing new presences in Alberta.

Montréal-based Luge Capital and Vancouver-based Pender Ventures are both adding new Calgary-based investors after the Alberta Enterprise Corporation contributed to their most recent funds. The new VC presence indicates a boost in capital available to early-stage companies in Alberta. 

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‘Is there life after acquisition?’ Canadian founders get candid at TechTO

Can ChatGPT write a founder’s story for them? What does life after exit look like? And how do you get men to back a fertility solution?

On January 13, four founders took the stage at the MaRS Discovery District for TechTO Together to share hard-earned lessons about fundraising, storytelling, life post-acquisition, and winning at every stage of entrepreneurship.

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These opportunities have prompted a talent recruitment campaign in Toronto, and Intuit’s Greg Coulombe believes the draw lies in an opportunity to work on tech used by millions around the globe.

“The potential to impact so many people’s lives is really cool,” he said. “Where can you impact 100 million people with the work that you do? That’s rare.”

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Weekly Canadian Deals & Dollars

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• CA – Feds pledge $100M in grants to commercialize research
• CGY – The51 closes $51M CAD for Food and AgTech Fund
• KW – Uvaro acquires coding school Lighthouse Labs
• TOR – Float secures $70M CAD Series B round
• TOR – League secures $144M CAD credit facility and 40M users
• MTL – Vasco raises $11.5M CAD in seed funding
• MTL – Lyteflo closes $3M CAD seed round

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The BetaKit Podcast — Discussing Social media’s midlife crisis with Amber Mac

“It does make me increasingly nervous that one of them really wants to move to Mars and the other one has a legit bunker. Like, what are they preparing for?”

Social media expert Amber Mac joins to discuss why two of the world’s richest men, collectively responsible for over 3 billion monthly users, are so quick to blame everyone else for the problems their platforms cause.

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Take The BetaKit Quiz – This week: Uvaro acquires, Float soars, Shopify’s order is ready for pickup

Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Test your knowledge of Canadian tech news with The BetaKit Quiz for Jan. 17, 2024.

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Feature image courtesy Mark Carney via X.

The post Canadian tech is locked in on election season first appeared on BetaKit.

Social media is going through a midlife crisis.

How does that work? Social media is only around 20 years old! Well, tech ages twice as fast, so it only took half the time.

 “It does make me increasingly nervous that one of them really wants to move to Mars and the other one has a legit bunker. Like, what are they preparing for?”

Certainly, the owners of social media are going through midlife crises (I personally wouldn’t know anything about that): Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, two of the richest men in the world, are responsible for over 3 billion monthly active users. And maybe more if ‘Elon can save TikTok.’

What does saving TikTok even mean? And why are the people in control of what drives our attention online blaming everyone else for the problems their platforms cause?

To help me answer those questions and pose many more is award-winning podcaster and author, Amber Mac, who literally wrote the book on social media.

Now, techno-optimists, members of the e/acc movement, or those who like to order their lives as a reflection of the rich and powerful, might bristle at some points of this conversation. But it’s fair to say that the day-to-day experience on these social platforms isn’t great, and is unlikely to improve if the platform owners abdicate their responsibility of moderation (which some have argued is actually the product). Platformer’s Casey Newton has done an excellent job tracking the obvious harms that will come from ignoring mis- and disinformation or removing protections for underrepresented groups.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

Understanding what’s about to happen is important but so is understanding why it’s happening. Free speech is an important democratic pillar in need of a refresh to function in modern digital-first societies, but it’s not what is driving X and Facebook’s leadership; the hypocrisy from both (or if you want to be charitable, dire intellectual inconsistency) cuts the legs out from that argument.  

That leaves the old standbys of power and politics. The tech and political worlds have completely collided and it can’t be ignored that Facebook’s policies change in lockstep to each US election outcome or that Musk has used his purchase of X to drive specific political outcomes. And again, I don’t think these are principled decisions but something much simpler: the middle-aged owners of the world’s social platforms really care about what you think of them.

On the podcast, Amber wasn’t too interested in my armchair psychoanalysis, but these are human beings, remember? The problem is the extent to which their very human personal limitations impact the rest of us. Perhaps that’s why we’re now seeing tech leaders band together to prevent the billionaire capture of Bluesky.

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The BetaKit Podcast is presented by The BetaKit Newsletter: BetaKit’s flagship newsletter.

Every Sunday, The BetaKit Newsletter serves up in-depth analysis and insights on Canadian tech and innovation news, piping hot and straight to your inbox.

Your inbox deserves better, and so do you. Stay informed on all things Canadian tech by signing up for The BetaKit Newsletter today.

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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Produced & edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy BetaKit. Source images courtesy Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

The post Discussing social media’s midlife crisis with Amber Mac first appeared on BetaKit.

Can ChatGPT write a founder’s story for them? What does life after exit look like? And how do you get men to back a fertility solution? 

On January 13, four founders took the stage at the MaRS Discovery District for TechTO Together to share hard-earned lessons about fundraising, storytelling, life post-acquisition, and winning at every stage of entrepreneurship.

Jackie Hanson, Sprout Family

Jackie Hanson believes storytelling is a founder’s most powerful tool.

When pitching Sprout, her fertility benefits platform, Hanson used stories to make the problem hit home for investors who might not see it right away. 

For Hanson, real-world examples of the hurdles people face accessing fertility care made the issue feel real and urgent, even to those unfamiliar with it.

“You have to put investors in a position where they can understand: ‘OK, I have a friend that’s gone through this, or my wife went through three rounds of IVF. This is a really big problem, and I want to help solve this,’” she said.

Hanson’s fireside chat explored her transition from investment banking to entrepreneurship, her focus on finding aligned investors, and her strategies for building a business in an underserved market.

Watch the conversation here.

Eldon Sprickerhoff, eSentire

Entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart, just ask Eldon Sprickerhoff.

The founder of eSentire, startup consultant, and author of Committed took the stage to deliver a harsh truth: no AI software, no shortcut, and no hack can replace the lived experience of building something great. 

During his session, Sprickerhoff urged the audience to avoid the trap of instant solutions in the ChatGPT era.

“ChatGPT has read every book, but has no idea what it’s like when shit falls apart,” he said.

Sprickerhoff’s core message? Entrepreneurship is hard, embrace it. He said founders must become their own “chief survival officer,” which means prioritizing endurance and subsistence at all costs. 

Watch Sprickerhoff’s session here.

Corey Gross, Sensibill

What does life after acquisition look like? Sensibill founder Corey Gross has answers.

When his startup was acquired in 2022 by Austin-based Q2 Holdings, Gross wrestled with the same questions that haunt many founders: “Is the process painful? Should I stay on? Am I giving up my baby?”

Gross reassured the audience that post-exit life isn’t as intimidating as it seems. The opportunity, he said, lies in how you as a founder redefine your purpose and sense of self after you sell.

“I was the receipts guy, the expense management guy, the Sensibill guy,” he said. “But when you get acquired, that isn’t who you are anymore. It’s who you were, and now you’ve got to figure out who you want to be.”

Watch Gross’s full session here.

Alwar Pillai, Fable 

To Fable founder Alwar Pillai, fundraising is like a speed-dating session that ends in marriage.

When her startup closed over $30 million CAD in funding last October, she faced a pivotal choice between a Silicon Valley investor focused solely on billion-dollar exits and a growth equity firm prioritizing sustainable outcomes.

The fundraising journey, Pillai explained, is rarely a straight line. Success depends on finding investors who genuinely align with your product and vision, which often means having tough conversations.

“It’s a long-term partnership,” she said. “So you need to be able to ask some difficult questions to your investors.”

In her session, Pillai shared more key strategies for finding the right partners, including aligning on growth goals early and conducting thorough two-way diligence.

Watch Pillai’s full session here.

Images courtesy Sean Pollock for TechTO. Check out the full calendar of TechTO events here.

The post ‘Is there life after acquisition?’ Canadian founders get candid at TechTO first appeared on BetaKit.

Two venture-capital (VC) firms from opposite sides of the country are establishing new presences in Alberta.  Montréal-based Luge Capital and Vancouver-based Pender Ventures are both adding new Calgary-based investors after the Alberta Enterprise Corporation (AEC) contributed to their most recent funds. 

The new VC presence indicates a boost in capital available to early-stage companies in Alberta.

Montréal-based Luge Capital is bringing on investor Chelsea Gillett, while Vancouver-based Pender Ventures has hired associate Jacob Grainger.

The new VC presence indicates a boost in capital available to early-stage companies in Alberta. Luge Capital mainly invests in FinTech-focused companies at the early stage, managing approximately $180 million across two funds.  

Luge Capital closed its Fund II in September at $96 million, despite a difficult fundraising environment for emerging managers. Its limited partners (LPs) include Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Desjardins, BDC Capital, Sun Life, Industrial Alliance Financial Group, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Inovia through its Discovery Fund. AEC invested $10 million, spurring a newfound focus on Alberta-based companies. 

Two Alberta FinTech companies have already been backed by Luge: Edmonton-based HonestDoor and Calgary-based OneVest. 

RELATED: Luge Capital navigates emerging manager minefield, closes second early-stage FinTech fund at $96 million CAD 

Gillett joins Luge from her role as principal across two funds at Calgary-based VC firm The51, which just closed its $51-million Food and AgTech fund geared towards startups with diverse leadership. She previously worked at Suncor Energy, according to her LinkedIn.

“As someone active in Alberta’s technology community, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many promising fintech founders and learn about their vision to shape technology that touches every area of people’s lives, from personal finance to large corporations’ business practices,” Gillett said in a statement. 

Alberta’s FinTech presence has indeed grown over the past few years, with local companies investing more than $1.5 billion in digital adoption for financial services from 2021 to 2024, according to Invest Alberta. Several Alberta-based VC funds that invest in FinTech companies have cropped up, including Graphite Ventures and Relay Ventures. 

Meanwhile, Pender Ventures, which is the VC arm of Vancouver investment firm PenderFund Capital Management, is adding Jacob Grainger as a full-time Calgary-based associate. Pender received $5 million from the AEC toward its $100-million fund focused on early-stage business-to-business (B2B) software and healthtech companies. 

Pender Ventures has previously invested in Edmonton-based healthtech startup DrugBank through its first fund. Grainger has a background in life sciences, having worked at Enveric Biosciences and Willow Biosciences, according to his LinkedIn. He was most recently a venture associate at the Alberta chapter of innovation hub Plug and Play.

Kristin Williams, CEO of the AEC, said in a statement that two-thirds of startups in Alberta focus on healthtech, life sciences, or B2B software, which “aligns directly” with Pender’s investment thesis. 

In addition to the new investor presence in Alberta, the AEC itself is eyeing early-stage startups through its co-angel investment Accelerate Fund IV, which has raised $15 million of its $25-million target.  

Feature image courtesy Luge Capital and Jacob Grainger via LinkedIn.

The post Luge Capital, Pender Ventures hire in Alberta following investments from AEC first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian companies secured some high-profile awards at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, even while most face hurdles building their solutions on home soil.

Montréal-based Eli Health won a Best of Innovation award at the event for the Hormometer, an app-linked home device that the company says can measure levels of the hormones cortisol and progesterone in saliva. Users pay by the test ($8 each), making it viable to check hormone levels frequently and get faster, more personalized care than you’d receive by waiting for lab appointments, the company claims.

Haply Robotics, also from Montréal, earned its own Best of Innovation award for the minVerse.

It’s a small “haptic device” meant to provide precise interaction in virtual environments, such as 3D modelling and animation. The $1,500 unit is considerably more affordable than the company’s professional products (which cost as much as $7,500) and is aimed at “prosumers” who want more dexterity than the usual VR controllers and hand gestures can provide.

Eli CEO Marina Pavlovic Rivas told BetaKit that her company’s win was a symbolic recognition of its work, and small companies in general. The startup beat out healthcare giants like Abbott and Dexcom, she added. 

Meanwhile, Haply co-founder Colin Gallacher noted that his firm had oversold pre-launch orders, and anticipates a bright future for minVerse. It’s more of an AI-driven robot than a 3D mouse, he said.

Made in Canada?

There was little doubt, however, that the Canadian tech companies exhibiting at CES still faced an uphill battle when it comes to the global tech landscape—first and foremost, with production.

Eli Health said it conducts all its research and manufacturing in Canada, noting that both had to be developed at the same time to establish economies of scale. Cellphone signal-boosting startup SmoothTalker, which was also at CES, produces all of its boosters in Aurora, Ontario, the town where the company is headquartered, according to Business Development Director Kevin Carter.

Other companies don’t have that option. Gallacher noted that Haply has to outsource some elements of production, though large portions (including final assembly) take place in the country. George Yin, the CEO of composting technology company VCycene, pointed out a familiar reason for manufacturing his brand’s Lila home composter device in China: fast, easy access to a supply chain that simply isn’t available in Canada. Even if the factories are domestic, the component and raw material suppliers tend to remain overseas.

There’s also the question of talent. Pavlovic Rivas said that Eli has little trouble attracting workers from around the world due to its niche field. Dan Vu, the business director for medical robot creator Cobionix, said that southern Ontario was “primed” for tech talent. His company has drawn heavily on graduates from the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo to support plans to bring its tech to market in three years.

Not everyone shared the same optimism. Daniel Park, the Director of Engineering at Waterloo, Ont. micro-semiconductor startup VueReal, said it was difficult to attract talent that would otherwise go to California.

The Canadian brands at CES also had common complaints about a lack of support. VueReal’s Park and Cobionix’ Vu argued that government support has been lacking, while VCycene’s Yin contended that Canada’s industrial infrastructure is not robust enough to back up innovative projects. There was more positivity from Gallacher, though, as he said investments from  Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) program dramatically eased Haply’s work.

Gallacher even suggested that Canadian companies tend to have a defeatist mindset. They look for quick exits (that is, being acquired) rather than ways to scale to the large valuations of American heavyweights. And that greater ambition might be important when the threat of steep US tariffs looms over many Canadian businesses.

Images courtesy Jon Fingas for BetaKit.

The post Home hardware: Canadian founders at CES talk challenges and opportunities first appeared on BetaKit.

The federal government has announced a nearly $100-million commitment over five years to support the commercialization of lab innovations from Canadian universities. 

SFU and UBC are leading the Lab2Market program’s West Coast expansion, which will be known as the Lab2Market Pacific Hub.

A total of $95.3 million in grants will be dispensed in varying amounts across four university-led networks: $32 million to Dalhousie University’s Lab2Market network, $24 million to Red River College Polytechnic’s network in Winnipeg, $22.9 million to the National Invention to Innovation (i2I) Network through Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, BC, and $16.3 million to the Sustainable Food Systems for Canada Innovation Platform at the University of Guelph. 

The goal is to increase business investment in research and development (R&D) and put more Canadian-built products on the market to improve Canada’s commercialization efforts, which some experts have characterized as middling and lagging behind peer countries. 

Terry Duguid, Minister of Sport and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, announced the funding commitment in Winnipeg on Wednesday. The grant money is a joint effort between the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). 

“When researchers move their breakthroughs from the lab to the marketplace, they fuel economic growth, create good jobs, and keep Canada competitive,” Duguid said. 

The funding will establish Dalhousie University as the headquarters of Lab2Market, a national entrepreneurial skills training program that was a joint venture between Dalhousie, the University of Toronto, and the non-profit research organization Mitacs. 

RELATED: CIFAR, CABHI among recipients of more than $850 million in federal science and research funding

“The thriving startups already supported by Lab2Market are a testament to its success and a promise of the program’s future impact,” Jennifer Bain, Dalhousie’s interim vice-president of research and innovation, said in a statement. “This expanded program will equip even more of our brightest minds with the tools to create the innovation-driven organizations that Nova Scotia and Canada need to remain competitive.”

SFU and the University of British Columbia (UBC) are leading the Lab2Market program’s West Coast expansion, which will be known as the Lab2Market Pacific Hub. Participants will gain access to venture-building resources from Innovation UBC and SFU Venture Labs, according to the universities.

Lab2Market received federal funding in 2020 to deploy its 16-week training program to support researchers looking to commercialize deep tech innovations. Having expanded its mandate since then, the program has produced ventures such as Myomar Molecular, a Halifax-based startup that makes at-home diagnostics for muscle degeneration. 

According to the press release, the grants give researchers access to resources and expertise to more effectively put lab developments on the market. The initiative seeks to enhance entrepreneurial skills among researchers by providing financial assistance, mentorship, digital resources, and knowledge-sharing opportunities. 

The grants are part of the federal government’s initiative in Budget 2022 to establish a national program to help researchers commercialize their work. Canada has struggled to commercialize domestic innovations at the same pace as other G7 countries, ranking second-to-last in the G7 according to the 2024 Global Innovation Index. Some policy thinkers have noted that low rates of commercialization are a drag on the national productivity rate. 

Federal agencies NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC had previously collaborated for the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research. A 2017 report evaluating the initiative noted that barriers to effective commercialization include access to early-stage funding, entrepreneurial skill development, and infrastructure to bring innovations to market.

Feature image courtesy Dalhousie University.

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Feature image courtesy Float.

The post Uvaro acquires, Float soars, Shopify’s order is ready for pickup first appeared on BetaKit.

Nine Canadian tech companies, but few new faces, have been named to the 2025 Global Cleantech 100 list.

This is the first year Canada has had fewer than 10 companies on the list since 2015.

The Global Cleantech 100, developed by San Francisco-based research and consulting firm Cleantech Group, showcases private cleantech companies globally that are predicted by a panel of experts to make a substantial impact on the market in the next five to 10 years.

The total number of Canadian companies on the 2025 list dropped by four from last year’s 13, and this is the first time since 2015 Canada has had fewer than 10 companies featured. Additionally, there’s only one new Canadian company on this year’s list, with eight of the nine having also been named to the 2024 Global Cleantech 100. 

“The lower representation of Canadian companies this year highlights the need for ongoing investment and support to maintain our competitive edge in this critical area,” Tyler Hamilton, senior director of climate at MaRS, said in a statement. “Innovation remains strong, but government, industry, investors and other stakeholders must work better together to generate opportunities that will see more Canadian cleantech leaders grow and compete globally.”

The returnees include Cyclic Materials, e-Zinc, Ionomr Innovations, Mangrove Lithium, Pani, pH7 Technologies, Summit Nanotech, and Svante. Companies that did not return include Carbon Upcycling, Genecis, MineSense, and Moment Energy. 

RELATED: Eavor, Ionomr Innovations, Summit Nanotech among 13 Canadian companies named to 2024 Global Cleantech 100

The lone new company on the list is Toronto-based Enersion, which develops a compressor-less heat pump that uses water vapor instead of synthetic and potentially harmful refrigerants. The company claims its green cooling and heating technology consumes 10 times less electricity than a traditional heat pump. 

Cyclic Materials, which debuted on the Global Cleantech 100 last year, is looking to expand its rare earth recycling infrastructure in the United States and Europe after raising a $71-million CAD ($53-million USD) Series B round this past September. 

Moment Energy is notably absent from the list it was on last year. The Port Coquitlam, BC-based EV battery startup was awarded $28.1 million CAD ($20.3 million USD) by the United States Department of Energy to establish a new gigafactory in Texas this past October. The company also secured a $15-million USD Series A round co-led by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and Voyager Ventures this week. The company said in a statement that it has raised $52 million USD to date. 

Feature image courtesy Nong via Unsplash.

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A team of Canadian businesspeople, including tech founders and venture capital (VC) investors, have been tapped by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to lead Canada’s response to the threat of potentially devastating 25-percent tariffs imposed by the US. 

Council members are being asked to leverage their expertise to support the Prime Minister and Cabinet in crafting a plan to deal with the potential outcomes of US tariffs. 

A handful of Canadian tech and investment leaders were appointed to the 18-person Council on Canada-U.S. Relations. Dragon’s Den investors Arlene Dickinson and Wes Hall will both serve on the panel. Dickinson is the CEO of Venturepark and the managing general partner of Toronto-based District Ventures Capital, which invests in food, health, and wellness startups. 

Hall is the founder of Toronto-based private equity firm WeShall Investments and the BlackNorth Initiative, which aims to remove systemic barriers for Black entrepreneurs in Canada. He was also recently appointed as Chancellor of the University of Toronto. 

As for tech CEOs, the panel includes Shahrzad Rafati, the CEO of Vancouver-based media tech firm RHEI (formerly BBTV). Trudeau had previously appointed Rafati as a Canadian representative on the G20 Business Women Leader’s task force in 2018, and as co-chair of G20 EMPOWER, a private-sector alliance for women in leadership roles in 2020. 

The council includes business leaders such as Tabatha Bull, president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business, and Tim Gitzel, CEO of uranium company Cameco. Labour leaders and three ex-premiers were also appointed, including Unifor president Lana Payne, former Québec premier Jean Charest, former Alberta premier Rachel Notley, and former Nova Scotia premier Stephen McNeil. 

RELATED: BBTV rebrands to RHEI, launches new AI training licensing platform for creator content

Council members are being asked to leverage their expertise to support the Prime Minister and Cabinet in crafting a plan to deal with the potential outcomes of US tariffs on goods that Canadians export to the US. 

Incoming US President-Elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said he would impose 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports when he takes office Monday. Trump said he would impose the tariffs until the countries do more to prevent the flow of migrants and drugs across the US border.

According to The Globe and Mail, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson said today that Trump is considering three options: 25-percent tariffs on Canadian imports, 10-percent tariffs on imports from all countries, or a lower tariff that grows over time.

The first outcome would have severe impacts on the Canadian economy, as it would put a tax on more than $1 trillion worth of Canadian goods exported to the US every year. The government of British Columbia estimated that these tariffs could incur losses of $69 billion in economic activity from now to 2028. Québec’s minister of the economy said the government could provide direct support to companies affected by trade tariffs.

The federal government pledged to put aside $1.3 billion to secure its border with the US in its fall economic statement, but Trump’s incoming administration has not indicated this plan would deter his decision. 

Feature image courtesy Justin Trudeau via Flickr.

The post Trudeau’s tariff team taps Canadian tech to get tough on Trump  first appeared on BetaKit.

Women-led investment firm The51 held the final close for its $51-million CAD Food and AgTech Fund after actively raising for nearly the past four years. 

The Food and AgTech Fund is The51’s first sector-specific fund, and will invest in diverse founders who are transforming food and agriculture with advanced technology between the pre-seed and Series A stages.

A joint statement fromThe51and Alberta Crown corporation ATB Financial, which contributed the final dollar in the second half of 2024, said the fund close marks a significant milestone in the current challenging venture capital landscape. 

“The current VC environment forces discipline.”

Alison Sunstrum
The51

“This final close empowers The51 Food and AgTech Fund to accelerate the growth of early-stage companies revolutionizing agriculture,” The51 general partner Alison Sunstrum said in a statement. “By leveraging technologies like AI, robotics, and biotechnology, these companies are poised to transform the industry.” 

The51 initially announced the Food and AgTech Fund in September 2021 with hopes to raise between $25 and $30 million, but expanded to a $50-million target after receiving more soft commitments and investor interest in 2022. 

The firm went on to secure $30 million of its $50-million target in April 2023, supported by lead investor Farm Credit Canada, with limited partners (LPs) including Alberta Enterprise Corporation, National Bank of Canada, family foundations and offices, and several undisclosed individual accredited investors from agribusiness, farming, and industry backgrounds. 

RELATED: The51 closes $30 million of targeted $50-million Food and AgTech Fund

Realize Capital Partners, Boann Social Impact, and the Government of Canada’s renewed Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative inclusive growth stream have also backed the fund. 

Sunstrum told BetaKit in April 2023 that, while the group was initially optimistic, they saw a shifting climate and a withdrawal of LP investors when they tried for an earlier close in 2022. The51 also told BetaKit at the time that it hoped to fully close the fund in June 2023. 

In an email statement to BetaKit following the fund’s final close, Sunstrum said they did not know how tough things would get as they sought to close the fund. She explained that Agtech venture capital investment faced significant challenges in the latter half of 2023 and into 2024 that was characterized by sector-wide valuation corrections, which reflects trends of tightened access to capital.   

RELATED: GPs and LPs at Startupfest expect gradual recovery with 2024 on pace to be worst for Canadian VC in a decade

“The current VC environment forces discipline,” Sunstrum said. “We honed our thesis and doubled down, building our team, advisory bench, created a new AgTech focused management entity and expanded our reach with offices in Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto.” 

Sunstrum added that they observed a significant increase in deal flow through the last half of 2024, and that founders with “substantial potential” have been adjusting their valuation expectations to more realistic levels.  

“This trend reflects a broader market correction, we are prioritizing companies that demonstrate clear paths to scalability and profitability.” 

Sunstrum  toldBetaKit that The51 anticipates investments from the Food and AgTech Fund to range from $350,000 to $2 million per startup. The fund has already invested in six companies to date, including Erthos, ArkeaBio, and Synergia Biotech.

UPDATE (1/17/2025): This story has been updated with commentary from The51 general partner Alison Sunstrum.

Feature image courtesy The51.

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Montréal-based electric vehicle (EV) sales platform Lyteflo has closed a $3-million CAD seed round to help car dealerships sell EVs more effectively. 

“EVs are here to stay. They’re too big to fail.”

Ryan Osten

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup aims to demystify the EV buying process for consumers and dealerships through its EV Revenue Platform, which it says offers a suite of tools for sellers to access frequently requested information about EVs.  

Montréal-based Diagram Ventures led the all-equity, all-primary round through its ClimateTech fund. Whitecap Venture Partners and Amplify Capital also participated. Both are Toronto-based venture capital (VC) firms that target seed and Series-A stage investments. The round closed Dec. 3, adding to an initial $700,000 secured in simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) funding. 

“We’re focused on delivering tools that are moving the needle for [dealerships] and helping them sell more EVs more profitably,” Ryan Osten, co-founder and CEO of Lyteflo, said in an interview with BetaKit.

Osten was previously the COO of Gubagoo, a messaging and e-commerce platform for car dealerships. After the company sold to Reynolds & Reynolds in 2021, Osten sensed an opportunity to assist dealerships in pivoting their sales efforts to EVs. 

“Dealerships need new strategies in order to sell these vehicles, and that’s where we are filling a gap and providing a solution,” Osten said. 

In both Canada and the US, government subsidies and incentives can vary widely between regions, putting an informational load on the consumer and seller, the company says. Lyteflo aims to solve that problem by displaying vehicle data such as fuel and maintenance savings, available incentives, charging capacity, and more, directly on the dealership website. 

RELATED: Diagram Ventures beats target to close first ClimateTech Fund at $80 million

The EV Revenue Platform relies on first- and third-party data from government sources and private partners to answer some of consumers’ most frequent questions, Osten said, such as how much charging the vehicle will cost them per month. 

Lyteflo said it would put the funding primarily toward product development and new features for its software platform, including EV battery testing and health reports. It also plans to roll out a hardware product in the second half of this year that captures data about an EV battery’s cell health. The information would be fed into Lyteflo’s existing software for used vehicle sellers and buyers to access. 

Zero-emission vehicles reached record sales in Canada in Q3 2024, accounting for more than 15 percent of new vehicle registrations, according to data from Statistics Canada. Over half of new EV registrations were in Québec, which also leads the nation in the number of EV charging ports. 

However, some federal incentive programs, which provide a key value offering for Lyteflo, are in jeopardy. Canada’s Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program, which gave buyers up to $5,000, was suspended this week. Québec announced it was temporarily pausing an equivalent program this February due to a lack of funds. The incoming US administration is also planning to kill its consumer EV tax credit, Reuters reported. 

Despite the uncertainty of incentives, EV sales are expected to grow steadily within the next decade, following the Canadian government’s pledge to hit 100-percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035.

Osten said that pulling back Canadian incentives in the short term may impact affordability for consumers, but in the medium to long term, EVs are going to make up a growing share of the landscape due to improved infrastructure and lower prices. 

“EVs are here to stay,” Osten said. “They’re too big to fail.”

The startup currently employs seven people and said it’s looking to hire as it focuses on onboarding its first dealership clients. It has also partnered with US company DealerOn to bring its website integration software to American dealerships.

Feature image courtesy Michael Fousert via Unsplash. 

The post Lyteflo secures $3 million CAD in seed funding to rev up EV sales platform first appeared on BetaKit.

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre says he will reverse the capital gains tax rate changes announced in the 2024 budget, if he is elected. 

While Poilievre had previously voted against the changes, and produced a video denouncing them last year, he had yet to commit to a reversal if he were to take power—until now. 

The Conservative Leader told The Globe and Mail this week that he did not want to make a commitment until he had a costed plan to bring down the deficit while eliminating the tax increase. 

In a LinkedIn post, Poilievre called the policy change a “Liberal jobs tax” and wrote that it was a bad idea before President-elect Trump’s planned tariffs, but is “outright insanity now.” 

An accompanying call-to-action on the Conservative Party website claims that Liberals’ tax changes would “drive billions of dollars of machines, technology, business and paycheques out of our country.”

RELATED: How Canada’s capital gains tax changes might impact Canadian tech

In a press conference following his announcement, Poilievre added he would be “slashing corporate welfare,” which he described as subsidies and handouts given to big businesses, to make sure reversing the tax hike doesn’t add to Canada’s deficit. 

The Government of Canada proposed raising not the tax rate but the inclusion rate on capital gains—which include profits from the sale of assets like stock or property—from one-half to two-thirds last April. The proposal meant that a greater percentage of capital gains would be considered taxable income, potentially bumping some individuals and companies into new tax brackets. 

The government planned to partially offset the impact of these changes with an increase to the lifetime capital gains exemption and a gradually increasing tax break called the Canadian Entrepreneurs’ Incentive. By doing this, the Liberal government’s stated hope was to help finance billions in spending on housing and other priorities and increase tax fairness between middle-class and wealthy Canadians.

Poilievre is making his position clear during a period of uncertainty for both the government and the tax rate changes themselves. First announced in April 2024 and originally set to take effect in June 2024, the tax policy was curiously absent from the Liberals’ motion to introduce the budget to the House of Commons. The proposed changes attracted significant heat from Canadian tech leaders, and the government has yet to actually make the policy into law. 

RELATED: A requiem for the feds’ (failed) innovation strategy

Now, following Finance Minster Chrystia Freeland’s shock resignation in December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he would prorogue Parliament and resign upon the election of a new party leader, and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s announcement that he plans to trigger an election when the House of Commons sits again, there is little to no runway for the changes to become law. Still, the Canada Revenue Agency is moving forward under the assumption that the changes will come into effect. 

OMERS Ventures founder John Ruffolo, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, and the Canadian Council of Innovators president Ben Bergen all reacted positively to Poilievre’s statement.

“This commitment reflects what the Council of Canadian Innovators has long championed: creating a fair and competitive tax environment that enables Canadian companies to scale globally and prosper locally,” Bergen wrote in a LinkedIn post. 

Feature image courtesy Pierre Poilievre via LinkedIn.

The post Pierre Poilievre pledges to scrap capital gains tax changes under Conservative government first appeared on BetaKit.

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) is launching a think tank focused on advancing innovation policy and promoting economic nationalism. 

The Canadian SHIELD (Securing Homegrown Innovation, Economic Leadership, and Defence) Institute is opening with a $10-million CAD donation from Jim Balsillie, CCI co-founder and chair and former BlackBerry co-CEO. The policy institute will focus on a broad range of issues that impact the Canadian economy, including economic sovereignty, national security and defence, tax policy, and innovation strategies for sectors like deep tech, energy, agriculture, and forestry. 

“If we don’t have a sense of economic nationalism, we’re going to actually continue to see the erosion of our wealth and prosperity as we have for the last 25 years.”

Benjamin Bergen

According to CCI, a core value of the institute is the need for a “sovereign, self-reliant economy” in Canada, fuelled by large homegrown companies instead of foreign multinationals. 

“We’ve got to come up with a new playbook that can respond to the economic crisis that we find ourselves in,” CCI President Benjamin Bergen said in an interview with BetaKit. 

“If we don’t have a sense of economic nationalism, we’re going to actually continue to see the erosion of our wealth and prosperity as we have for the last 25 years.”

The think tank will operate as a separate entity from CCI, Bergen told BetaKit, with opportunities for the two to collaborate. Though membership with CCI is exclusive to tech company leaders, participation in Canadian SHIELD activities will be open to a broader range of people.

When asked how long the funding would sustain the institute, Bergen said that CCI’s intention is to build Canadian SHIELD as a long-term institution built upon the “solid foundation” of Balsillie’s donation. Bergen declined to share future funding plans or a specific number of staff members they plan to hire at Canadian SHIELD. 

RELATED: ITIF president wonders whether Canada has the “political will” to fix its productivity issues

According to a statement, Canadian SHIELD plans to disseminate its research and policy ideas through events, research papers, think pieces, and policy recommendations. 

The institute’s launch comes at a tumultuous time for Canada, amid declining productivity rates and uncertain political leadership following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement. At the same time, US President-Elect Donald Trump, who takes office Monday, has repeatedly threatened to levy 25-percent tariffs on Canadian goods imported to the US. 

“The impetus to really get this going has obviously been some of the political chaos that we’ve seen take place in Ottawa over the last year, with a Prime Minister not willing to show the leadership required in order to move things forward,” Bergen said. 

As to whether Canadian SHIELD is debuting in response to the incoming Trump administration, Bergen said that that was a consideration, but the project is also a “natural result of CCI’s advocacy work over the past decade.”

CCI was founded in 2015 by Balsillie and John Ruffolo, founder and managing partner of Maverix Private Equity. The council now counts more than 150 CEOs of Canadian scaleups and lobbies for the Canadian tech industry on a range of innovation policy issues. 

The Council has been a vocal advocate for and critic of policy proposals that impact the tech industry and entrepreneurs in general. CCI has outlined reforms to the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive program, called for procurement policy improvements, and pushed back against the proposed changes to the capital gains inclusion rate, penning an open letter signed by more than 2,000 business leaders. 

“Capital gains really showed us there was a desire from business leaders to participate in something broader than just CCI’s mandate of innovation,” Bergen said.

With Canadian SHIELD, Balsillie continues a streak of philanthropic donations to academic and policy-focused institutions, most recently to the University of Waterloo’s Balsillie School of International Affairs and Waterloo-based think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation, which he founded in 2001. Balsillie is also a founding member of Waterloo-based startup hub Communitech. 

In a recent National Post op-ed, Balsillie criticized Canada’s current industry policies, noting that the country lacks a national strategy to capture wealth, and that a large portion of federal innovation fund dollars have gone to foreign entities. Balsillie has repeatedly argued that encouraging sovereign IP retention is part of the solution to Canada’s productivity woes. 

 “No country with our potential inflicts as much damage to its own economic prosperity and sovereignty as Canada,” he wrote. 

Not everyone agrees with Balsillie’s view, however. Canadian-American economist Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Canadian Centre for Innovation and Competitiveness, wrote on X that Balsillie’s assessment is “fundamentally wrong.” Atkinson has rebutted Balsillie’s IP argument by noting that Canada runs a trade deficit on IP, so increasing the amount of domestic IP would not meaningfully impact productivity.  

Feature image courtesy Council of Canadian Innovators.

The post CCI launches Balsillie-backed innovation policy institute Canadian SHIELD first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based Vasco has secured $8 million USD ($11.5 million CAD) in seed funding to help startups commercialize through its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered revenue operations (RevOps) platform.

“One of the top reasons why great innovation doesn’t make it to the world is because [it] fails in commercialization.”

Guillaume Jacquet
Vasco

Vasco’s revenue management platform aims to solve go-to-market challenges and eliminate revenue blindspots for startups so they can scale effectively. The company says the funding will go towards enhancing the platform’s AI solutions and expanding its client base globally.  

Inovia Capital led the all-equity, all-primary round, with participation from BY Venture Partners, FRAMEWORK Venture Partners, and angel investors.

“There’s a science behind scaling businesses,” co-founder and CEO Guillaume Jacquet said in an interview with BetaKit. “We have a firm belief that go-to-market fit for [business-to-business (B2B)] companies is as important as product-market fit.”

Vasco positions itself as a startup built to serve startups and scaleups, from their prototyping phase to maturity. But it targets a specific pain point: the go-to-market phase, after the startup has proven product-market fit and filled a strong customer demand. Here, Jacquet said, is where most companies hit “the biggest bottleneck.” 

“In B2B companies … one of the top reasons why great innovation doesn’t make it to the world is because they fail in commercialization,” he said. 

RELATED: Lightspeed adds Google alum Ryan Tabone as chief product and technology officer

For venture-backed startups, data supports the notion that go-to-market is where companies falter in Canada. A recent report by Charles Plant through the Narwhal Project found that of 260 Canadian tech companies founded in 2014, only 8.4 percent made it to a Series B funding round. Plant argued that the crux of the problem lies in marketing and sales failures. 

As a company grows, Jacquet said, different streams of revenue generation become siloed: sales, marketing, and customer success work on different datasets and tech stacks. Vasco aims to unite these teams through its RevOps platform, where insights are centralized and teams can evaluate the impact of a marketing campaign in one place. 

Vasco integrates real-time data about marketing, sales, and customer success alongside a workforce management tool. This allows companies to map out revenue targets on a timeline and assign team members to different tasks, tracking individual and team contributions.

“We take the data from your enterprise, we analyze them, and we show you the zones where you’re performing and where you’re wasting your energy,” Jacquet said. 

Vasco claims the AI RevOps copilot, called Gama AI, identifies the causes of revenue gaps and suggests strategies to improve revenue generation. Gama AI sifts through data and generates scores for different phases of the customer journey, such as awareness, closing, onboarding, retention, and expansion. Jacquet declined to disclose which large-language model Gama AI is built on, but said it was “one of the best.” 

Other features of Vasco’s platform include a data health monitoring tool, which identifies weaknesses in revenue trajectory, as well as a customizable reporting tool to evaluate customer profiles.

Jacquet’s previous experience as a founder sparked his interest in a broader approach to RevOps. ChronoGolf, his golf management software startup and first venture, was acquired by Lightspeed in 2019. All four of its founders moved to Lightspeed, with Jacquet becoming Lightspeed’s executive vice-president of product and technology and his ChronoGolf co-founder, JD St-Martin becoming the company’s president.

The investment from Inovia follows a decade-long relationship with the firm after it backed ChronoGolf. 

In 2022, Jacquet left Lightspeed to launch Vasco alongside co-founder and CTO Sébastien Rothlisberger, who had served as senior architect of technology at Lightspeed.

Vasco’s customers include Lightspeed and Montréal-based Connect & Go, both of whom have endorsed the product. The company is also a certified partner of Winning by Design, RevGenius, and Pavilion—SaaS consultancies whose expertise helped inform Vasco’s product, Jacquet said.

Vasco’s ultimate goal is for its platform to make it into the hands of as many go-to-market leaders and RevOps teams as possible. Right now, their team has just over 20 employees and is looking to grow over the next year. 

 “We use Vasco every day to understand how Vasco is doing,” he said. “As a user of your own platform, you’re much more severe to what your platform should be doing.”

Feature image courtesy Scott Graham via Unsplash.

The post Vasco raises $11.5 million CAD to help startups manage revenue trajectory with AI first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada has quietly become a powerhouse for Intuit’s most ambitious technology projects. 

From its Toronto base, Intuit’s workforce is tackling some of the company’s thorniest problems in personal finance and small business management, working on its marquee products like TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp.

“Where can you impact 100 million people with the work that you do? That’s rare.”

Intuit is currently recruiting in Toronto to help build an AI platform designed to solve financial challenges for approximately 100 million global customers. Drawing on four decades of Intuit’s data, the platform uses AI to simplify and improve how individuals and businesses manage their money.

These career opportunities come with some enticing perks, but Intuit’s Greg Coulombe, Director of Product Development, believes the real draw lies in the opportunity to work on tech that is used by millions.

“The potential to impact so many people’s lives is really cool,” said Coulombe. “Where can you impact 100 million people with the work that you do? That’s rare.”

Coulombe said Intuit draws talent from a broad range of industries, including the banking and public sectors, but finds that candidates with experience at tech companies are often the strongest match.

“The best ones are coming from roles where they’ve had a high impact and they want that again,” he added. “They like the scale and the stakes.”

Intuit offers employees a wide range of benefits, including health insurance, paid vacation, and support for family and adoption-related expenses. Full-time employees also have access to programs like Well-Being for Life (where employees are reimbursed for up to $1,300 in physical, emotional, and financial expenses) and a generous RRSP matching plan. 

Beyond financial perks, Intuit provides paid volunteer opportunities, 15 employee resource groups (like the Pride Network and African Ancestry Network), and a hybrid work environment at Intuit’s state-of-the-art office at The Well.

Here are four tech roles Intuit is hiring for right now. Explore these and other opportunities on Intuit Canada’s career site.

---

Senior Staff / Principal Software Developer

Intuit is scouting for a senior software developer to shape how its teams build AI-powered tools and deliver faster, smarter solutions across key projects.

This role involves designing and building software that is scalable, secure, and built to last, as well as solving problems in a fast-moving FinTech environment, and ensuring systems run smoothly, stay highly available, and perform at their best.

This role is ideal for those with at least 10 years of software development experience, and at least seven years in designing complex distributed systems or business applications. 

Staff Product Manager, TurboTax Data Integrations

Intuit is also seeking a Staff Product Manager to lead TurboTax’s Data Integrations, which will allow over 40 million customers access to their financial data seamlessly and more efficiently during tax time.

This role focuses on defining and delivering the strategy for TurboTax’s data integrations. Responsibilities include identifying customer needs, working with developers to design intuitive user experiences, and building scalable services. Success in this role requires analyzing user workflows, solving complex problems, and creating high-performing AI-enabled services.

Intuit is seeking candidates for this role with at least five years of experience in product management, and a background in data systems or large-scale enterprise applications is preferred. 

Senior Design Technologist

Intuit is building an AI-powered design platform to improve how its designers and developers build solutions, and the team is looking for a Senior Design Technologist to take it from concept to execution. 

As one of the first hires on this team, the Senior Design Technologist will create tools that cut through complexity, speed up workflows, and help teams deliver better products across TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mailchimp, and Credit Karma. 

This is a hands-on role that involves writing code, troubleshooting, and testing ideas with real users. Beyond building tools, this hire will also help designers and developers work at their best, with the right mix of creativity and precision.

Applicants should have at least five years of experience blending code and design, with a strong grasp of frontend technologies. 

Staff Software Developer (Full Stack)

Finally, Intuit is on the hunt for a Full Stack Staff Software Developer to help bring its AI-powered financial tools to life.

As part of the team, this developer will take the lead on large, complex projects—designing systems, writing code, and ensuring systems run smoothly across web and mobile platforms. 

The ideal candidate will have at least seven years of experience building enterprise applications, solid expertise in Java, and a strong understanding of databases, including SQL and NoSQL.

---

Find more details about all of these roles and other open positions on Intuit’s career site.

All images provided by Intuit.

The post Intuit Canada is hiring key tech roles first appeared on BetaKit.

Hamed Abbasi, the co-founder and former CEO of Toronto-based payments scaleup Plooto, is facing charges of sexual assault, BetaKit has learned.

According to court documents obtained by BetaKit, the alleged assault took place in Toronto in Nov. 2023. Abbasi was arrested and charged days later with one count of sexual assault contrary to s. 271 of the Criminal Code of Canada. The Crown elected to proceed by indictment in June 2024, which means Abbasi could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

The complainant’s name and any other information that could be used to identify them is protected under a court-ordered publication ban.

Abbasi could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. When reached for comment, Abbasi’s legal counsel denied the allegations.

A media spokesperson for the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario declined to comment on the case beyond confirming the above details. 

These allegations have not yet been proven in court. When reached for comment, Stockwoods LLP partner Gerald Chan, who is representing Abbasi, denied these allegations. “Mr. Abbasi is innocent of these allegations,” Chan told BetaKit. “We trust the court process and look forward to the truth emerging during the course of the trial.”

Abbasi’s trial began Jan. 13 at the Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto, with Justice Jennifer Strasberg presiding. The proceedings included a display of video evidence that showed Abbasi and the complainant at a restaurant and hotel during the night of the alleged sexual assault. Proceedings were adjourned early yesterday afternoon when defence counsel fell ill. Lawyers were back in court briefly this morning, before the trial was adjourned again. It is now scheduled to resume Jan. 16.

Departure from Plooto

Plooto offers cash flow management and payments automation software to small and medium-sized businesses and their accounting firms. 

Abbasi departed Plooto in March 2024 after nine years at the helm of the company. In the announcement of his departure, Plooto did not disclose why Abbasi left or comment on his departure. 

Last October, upon announcing John McLane as the company’s new CEO, a Plooto spokesperson told BetaKit: “Hamed stepped down as CEO, with the board’s agreement, for personal reasons.” The spokesperson added that “Plooto is not in a position to elaborate on or further discuss the reasons for Hamed’s departure.”

A company spokesperson stated that “Plooto is not in a position to elaborate on or further discuss the reasons for Hamed’s departure.”

At that time, Abbasi told BetaKit that Plooto’s description was accurate, noting that after scaling Plooto to 130 employees and 10,000 customers as founding CEO, he decided that the time was right to cede leadership to someone new and take a break.

Abbasi claimed to BetaKit that Plooto’s board understood his decision and they reached an equitable agreement, noting that he no longer holds a board seat or works in an operational role with the company, but still attends board meetings and gets regular business updates. BetaKit was not aware of the charges against Abbasi at that time.

Speaking under condition of anonymity, multiple sources familiar with Plooto’s operations claimed to BetaKit in 2024 that Abbasi’s leadership approach during his time as CEO made it difficult for the company to hire and retain employees, particularly at the executive level. 

When asked about this by BetaKit in Oct. 2024, a Plooto spokesperson declined to comment on Abbasi’s leadership to BetaKit, while Abbasi emphasized the strength of the leadership team Plooto built during his tenure and told BetaKit that he has personally sought guidance to become a better leader over the years.

A Plooto spokesperson declined to comment on Abbasi’s charges or additional questions concerning his departure from the company last year. The spokesperson instead referred BetaKit to the company’s March 2024 announcement release.

With files from Douglas Soltys. Feature image courtesy Plooto.

The post Former Plooto CEO Hamed Abbasi on trial for alleged sexual assault first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based healthcare platform League has secured a $100-million USD ($144-million CAD) credit facility from RBCx as it celebrates achieving 40 million users under contract. 

League struck a partnership with Australia’s largest private health insurer this past October. 

League said in a statement that the customer milestone represents a 160 percent increase year-over-year, and claimed the surge is driven by increasing demand for its new data and artificial intelligence (AI) offerings. The company added that the financing will support its investments in platform development, sales capacity, and potential mergers and acquisitions. 

“This capital will be important in capturing the significant opportunities that come with scaling a healthcare platform of our magnitude,” League founder and CEO Michael Serbinis said in a statement. “RBCx plays a vital role in fostering innovation in the technology sector, and we’re proud to have their support as we scale our business toward 100 million people by 2030.”

Founded in 2014, League provides a white-label customer experience platform for healthcare providers and payers, such as insurance companies. Its platform allows users to navigate their coverage and claims, participate in rewards programs, and integrate third-party health apps. League says some of its customers include Highmark Health and Manulife. 

RELATED: League enters 2022 as Canada’s newest unicorn with TDM Growth Partners-led round

The company said its recent customer growth has been part of a period of significant momentum, which includes expanding internationally through a partnership with Australia’s largest private health insurer, Medibank, this past October. The partnership’s initial focus is to enable Medibank’s new corporate digital health and wellbeing solutions, with plans to be integrated into the My Medibank app experience this year.

League also announced a batch of new AI-powered offerings in October, which included features such as an AI-powered provider finder, League claims its provider finder will match individuals to providers by considering factors like specialty, location, language, and accessibility. The company said the AI offerings would begin rolling out in the first quarter of 2025. 

League achieved unicorn status through a $95-million USD funding round in 2022. Led by Sydney, Australia, and New York-based TDM Growth Partners, the round pegged League at a pre-money valuation of $850 million USD (or $1.1 billion CAD, at the time). League now says it has raised more than $235-million in venture capital funding to date.  

Feature image courtesy League. 

The post League hits user milestone and secures $100-million USD credit facility from RBCx first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne announced today that he will not seek the Prime Minister’s office. 

“You don’t take lightly the opportunity to lead a country like Canada.”

François-Philippe Champagne

With the Liberal leadership contest taking shape, eyes were on Champagne to confirm his intentions during a fireside chat with Taking Stock’s Amanda Lang at Toronto’s Canadian Club Tuesday, Jan. 14. As Champagne detailed his recent conversations with incoming President Donald Trump and called Canada “the land of opportunity of the 21st century,” Lang prodded him to reveal what he thought of potentially becoming Prime Minister. 

Champagne responded that he will not join the race for Liberal leadership. 

“I will dedicate my energy to defend Canada, to defend Canadians, and to defend Canadian businesses,” Champagne said. “It was probably one of the most difficult decisions in my life, but I think it’s the right one at the right time.”

When Lang asked if he would run in the upcoming election. Champagne laughed and replied, “Can I take this one decision at a time? This is already a big day.” 

“You don’t take lightly the opportunity to lead a country like Canada,” he added. 

So far, Liberal leadership hopefuls include former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney (fresh off an appearance on The Daily Show), House leader Karina Gould, Baylis Medical Technologies chairperson Frank Baylis, and MPs Jaime Battiste and Chandra Arya. All of the aforementioned candidates have either announced, or are expected to announce, that they will enter the race.

RELATED: A requiem for the feds’ (failed) innovation strategy

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicked off the Liberal leadership race last week when he announced he was proroguing parliament with the intention to resign from his position when a new Liberal leader had been selected. With NDP leader Jagmeet Singh having announced his intention to file a non-confidence motion when the House of Commons sits again, an election is expected to happen in the spring. 

Trudeau faced mounting pressure from both internal and external pressures around his viability as Prime Minister, which came to a head when Freeland resigned from her position just hours before she was scheduled to deliver the Fall Economic Statement in December. 

With a prorogued Parliament, the Liberals in leadership limbo, and a likely early election, many of the government’s innovation policy commitments are in doubt. These include open banking reforms, procurement changes, an IP patent box for the SR&ED program, the Online Harms Act, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), and the 2024 budget’s capital gains tax rate changes that struck a nerve with innovation leaders. 

Champagne has served as Innovation Minister since 2021, taking over from Navdeep Bains, and remained in the position following the most recent cabinet shuffle spurred by Freeland’s exit. So far, no current cabinet member has signalled an intention to become Liberal leader. 

Feature image courtesy Canadian Club. 

The post Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne will not seek Liberal leadership first appeared on BetaKit.

Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.-based workforce training platform Uvaro has acquired coding school Lighthouse Labs for an undisclosed amount. 

Uvaro said in a statement that the acquisition is a strategic move that aligns with wider job market trends, pointing to the Government of Canada’s launch of AI-focused programming and investments in a digitally skilled workforce. 

Founded in 2013, Lighthouse Labs is a tech education company that claims it has trained over 40,000 learners since its inception through its full-time and part-time programs that teach skills in cybersecurity, data science, data analytics, and web development. 

Uvaro, which provides similar skill development and career services but without the technical focus, said that Lighthouse Labs’ hands-on training for mid-career professionals complements its workforce development programs, and will help Canadians adapt to the pace of change and unlock career opportunities.

“I just felt like it was important that Lighthouse wasn’t doing this alone anymore.” 

Jeremy Shaki

In an interview with BetaKit, Uvaro CEO Joseph Fung said that all the best practices of upskilling are “getting thrown out the window” due to AI, as job descriptions get redesigned and rewritten to account for the new tools on the market.

Because of this, he added that acquiring Lighthouse Labs is like two puzzle pieces coming together. 

“Uvaro has really focused on go-to-market roles, sales, marketing, project management, and using AI in front of office roles, while Lighthouse historically has focused on development, data analytics, software, [programming language] SQL, [as well as] building and using AI technologies,” Fung said. “Bringing them together lets us complete the full set of upskilling work.” 

Fung added that all of Lighthouse Labs’ approximately 40 employees will be joining the combined company. Lighthouse will operate as a Uvaro subsidiary under the leadership of CEO Jeremy Shaki, who will also become Uvaro’s chief revenue officer. 

RELATED: Lighthouse Labs, TechNL each secure over $20 million in federal funding for tech upskilling programs

Shaki told BetaKit in an interview that he and Lighthouse Labs had spent 11 years working in a space where the job market was “incredible” from a technology perspective. However, the “wild” past five years with COVID-19, remote work, and the advent of AI, changed the job market, and it was time for Lighthouse Labs to adjust or pivot. 

“It was just really clear to us that we were at a place where everything was evolving so quickly in the job market. We needed to make sure career changers and upskillers were just provided with more options,” Shaki said. “With everything accelerating with AI, I just felt like it was important that Lighthouse wasn’t doing this alone anymore.” 

Shaki said the next few years are going to be pivotal as the joint company sets itself up to understand, navigate, and provide the skills that are going to be needed in the ever-changing job market. 

“My job truly is making sure that we are set up to talk about these skills in a way that’s understood by stakeholders,” Shaki said. “Where we understand where the market is going, where we understand what’s actually going to be great for outcomes, for students, employers, and government, and to make sure that we have the best value proposition to do so.”

Feature image courtesy Lighthouse Labs. 

The post Uvaro acquires coding school Lighthouse Labs to take on AI-augmented job market first appeared on BetaKit.

It took Toronto-based corporate virtual private network (VPN) startup Tailscale over four years to reach 5,000 paid business customers, a milestone it achieved in March 2024. 

Ten months later, Tailscale has more than doubled its corporate client base. The software unicorn recently hit 10,000 paid business customers—ranging from small firms to Fortune 500 companies—and not including its hundreds of thousands of personal users.

Tailscale co-founder and CEO Avery Pennarun said the company’s rapid product-led growth has been fuelled in part by strong demand from artificial intelligence (AI) businesses, as companies across the world have raced to take advantage of the technology. Today, Tailscale serves some of the world’s most prominent AI startups, counting Mistral, Hugging Face, and Toronto-based Cohere among its customer base, which also includes businesses like Duolingo and Instacart.

“You could say that we’re the network that powers AI.”

Avery Pennarun, Tailscale

“We’re not an AI-powered network or anything like that, but you could say that we’re the network that powers AI,” Pennarun told BetaKit in an exclusive interview. “If you want to get rich in the gold rush, don’t go searching for gold; sell shovels … Tailscale is sort of the shovel seller for the AI world, and I think that’s pretty exciting.”

Pennarun has written that AI firms have big networking problems because they must transfer immense amounts of data between many machines across multiple cloud providers. They also face plenty of access control, compliance, cryptography, identity, and privacy concerns, given the amount of personal data they process for clients and the reputational risk should something go awry. These characteristics make AI companies “an ideal use case” for Tailscale.

Pennarun said that AI businesses often use multiple cloud providers because AI chips like graphic processing units (GPUs) are expensive, and big cloud providers rarely offer the best prices. This forces AI companies to use large cloud providers for most of their work, GPU cloud providers for their GPU work, and network between them. “That’s something that Tailscale does really well,” the CEO told BetaKit.

Founded in 2019 by former Google software engineers, Tailscale caters to companies and individuals with its zero-configuration VPN, which can be installed on any device, manages firewall rules for users, and works from anywhere. One of Tailscale’s key selling points is software’s accessibility, which enables people and teams to securely access network services without the long setup times and complexity of traditional VPNs.

Tailscale’s tech is based on Google’s BeyondCorp architecture and built using the WireGuard protocol, and can be launched without costly upfront hardware investments—enabling users to roll it out incrementally. Tailscale touts its solution as “strong security, without the pain.” Security networking products have historically been sold to large enterprises from the C-suite down, Pennarun said. Tailscale takes a different approach, which he has described as “bottom up,” targeting the end users of its solution—developers—first.

Tailscale has raised approximately $148 million CAD in total funding to date from a group that includes CRV, Insight Partners, Accel, Heavybit, Uncork Capital, and Montréal-based Inovia Capital and Panache Ventures. This includes a $128-million Series B from May 2022, which valued the company at more than $1 billion.

The startup has grown significantly in recent years following the pandemic-era shift to remote work. Pennarun claimed that Tailscale has been growing more than 100 percent year-over-year. He declined to share Tailscale’s revenue with BetaKit but claimed that it has also been growing proportionally to its customer base.

RELATED: Tailscale closes $128-million CAD Series B to scale VPN service, amass more developer evangelists

Tailscale also recently surpassed 500,000 weekly active users. Taking into account those who use the product less frequently than weekly, Pennarun said its active user count is in the millions, which he claimed is “quite high” in terms of usage for a network security product.

Tailscale has moved up market to larger customers since its Series B round while continuing to service smaller clients, rolling out additional security features, more refined access controls, network flow logging, and other capabilities to meet enterprise needs.

Tailscale opted to raise a lot of money in 2022 partly to ensure it had the runway to survive more difficult market conditions. According to Pennarun, the now more than 100-person company has not had to make any layoffs or pause hiring during the downturn but did hire a bit more slowly last year out of caution.

According to Pennarun, employers’ push for workers to return to the office in person has typically led to hybrid work and a continued need for the startup’s product during the times when employees are working remotely. 

RELATED: BlueCat Networks to acquire San Francisco’s LiveAction from Insight Partners

Today, Pennarun said Tailscale remains well capitalized, can become cash-flow positive without additional financing, and has begun to contemplate another fundraise.

Pennarun said Tailscale has achieved not just product-market fit but go-to-market-fit and is now entering what he described as “the growth phase.”

To help it move faster, Tailscale has appointed former Cloudflare head of business operations and Asia-Pacific manager Grace Lin as senior vice-president (VP) of operations. “Grace has a lot of experience in that acceleration phase,” Pennarun said. This included helping the fellow network security company scale to its 2019 initial public offering.

“Grace has a lot of experience in that acceleration phase.”

Lin told BetaKit that she was initially drawn to Tailscale by the number of ex-Cloudflare folks at the startup, its high level of customer satisfaction, its product-led growth, and its freemium business model.

“We have this huge freemium base, we have a self-serve business that really democratizes the product, and then we’re growing out this enterprise business that’s serving some of the most important companies at the forefront of AI and other areas,” Lin said.

Lin said she sees lots of room for the company to expand more internationally. She marks the latest in a series of executive hires the company has made over the past year, including Sydney Rossman-Reich as VP of marketing, Andrew Mitchell as VP of engineering, and Travis Perkins as VP of customer experience.

Tailscale plans to grow its team in 2025 and is recruiting for engineers, sales, marketing, and operations roles, including at its London, UK office to ensure 24/7 coverage globally. The company is currently hiring for more than 20 positions.

As for the 100-plus-percent annual growth that Tailscale has been posting, Pennarun said, “I don’t know how long that’s going to be able to continue, but I’ve got my fingers crossed we should be able to do it for at least another year.”

Feature image edited by Josh Scott. Headshots courtesy Tailscale.

The post Tailscale hits 10,000 paid business clients after doubling customer base in 10 months first appeared on BetaKit.

Ritual CEO Ray Reddy announced this morning that the Toronto-based food ordering app’s key talent is ready for pickup by Shopify.

Co-founders Reddy and Larry Stinson, alongside members of Ritual’s research and development (R&D) team, are leaving to join the e-commerce giant. Reddy will be Shopify’s new vice president of retail, The Globe & Mail reported. 

“One of Shopify’s secret weapons is that we’re full of founders. And we keep adding more.”

Kaz Nejatian

Reddy will remain on Ritual’s board of directors as an advisor and the company will continue under new leadership, but it’s unclear who will serve as CEO in his stead. Shopify directed BetaKit to the public X posts from Reddy and Shopify leadership when asked how many Ritual employees are joining the company and in what capacity. Ritual declined to comment for this article.

“Over the years, I’ve gotten to know Tobias, Harley, Kaz, and the Shopify crew, and I’ve been blown away by their deep respect for entrepreneurs and their long-term vision (decades, not years) to make commerce better for everyone,” Reddy wrote in a LinkedIn post. 

“I’m inspired by the opportunity to help local businesses adapt and thrive as generative AI reshapes customer expectations—a moment that reminds me of launching Ritual over a decade ago during the rise of mobile internet.”

Members of Shopify’s leadership team expressed their enthusiasm on X about Reddy joining the team.

“Shopify is a company where founders come together to make software and markets which causes more founders. I’m super excited about Ray joining up, always admired his work,” Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke wrote.

“One of Shopify’s secret weapons is that we’re full of founders. And we keep adding more,” Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian added in a separate post. 

RELATED: Ritual lays off 16 percent of staff to “prepare for a recession”

Ritual launched as a mobile food ordering app in 2014, catering to office workers picking up lunch orders. By 2019, the company had raised a total of $143 million CAD and was valued at $300 million USD. 

But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Ritual’s business model suffered due to the “devastating impact” of reduced in-person operations. The startup laid off over half its staff and wound down operations in Germany and the Netherlands. 

Later that year, the company quietly raised nearly $30 million CAD, in part to help grow its commission-free online ordering tool and compete with other food delivery apps. In 2022, Ritual decided to cut 16 percent of staff to prepare for the possibility of a recession, Reddy said at the time.

This marks the first time Ritual will operate without any of its original co-founders. Co-founder Robert Kim left the company in 2021 to launch GoodGood, a craft product-focused commerce startup. 

The news comes after a spate of acquisitions of direct-to-consumer brands by the e-commerce giant. Last summer, Shopify bought Checkout Blocks, Threads, and ChannelApe. The habit extends as far back as 2013, with the acquisition of former VP of corporate development and head of product Satish Kanwar’s design agency Jet Cooper. In 2019, Shopify acquired Helpful, founded by current VP of partnerships and product Dan Debow and head of engineering Farhan Thawar. However, there is no indication that Shopify is planning to fully acquire Ritual.

Shopify’s growth as Canada’s e-commerce giant has accelerated recently. According to its latest earnings report, the company’s sales climbed 26 percent year-over-year to $2.16 billion USD in Q3, beating expectations and marking Shopify’s sixth consecutive quarter of greater than 25 percent revenue growth. 

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

Feature image courtesy Ritual.

The post Ritual CEO, R&D team members to join Shopify first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based corporate card and expense management technology startup Float has secured a $70-million CAD Series B round to increase its footprint in Canada. 

The all-equity round was led by the growth equity arm of Goldman Sachs with participation from OMERS Ventures, FJ Labs, Teralys, and return investor Garage Capital. Clare Greenan, a vice-president with Goldman Sachs growth equity, will be joining Float’s board as a result of the round.

Float CEO and co-founder Rob Khazzam told BetaKit in an email statement that there was a “minor” secondary capital component, but declined to disclose the exact split. Including this latest round, Float has raised $124-million CAD in external equity funding to date. 

“We have to stop resting on the laurels of legacy institutions that no longer serve everyone.”

Rob Khazzam
Float

Float said in a statement that the new capital will be used to broaden its product suite, attract top talent, and expand its leadership in the Canadian market. Khazzam told BetaKit that Float will “continue to deepen” its spending management solutions and expand its financial services beyond its flagship high-yield account product, ultimately intending to move into the realm of financial-services partner for small and mid-market Canadian businesses.

Float currently sits at about 100 employees, and while Khazzam declined to disclose how many new employees he intends to hire with this capital, he said Float will be hiring in all parts of the business, including product, engineering, sales, marketing, and operations.  

“We purposefully chose to scale Float without adding significant headcount,” Khazzam said. “By focusing on efficiency from the outset, we built a stronger business that’s positioned for growth before we raised more capital.”

According to Float, the Series B comes with a higher valuation than its 2021 Series A round. While Khazzam did not disclose Float’s exact valuation, he did confirm to BetaKit that it exceeds $200-million USD, including funds received, and that the company was not yet profitable. When asked if Float had a timeline to achieve profitability, he said “We still have a meaty product roadmap to deliver to Canadian businesses first.”

Float claims that, since its Series A round, it has seen growth in total payment volume by a factor of 45, revenue by a factor of 50, and assets under management by a factor of 30. The company also said that participants from its Series A round, including Golden Ventures, Susa Ventures, and Tiger Global, remain fully invested in Float.

Founded in 2019, Float aims to simplify spending for Canadian companies. The startup’s flagship business finance platform combines corporate cards with spend management software, giving finance teams real-time visibility into business spending as well as the capacity to spend, track, approve, and reconcile expenses.

RELATED: Float’s CEO on bridging the spending and software divide

Last February, Float secured a $50-million CAD credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank to grow its corporate credit offering. The company also launched new products throughout 2024, with new bill pay and reimbursements offerings, powered through a partnership with Australian-founded, Singapore-headquartered FinTech firm Airwallex. Float claims that more than 4,000 Canadian businesses now use its services, including Jane Software, LumiQ, and Knix.

In a blog post, Khazzam used the round to speak on Canada’s current political and economic climate, saying that “The investment in Float is an investment in Canada.” He added that Canada is “at a tipping point,” and that the nation’s economic and social prosperity is at stake.

“As a nation, we must aim higher by fostering innovation and removing barriers that make it harder to build businesses in Canada,” Khazzam said. “We have to stop resting on the laurels of legacy institutions that no longer serve everyone.”

Feature image courtesy of Float.

The post Float raises $70-million Series B CAD led by Goldman Sachs first appeared on BetaKit.

A consortium of open tech leaders is calling for social media feeds to be unbound from the control of tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. 

The group of tech entrepreneurs, scholars, and advocates, which includes celebrity signatories such as Mark Ruffalo and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, launched a fundraising campaign today called Free Our Feeds.

“The underlying problem [is] that one person can make such decisions for us. It puts us at the mercy of their decisions.”

Philippe Beaudoin
Numeno.ai

The campaign hopes to establish a public service foundation to protect decentralized social networking platform Bluesky’s underlying technology from billionaire capture.

Canadians Mark Surman, president of the Mozilla Foundation, and Philippe Beaudoin, co-founder and CEO of Numeno.ai (formerly Waverly), are both custodians of the Free Our Feeds initiative. Nine custodians plan to help kickstart the foundation and register it as a non-profit in the US. 

“Social media is the space for public discourse and should be controlled by our democratic processes, not the autocratic whims of billionaires,” Sherif Elsayed-Ali, project custodian and executive director of the Future of Technology Institute, told BetaKit. “That should be a public good and shouldn’t be owned or controlled. There’s something fundamentally problematic about that.”

The campaign aims to raise a total of $30 million USD to build independently hosted tech infrastructure to ensure that Bluesky’s content stream and data remain accessible to users, developers, and researchers.

RELATED: Waverly and the broken internet

By December 2025, the team plans to launch an innovation fund for developers who want to build alternative social media on top of Bluesky’s open protocols. According to the campaign, the goal is for users to take control of their feeds and “make social media a healthier and happier place.” 

Free Our Feeds will initially operate under Development Gateway, a US-based charitable organization that will hold the funds raised through crowdfunding. The executive team and custodians will have authority over governance decisions, including how the money will be spent. According to the campaign, Bluesky supports the project’s objective but does not provide operational or financial backing.

Billionaire broligarchy 

The team behind Free Our Feeds is concerned that Bluesky could be vulnerable to the whims of the world’s largest tech companies and the billionaires who lead them.

Microblogging social media platform Bluesky opened registrations to the public in February 2024. It was conceived as a research venture at Twitter under the direction of then-CEO Jack Dorsey in 2019. Bluesky was then spun off into an independent company in 2021.

“Social media is the space for public discourse and it should be controlled by our democratic processes.”

Sherif Elsayed-Ali
Future of Technology Institute

Bluesky is built upon an open, decentralized social network known as the AT Protocol. The AT Protocol allows servers to communicate with each other, allowing users to own and retain their own data and profile information while switching between providers or social platforms.

The benefit corporation that owns Bluesky has raised over $23 million USD from VCs such as Blockchain Capital, Alumni Ventures, and San Francisco-based Neo.

The Free Our Feeds project claims that Bluesky and its underlying infrastructure are therefore susceptible to billionaire capture, and could end up under the direct control of and direction of high-net-worth leaders, such as Elon Musk with X and Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. These two individuals, who are two of the world’s richest men, determine the platform rules for a global user base of over 3 billion people. 

RELATED: Nice Try, Bluesky (Still Bitter Over Twitter)

“Social media today is controlled by giant platforms built to be addictive, rewarding divisive content, hate speech and disinformation. These platforms drive us apart rather than bring us closer,” the Free Our Feeds pitch deck reads. 

Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the extent of his unilateral control over billions of social media users last week when he announced changes to Meta’s content moderation policy. The changes included eliminating its fact-checking teams, removing automated filters that flag certain types of harmful posts, and promoting more political content after the platform began suppressing it in March 2024. 

Zuckerberg framed the overhaul as a move toward “free expression,” which he said had been declining on Meta platforms. In his announcement, he blamed legacy media for pushing to increase content moderation after Donald Trump’s election as US president in 2016—though Zuckerberg himself decided to create a Meta oversight board and launch the fact-checking program. He also blamed his own fact-checkers for being “too politically biased” and contributing to increased censorship on Meta’s platforms, though their role was mostly to flag harmful or suspicious content rather than remove it.  

The move has been seen as a response to threats from incoming US president Donald Trump, who has accused Zuckerberg’s platforms of anti-conservative bias through its content moderation. 

David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, wrote in a Substack post that Zuckerberg’s commitment to free speech is a matter of political convenience. “Why would Mark Zuckerberg pay extra money for a program that creates political hassles?” Karpf wrote.

Zuckerberg is taking inspiration from Elon Musk’s X in replacing fact-checkers with a “community notes”-style model. Also a self-described free speech proponent, Musk implemented changes on X that downranked or censored trustworthy sources of information and boosted misinformation while more vocally and financially aligning himself with Trump. 

While Zuckerberg’s changes to Meta’s operations align with the wishes of the incoming US administration, it will have immediate and potentially harmful trickle-down effects for billions of users. New content moderation guidelines reduce the amount of content that can be flagged for removal, now allowing posts to stay up that insult others based on their sexual or gender identity, denigrate immigrants or refugees, and refer to women as “household objects.” Facebook employees themselves are being censored internally for speaking out against the new policies, according to reports from 404 Media and Platformer.

Beaudoin worries that this is just one example of how billionaires can make politically motivated, unilateral decisions that directly impact the feed experience for users.  

“I really hope we can use this moment to talk about, not only that decision about fact-checking, but the underlying problem that one person can make such decisions for us,” Beaudoin said. “It puts us at the mercy of their decisions.” 

User agency

Following the establishment of its foundation, Free Our Feeds establishes plans to put part of its crowdfunded money toward an innovation fund. By the end of 2026, the campaign hopes to dole out $16.2 million USD of seed funding to teams and projects to create new social platforms and features on top of Bluesky’s underlying tech.  

The goal is to expand options for social media users. According to Beaudoin, the largest social platforms lock consumers in and discourage them from exploring other options. Leaving X or Meta platforms means losing your data and connections.

“If there was a plurality of options, we could go elsewhere,” Beaudoin said. “But right now, it’s impossible because the underlying system locks us in a few different places, it makes it really hard.”

But the AT Protocol allows for account portability, so users can take ownership of records such as posts, comments, likes, and follows, and move them to different platforms. 

Beaudoin, who co-founded Montréal’s Element AI and was a founding engineer on Google’s Chrome machine learning team, has been tackling the problem of social media agency for years. 

In 2022, after two years of engineering, Beaudoin launched Montréal-based Waverly, a social media app built on top of the AT Protocol that allows users to personalize their feeds through an AI-powered natural language analysis algorithm—in short, by users telling the app what content they want to see.

In August 2024, Beaudoin pivoted the venture to bring that technology to the B2B space through Numeno.ai. Its application programming interfaces (APIs) allow companies to offer customers and users custom experiences based on natural queries.

Beaudoin is hoping that this kind of user-personalized experience could be a part of the future of social media if the Free Our Feeds campaign is successful and raises the money to build more democratic networks.

“If you think about it, we have seen very little innovation in the way our feeds work since the beginning of social media,” Beaudoin said. “The dream here is … the richness of the early internet, when a bunch of people were trying different things.”

Feature image by Madison McLauchlan. AT logo courtesy Bluesky.

The post Canadian tech advocates join movement to free social media feeds from billionaire control first appeared on BetaKit.

BetaKit took some tech locals out for an evening of theatre this weekend to see The Master Plan.

A theatrical dramatization of the emphatic failure to build a smart city in Toronto (based on Josh O’Kane’s book Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy), the production was a wonderful display of art’s power to present historical events in a new light. It was also a fun reminder that tech could benefit from laughing at itself more often.

While ostensibly a story about 12 acres on Toronto’s waterfront, I promise it has national relevance. The play features two main thematic sources of tension: American vs. Canadian expectations of how deals get done, and Canadians’ comfort with hidden power vs. its open display.

Both are topical in a week when our Prime Minister announced his intention to resign while the US President-Elect threatened Canadian sovereignty with “economic force.”

The 51st State dilemma has prompted all sorts of responses. Our outgoing PM has been on a US media tour reminding Americans this is all a distraction from forthcoming tariffs (essayist Stephen Marche agrees and goes further). Former PM Jean Chrétien, on his 91st birthday, was inspired to rally the troops, calling for leaders “showing that spine and toughness.”

Here’s my attempt. The current moment requires Canada to find new approaches to solve old problems. Doing so requires both optimism and national unity on the issues that truly matter. I am troubled by those I’ve seen willing to entertain the chaotic ramblings of a foreign leader over the national interest.

BetaKit’s Town Hall series last year was prompted by the unsavoury socioeconomic conditions driving some entrepreneurs to consider leaving the country. But the conversation was for those willing to stay and solve our nation’s problems. To do the hard work.

To those open to trading our sovereignty for a tax break or dinner date at Mar-a-Lago: you can leave. Canada is for builders. Not cowards.

Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief

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What lies ahead for global markets in 2025?

As the macro landscape continues to evolve and new market dynamics unfold, corporates and investors must understand the trends driving capital allocation, sector shifts and emerging opportunities to position themselves for success. There is growing optimism in the market, but critical questions remain about the impact of tariffs and trade policies, long-term risks to the USD, and how to interpret the economic narratives and structural shifts likely to define the immediate future. 

Get trusted insights from RBC Capital Markets’ experts on the economy, markets, M&A, and strategic alternatives for the year ahead.

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

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1Password builds on B2B growth with acquisition of UK-based Trelica

Toronto-based password management company 1Password has acquired United Kingdom software-as-a-service startup Trelica to expand the capabilities of its Extended Access Management platform.

1Password co-CEO Jeff Shiner described Trelica as “a pioneer in modern SaaS access management.” In an interview with BetaKit, Shiner claimed that Trelica represents 1Password’s largest-ever acquisition by company revenue, but declined to share exact figures.

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Carbon6 to be acquired by US-based SPS Commerce for $301 million CAD to grow e-commerce merchant toolkit

Toronto-based Carbon6 Technologies, whose core business model included acquiring numerous other companies, is now the one being bought.

The e-commerce software aggregator is set to be acquired by Minneapolis-based retail supply chain solutions company SPS Commerce for $210 million USD ($301 million CAD), roughly 40 percent of which is SPS Commerce stock.

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Humi acquired by Australian HR software company Employment Hero

Toronto-based Humi has been acquired by fellow HR software company Employment Hero, as the embattled Australian company looks to gain a foothold in Canada.

In a statement, Humi said the deal is “estimated to be worth north of $100 million CAD.” However, sources close to the company indicated to BetaKit that the acquisition was worth $155 million CAD.

In an interview with BetaKit, Humi co-founder and CEO Kevin Kliman declined to disclose the exact purchase price, but said the combined company plans to retain all of its current employees and materially grow its presence in Canada.

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Cohere launches customizable enterprise AI workspace platform North

Toronto-based generative artificial intelligence startup Cohere has launched an early access program for North, its new AI workspace platform that serves as an answer to Microsoft Copilot and Google Vertex AI. 

The new platform is launching alongside a counterpart for financial services called North for Banking, which Cohere developed in collaboration with RBC. North for Banking will integrate Cohere and RBC’s proprietary foundation models to accelerate the development of generative AI solutions at RBC, according to Cohere. 

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Shakepay bolsters regulatory standing with CIRO membership

Shakepay is now the first crypto platform in Québec to be certified as an investment dealer with the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), clearing a regulatory hurdle that will hold the company’s cryptocurrency trading platform to a higher standard.

Customers using the crypto platform will now be afforded CIRO protections, including compliance oversight and capital adequacy.

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BBTV rebrands to RHEI, launches new AI training licensing platform for creator content

Vancouver-based media tech firm BBTV Holdings, which went private in early 2024, has rebranded to RHEI and launched a new data monetization platform called RHEI Data Pro. 

The new platform is meant to help digital content creators, like YouTubers, license out their existing content for training artificial intelligence models. The company claims that every 1,000 hours of licensed content can earn creators up to $100,000 from multiple licensing transactions, while still retaining full ownership rights. 

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D-Wave CEO says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is “dead wrong” about quantum computing

D-Wave Quantum suffered a significant hit to its stock price alongside other publicly listed quantum computing companies after the founder and CEO of chip giant Nvidia, Jensen Huang, said that quantum computers are about 20 years away from being “very useful.” 

In response, D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz took to LinkedIn to say that Huang has a “misunderstanding of quantum,” adding that he is “dead wrong” about D-Wave. 

“We are not 30 years out, we’re not 20 years out, we’re not 15 years out. We are today,” Baratz said on a CNBC appearance.  

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FEATURED STORIES FROM OUR PARTNERS

Atlantic Canada is positioned to capitalize on the global tilt toward hardware innovation, says Talis Apud-Martinez, Associate Director of the Emera ideaHUB at Dalhousie University, pointing to the region’s unique labour conditions, research environment, and proximity to industry.

“We are seeing a lot of really interesting hard tech emerge from this region,” Apud-Martinez said. “It’s an important time for Canadians to see that, whether you’re an investor or a founder, it’s worth looking at the opportunity out here.” Read more about the growth of deep tech in Atlantic Canada. 

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Weekly Canadian Deals & Dollars

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• VIC – COAST launches new oceantech-focused accelator
• VAN – Aspect Biosystems raises $165M CAD Series B round
• VAN – Gumloops secures $24.5M CAD Series A, relocates to US
• VAN – Broadsight appoints Steve Lowry as CEO
• TOR – OXcan secures $16M CAD Series round
• OTT – Shopify acquires Shop.ca domain from Emerge
• MTL – Carebook strikes deal to go private
• MTL – Lexop acquired by California-based Eltropy

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The BetaKit Podcast

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The BetaKit Podcast — The biggest tech questions of 2025

“I’m sure if there’s one takeaway here is that we can all trust Enron to solve the world’s energy problems.”

“With a mere human-sized egg.”

A cleantech crisis? The end of VCCI? The rise of centaurs? FinTech IPOs? Quantum leaps? BetaKit reporters Madison McLauchlan and Josh Scott join to review 2024’s biggest tech questions before offering a fresh set for 2025.

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THE BETAKIT QUIZ

The BetaKit Quiz — This week: Trudeau’s final bow, Bench’s bounceback, 1Password vs. shadow IT

Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Time to prove it. Test your knowledge of Canadian tech news with The BetaKit Quiz for Jan. 10, 2024.

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Secure up to $100K for your startup.

Women founders: This is your chance to secure up to $100K for your startup at DMZ’s Women Innovation Summit this March. Gain access to pitch advisory sessions, marketing opportunities, exclusive programming and so much more at Canada’s biggest celebration of women in tech.

Apply to pitch your startup by January 19.

Feature image by Dahlia Katz courtesy Crow’s Theatre.

The post It’s time for Canada to show “spine and toughness” first appeared on BetaKit.

The last episode of The BetaKit Podcast was about predicting what will come to pass in 2025. Our first episode of the new year is about open questions: tech happenings we’re wondering might happen this year.

“ I’m sure if there’s one takeaway here is that we can all trust Enron to solve the world’s energy problems.”  

“With a mere human-sized egg.”

Given my poor performance on our prediction episode, this week I asked for the aid of BetaKit reporters Madison McLauchlan and Josh Scott. Josh was familiar with this particular podcasting conceit, having battled me one-on-one last year. When we recorded our tech questions for 2024, I don’t think we were expecting them to be answered so definitively throughout the year. From executive departures to tech IPOs and innovation policy, the result became some of BetaKit’s biggest tech stories of 2024.

As for 2025? Under pressure to match last year’s performance, both Josh and Madison delivered. From the state of cleantech to the rise of centaurs and the decline of entrepreneurship in Canada, their questions were thoughtful and topical. So topical that at least one question was debated by the CEO of the wealthiest company in the world this week.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

As for me? Same old, same old: navel-gazing about innovation policy and other political impacts on Canadian tech, plus some FinTech thrown in for good measure. What can I say? My New Year’s resolution was to be more me, not change.

So what are the biggest tech questions of 2025? Let’s dig in.

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The BetaKit Podcast is presented by The BetaKit Newsletter: BetaKit’s flagship newsletter.

Every Sunday, The BetaKit Newsletter serves up in-depth analysis and insights on Canadian tech and innovation news, piping hot and straight to your inbox.

Your inbox deserves better, and so do you. Stay informed on all things Canadian tech by signing up for The BetaKit Newsletter today.

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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Produced & edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image by Madison McLauchlan for BetaKit (reference images courtesy BDC / Nvidia / Enron).

The post The biggest tech questions of 2025 first appeared on BetaKit.

Vancouver-based media tech firm BBTV Holdings, which went private in early 2024, has rebranded to RHEI and launched a new data monetization platform called RHEI Data Pro. 

“We are no longer in the creator economy. This is the augmented creativity era.” 

Shahrzad Rafati
RHEI

The new platform is meant to help digital content creators, like YouTubers, license out their existing content for training artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The platform is launching having already secured more than $35 million in committed partnerships from AI companies, RHEI chairperson and CEO Shahrzad Rafati said in a LinkedIn post.   

“RHEI is committed to ensuring that creators are empowered to actively take part in the evolution of AI by ensuring they are fairly compensated when their content and data fuel innovation,” Rafati said in a statement. 

RHEI says its per-hour pricing model compensates creators based on the “unique value” of each video they consent to being licensed. RHEI says it manages “all aspects of data preparation and augmentation” to ensure the content meets the requirements of major technology companies, such as adding in relevant metadata. 

The company claims that every 1,000 hours of licensed content can earn creators up to $100,000 from multiple licensing transactions, while still retaining full ownership rights. RHEI told BetaKit in an email statement that earnings are typically determined by the number of hours licensed, as well as the language, quality, category, and size of the content library.

RHEI Data Pro appears to be aiming to offer a solution to AI models training on data that hasn’t been legally cleared for that purpose. BetaKit has previously spoken with experts that assert academics, nonprofits, and early-stage AI startups are struggling to find material they can access for free to train their models,  and numerous companies have recently filed lawsuits over alleged copyright infringement from non-consensual AI training on their content. 

RHEI was founded in 2005 as BBTV. It was initially a hardware company, but quickly pivoted to technology that detected and helped monetize fan uploads of copyrighted media content. In more recent years, it acted as a multi-channel network that helped online creators manage, distribute, and monetize their content. Based on RHEI’s website, the company appears to still be offering these management services, but the company told BetaKit that it has a number of major announcements planned for the coming months that will outline the “evolution” of its existing solutions.

RELATED: Struggling, TSX-listed BBTV announces plan to become a private company

The company went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2020, much like many other Canadian tech companies, but began to struggle and cut staff as market conditions deteriorated. 

The company notably faced a now-settled dispute with popular content creator Ethan Klein of h3h3 Productions in early 2023 as YouTube creators expressed concerns around BBTV’s revenue splits and approach to paying out creators at the time. The public quarrel began after Klein claimed that BBTV had violated its contract with his H3 Podcast by taking a 30-percent cut of its YouTube channel membership revenue, which Klein later said BBTV had paid back.

In January 2024, BBTV officially went private when it was acquired and then merged with a holding company that was owned by Rafati and BBTV director Hamed Shahbazi, who is also the chair and CEO of fellow TSX-listed and Vancouver-based firm Well Health Technologies. 

In her LinkedIn post, Rafati says RHEI and its new Data Pro platform are part of a new vision for creativity.

“This is just the beginning. We are no longer in the creator economy. This is the augmented creativity era,” Rafati’s post reads. 

UPDATE (1/13/2025): This article has been updated with information and commentary provided by RHEI.

Feature image courtesy Xuthoria, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The post BBTV rebrands to RHEI, launches new AI training licensing platform for creator content first appeared on BetaKit.

Feature image courtesy 2017 Canada Summer Games via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The post Trudeau’s final bow, Bench’s bounceback, 1Password vs. shadow IT first appeared on BetaKit.

Vancouver-founded Gumloop has raised a $17-million USD ($24.5 million CAD) Series A round as it looks to hire talent for its new San Francisco home. 

The company, which develops an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered workflow automation platform, raised the all-equity round from round leader Nexus Venture Partners with participation from return investors First Round Capital and Y Combinator. Gumloop co-founder and CEO Max Brodeur-Urbas told BetaKit in an interview that Nexus Venture Partners is gaining a board seat as a result of the round.  

“It’s just too easy for someone who’s exceptional to get paid three times the amount in California and move down.” 

Max Brodeur-Urbas
Gumloop

Brodeur-Urbas said Gumloop was looking for investors who were previous founders that could provide advice on scaling, which the company got in the form of a number of angel investors. These include Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, Databricks co-founder Reynold Xin, Webflow co-founder Bryant Chou, and My First Million podcast founder Shaan Puri.

While he said Gumloop didn’t necessarily need the money, Brodeur-Urbas explained the company wants to move quickly and focus on its product without any external concerns, which it can definitely do now with this capital in hand. 

“If we’re trying to be such a talent-dense team, it’s much easier to convince great people to join if it’s derisked pretty heavily,” Brodeur-Urbas said.  

Gumloop was founded in April 2023 by McGill University classmates Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal under the name AgentHub. The company changed its name last May to, among other reasons, sound more accessible to non-developers. Soon after, it closed a $3.1-million USD ($4.28-million CAD) seed round in July. The company has raised a total of $20 million USD to date. 

Initially a side project for a small group of users on the messaging platform Discord looking to automate mundane digital tasks, Gumloop works by connecting relevant integrations like Google Sheets, Slack, YouTube, websites, emails, and more into a drag-and-drop style, no-code interface. Users can provide the platform instructions for what data needs to be taken from one and integrated into another, such as identifying PDFs in an email inbox and extracting invoice information into a Google Sheet. 

RELATED: Y Combinator grad Gumloop secures $3.1 million USD in seed funding to grow no-code automation tool

The Gumloop team currently only consists of Brodeur-Urbas, Behal, and one employee who will be relocating to San Francisco with them as they target hiring new talent that Brodeur-Urbas believes can be found in the Valley. 

“It feels like San Francisco is a very strong magnet for exceptional talent, and Vancouver suffers from being too close to that magnet,” Brodeur-Urbas said. “It’s just too easy for someone who’s exceptional to get paid three times the amount in California and move down, and then they’re just based there.”

It helps that, as AgentHub, Gumloop was one of the few Canadian companies that participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 demo day, allowing the young founders to build out their network in the Silicon Valley area.

While he doesn’t have a roadmap or timeline, Brodeur-Urbas has set a goal for Gumloop to hit a $1-billion valuation with a “soft” cap of ten employees. Since the company technically raised a Series A round with just two people, he thinks the company can grow even larger if the team is multiplied by a factor of five. 

Feature image courtesy Y Combinator.

The post Work automation platform Gumloop raises $24.5-million Series A as it relocates to Silicon Valley first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada punches well above its weight in artificial intelligence, regularly ranking among the top countries for AI talent globally.

With strong research institutions, federal funding, and a growing tech sector, the country has positioned itself as a key player in the sector. The country is now home to 10 percent of the world’s AI researchers, the second most in the world.

This isn’t just a point of national pride—AI is already reshaping the way people work and live. But while much of the attention is on AI’s impact in labs and offices, the tech is also making waves in Canada’s job market.

Five roles across Canada to apply for today

• Software Engineer, FasTab, Winnipeg
• Senior Software Developer, Bevertec, Toronto
• ASIC Video Design Engineer (Remote in Canada or US), NETINT Technologies Inc., Markham
• Software Developer, Guardian Mobility, Ottawa
• Software Developer, ClearVision Technologies, Inc., Vancouver

AI is quietly embedding itself into the hiring process and changing how candidates approach their career search. In a job market that can feel impossibly stacked, AI is becoming an unlikely ally to job seekers in Canada.

A new skill to hone

The AI sector in Canada is growing at an astonishing pace, with the market projected to increase by 33.9 percent annually between 2023 and 2028. By then, it’s expected to reach $28.2 billion—part of a global boom that could surpass $1 trillion by 2030. 

For anyone job hunting in 2025, this explosion is a signal to take AI skills seriously, whether through formal training or self-learning.

If you’re already using generative AI to write cover letters, tweak your resumé in response to particular job ads, and prepare for interviews, you’ve seen how it can streamline the basics. 

But AI goes further—not only can AI help you optimize your applications, it can shortcut your search with conversational search technology, and be used as a smarter outreach and networking tool. 

Let your next job find you

Canadian tech workers are no strangers to the challenges of navigating the job market: endless scrolling, vague job descriptions, and little clarity until late in the process.

But conversational AI is starting to change that by making it easier to find jobs that match your skills and goals without all the guesswork.

Take Robin from Amply, as an example. Robin is a conversational AI job search agent designed to help you locate your next tech position, fast.

Instead of wasting time sifting through irrelevant postings, you can focus on opportunities that fit. It’s a tool built for simplicity, and as more companies add it to their career pages, it’s becoming a key resource for job seekers.

You can also casually tell Robin about your skills, career aspirations, and preferred work environment. Through agentic AI, this simplifies your job search by instantly identifying relevant roles, helping you bypass endless scrolling.

Robin also makes awkward questions less awkward. You can ask about salary ranges, benefits, or work environments early on—details you’d hesitate to bring up with a hiring manager. By putting this information upfront, Robin removes unnecessary friction from the job search, making it more straightforward and efficient.

Automate the background work

Reaching out to potential employers has always been an art, but AI is turning it into a science. With the right tools, job seekers can analyze postings, identify key priorities, and craft messages that hit the mark. 

For example, if you’re eyeing roles in Alberta’s growing clean tech industry, AI tools can surface company projects and trends worth mentioning to give your outreach a sharper edge. 

By taking the guesswork out of research and strategy, AI frees you to focus on what really matters: making a genuine impression and showcasing your unique value.

Ready to flex your human skills in job searching? Visit the BetaKit Job Board today.

Feature image courtesy of Unsplash. Photo by Brooke Cagle.

The post How AI can get you a job in 2025 first appeared on BetaKit.

D-Wave Quantum suffered a significant hit to its stock price alongside other publicly listed quantum computing companies after the founder and CEO of chip giant Nvidia, Jensen Huang, expressed a pessimistic outlook on the sector. 

“There is more than one approach to building a quantum computer.”

Alan Baratz
D-Wave

D-Wave, a Canadian-founded, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)-listed company, opened the market on Tuesday trading at a price of $10.47 USD per share, but just after the market closed, Huang told the audience of a Nvidia financial analyst Q&A session at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that the quantum market is about 20 years away from being “very useful.” 

“If you said 15 years [away] for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side, if you said 30 [years] that would probably be on the late side,” Huang said. “If you said 20 years, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.” 

The stock prices of quantum companies such as IonQ, Rigetti Computing, Quantum Computing Inc, and D-Wave tumbled on Wednesday in the wake of Huang’s comments. In D-Wave’s case, the company opened the market trading at $5.63 USD per share, going as low as $4.88 USD per share. 

In response, D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz asserted in a LinkedIn post that Huang has a “misunderstanding of quantum,” adding that, while the founder and CEO of the second-largest company in the world might be right about other quantum companies, he is “dead wrong” about D-Wave. 

“There is more than one approach to building a quantum computer,” Baratz wrote in a LinkedIn post. “D-Wave took a different approach, which has allowed us to become commercial today and likely many years ahead of other quantum computing companies.”

RELATED: D-Wave completes $175-million USD stock sale to fuel quantum computing development

Baratz also appeared on CNBC to defend his company’s work in the quantum computing sector, where he clarified that Huang may be right about the gate-based approach to quantum computing being decades away, but D-Wave’s annealing approach is being deployed today. 

“We are not 30 years out, we’re not 20 years out, we’re not 15 years out,” Baratz said in the interview. “We are today. We are supporting businesses today with quantum compute to solve their hard problems.”

D-Wave raised $175 million USD ($246 million CAD) in gross proceeds through a stock sale near the end of 2024 to fuel its technical development efforts and business operations. 

After battling to keep its share price above $1.00 USD per share for most of 2024, the raise contributed to a significant share-price bump that coincided with Google announcing it had made a breakthrough quantum computing chip. According to CNBC, D-Wave shares rose by 178 percent in December as a result of the renewed investor interest, before being brought back down this week. 

Following its recent reckoning, D-Wave’s stock price has seen a slight recovery, but is still a fraction of its value before Huang’s comments, trading at $6.10 USD per share as of market close on Thursday. 

Feature image courtesy Nvidia.

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Montréal-based FinTech Shakepay has been made a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), clearing a regulatory hurdle that will hold the company’s cryptocurrency trading platform to a higher standard.

“Regulation matters. It’s the foundation for establishing confidence in this space.”

Shakepay is now the first crypto platform in Québec to be certified as an investment dealer with CIRO. With this new designation, Shakepay customers will benefit from up to $1 million CAD in insurance coverage for their cash through the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF). However, that coverage does not extend to crypto assets.

“Regulation matters,” Eric Richmond, Shakepay’s head of business development and general counsel, wrote in an email to BetaKit. “It’s the foundation for establishing confidence in this space.”

Customers using the crypto platform will also now be afforded CIRO protections, including compliance oversight and capital adequacy, Richmond said.

In preparation for the CIRO membership, Shakepay divided its operations into two entities: Shakepay Inc., the CIRO-certified entity that manages the crypto exchange and direct deposit, and Shakepay Financial, which handles cash operations and everyday payment services such as bill pay and a Bitcoin cashback Visa card. Shakepay claimed that Shakepay Financial will be registered as a payment service provider under the federal Retail Payments Activity Act later this year.

Shakepay differs from other crypto marketplaces in a few key ways. It buys and sells Bitcoin from its customers, and instead of charging commission or transaction fees, it charges a built-in “spread,” or markup, typically between 0.5 and 2 percent on Bitcoin at the time of the transaction. 

RELATED: Coinbase becomes first international crypto exchange to secure restricted dealer licence in Canada

The company is already certified by Canada’s anti-money laundering agency, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), as a money service business (MSB). Shakepay is also registered as a restricted dealer with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) in Québec and the securities regulatory authorities in all provinces and territories. 

As a CIRO member, Shakepay must now make disclosures regarding “account agreements, price and trade execution, asset handling, eligibility criteria, customer rights, and potential risks,” Richmond said.

The application process was extensive and rigorous, Richmond added, requiring Shakepay to demonstrate adherence to anti-money laundering protocols, as well as prove financial adequacy and customer protection measures. 

CIRO’s Deal Member Rules state that dealer members “must have and maintain at all times risk-adjusted capital in an amount not less than zero.” Shakepay confirmed that CIRO requires it to maintain a certain level of working capital, but declined to say how much, noting that it’s different for every member.

“There are key financial metrics that CIRO ensures we meet on a monthly basis to ensure that the company is financially viable,” Richmond added.

Shakepay joins the ranks of other Canadian FinTech firms and crypto platforms cleared as investment dealers with CIRO, such as Wealthsimple and WonderFi through its investment dealer platform Coinsquare. Last year, international exchange Coinbase secured a restricted dealer licence in Canada.

RELATED: Class action lawsuit filed against Wealthsimple, Shakepay over alleged misleading crypto trading fees

In a statement, CEO Jean Amouiny said Shakepay’s membership is a “major step forward in providing our customers with the trust and peace of mind they deserve.”

Shakepay has sought to position Bitcoin trading as a viable long-term investment option for Canadians who feel financially squeezed. The platform allows customers to trade in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but no other cryptocurrencies.

Last summer, Shakepay appealed to the Department of Finance to classify Bitcoin as a qualified investment during a federal consultation about whether the government should allow Canadians to deposit cryptocurrency directly into tax-advantaged savings plans such as RRSPs or TFSAs. 

Co-founded in 2015 by Amiouny and CTO Roy Breidi, Shakepay began as a Bitcoin-loadable credit card that users could spend in physical retail stores. In 2018, Shakepay pivoted into a crypto exchange and says it has grown to over 1.4 million Canadian users. 

In early 2022, the company secured a $44-million Series A and $313 million valuation, following a surge in growth in 2021. Later that year, Shakepay and Wealthsimple were both hit with class-action lawsuits seeking $10 million in punitive damages for misleading crypto trading fees. The “crypto winter” that followed saw drastic volatility in the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum, informed by massive fraud scandals like the collapse of FTX. 

Trading platforms operating in Canada have not been immune from scandal, either, highlighting the potential role that regulatory compliance may play in the future: BC-based ezBtc was fined $18.4 million for stealing from customers, and Binance was fined $6 million by FINTRAC before leaving Canada altogether in 2023. Binance had never obtained the necessary regulatory approval to operate in Canada. 

Feature image courtesy Shakepay.

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Toronto-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere has launched an early access program for North, its new AI workspace platform that serves as an answer to Microsoft Copilot and Google Vertex AI. 

Cohere claims North outperforms both Microsoft Copilot and Google Vertex AI in retrieval-augmented generation.

Cohere claims the new platform can integrate with “any tool a business cares about,” including in-house applications, allowing employees to easily create, customize, and share AI agents “with just a few clicks.” 

AI agents are programs that collect and use data to perform virtual tasks outlined by users which, in North’s case, can include business functions in HR, finance, customer support, and IT. 

For example, Cohere claims an employee could use North to create a specific agent that searches a connected application or dataset, such as Slack or an Excel spreadsheet, in order to summarize messages or create a data visualization. 

Cohere also frames the platform as security-focused, claiming North combines large language models (LLMs), search, and agents into one platform designed to run in “private–including air-gapped–environments.” In other words, North is designed to be able to search, interpret, and complete tasks based on data in computer systems that can’t connect to the internet.

“North gets rid of the pain that enterprises get stuck in during their AI adoption process, providing near-immediate productivity benefits to the workforce,” Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez claimed in a LinkedIn post announcing the launch. “All while being completely privately deployable, just about anywhere.”

North is launching alongside a counterpart for financial services, which Cohere developed in collaboration with RBC. Cohere said the platform, North for Banking, will integrate Cohere and RBC’s proprietary foundation models, alongside the bank’s internal platforms, to accelerate the development of generative AI solutions at RBC. 

Cohere claims North outperforms both Microsoft Copilot and Google Vertex AI in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)—the ability to fetch accurate and relevant answers from a dataset—as well as enterprise employee use cases and experience. The benchmark tests comparing the platforms were based on LlamaIndex tests and human evaluation.

RELATED: Cohere secures federal backing to build multibillion-dollar Canadian AI data centre

Founded in 2019 by former Google researchers, Cohere builds large-language models that power chatbots and other generative AI applications. Unlike some of its rivals, which include OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and Google, Cohere caters exclusively to businesses and has no direct-to-consumer generative AI product analogous to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

The startup closed a $500-million USD Series D round at a $5.5-billion valuation in July 2024, making it one of Canada’s most valuable tech startups. Japanese IT services company Fujitsu participated in the round as part of a partnership between the two companies to develop a Japanese LLM for private cloud usage, which launched in October. 

Cohere was also the first beneficiary of the federal government’s $2-billion Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy this past December, receiving $240 million CAD to build a multibillion-dollar AI data centre in Canada. 

Feature image courtesy Cohere.

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Montréal-based debt collections technology provider Lexop has been acquired by California-based loan collection platform Eltropy for an undisclosed amount. 

As part of the acquisition, Lexop will be integrated into Eltropy and begin operating under its brand name. Eltropy said in a statement that the combined company will continue to operate from both Eltropy’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California and Lexop’s headquarters in Montréal. 

Lexop CEO Amir Tajkarimi declined to disclose the purchase price, but reiterated to BetaKit in a statement that Lexop would maintain its Montréal presence.

“We’ve built a strong team here, and they’ll continue to be a crucial part of our combined future,” Tajkarimi said. “I’ll be staying on and working closely with [Eltropy CEO Ashish Garg] and the Eltropy leadership team to drive innovation in collections technology.”

Eltropy’s platform is meant to help community financial institutions (CFIs), like credit unions and community banks, collect on outstanding debt with automated text messaging, payments processing, and fraud prevention. 

Eltropy said in a statement that, by acquiring Lexop, it now has a self-serve solution that “prevents avoidable delinquency” by making it easier for borrowers to make payments before a due date. 

“Today’s phone-call-driven experiences are extremely inconvenient for the borrower, making it difficult for CFIs to collect debt payments on time,” Garg said in a statement. “By combining Lexop’s people-first collections technology with our AI-driven communications platform, we’re delivering an offering that increases effectiveness with empathy.”

Founded in 2016, Lexop’s platform helps credit union, financial, and enterprise clients automate communication with, and collect payments from, their borrowers. Its platform also provides analytics to clients about engagement, daily payment activity, and member preferences. 

The company scored the first-ever partnership between a subsidiary of Québec telecommunications giant Quebecor and a seed-stage startup when it integrated its collections solution into the customer accounts department of Vidéotron in 2019. 

Lexop went on to raise a $1.8-million seed round led by Anges Québec in 2020, and then an undisclosed amount as part of an “expansion round” led by Boston-based venture capital firm Companyon Ventures in 2022.

Feature image courtesy Scott Graham via Unsplash.

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Vancouver-based communications software startup Broadsight has hired Steve Lowry as its next CEO.

Lowry, who had been advising Broadsight for a year and a half, assumed the role earlier this month. He replaces Broadsight co-founder and senior public relations (PR) professional Kurt Heinrich, who has transitioned to chief strategy officer (CSO).

“It just struck me as a great opportunity to create a category … There are companies involved in PR tech, but from what I’ve seen, no one is doing exactly what we’re doing,” Lowry told BetaKit in an interview.

“It just struck me as a great opportunity to create a category.”

Steve Lowry, Broadsight

Broadsight, which aims to build “the Salesforce for comms,” offers a web-based workflow management platform for PR and communications professionals. The startup’s software aims to help media relations teams manage communications, media requests, and issues more efficiently with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and track the impact of their work.

Heinrich, who is executive director of media relations and issues management at the University of British Columbia (UBC), initially launched Broadsight as a Google Sheet database to satisfy his own needs. Over time, it has spun out of UBC and grown into a standalone company whose software has also been adopted by other large universities and organizations.

Lowry said Heinrich recently decided to step aside and recruit a new leader with more experience building tech startups to lead Broadsight through its next stage of growth, but will remain very involved with the business going forward. Broadsight co-founder and CTO John-Jose Nunez rounds out the company’s three-member C-suite.

Lowry has previously launched and built two tech startups of his own—in-cab advertising business Play Taxi Media and online ad marketplace Discover Media House—and spent some time working in corporate development roles with two prominent British Columbia tech companies in social media management firm Hootsuite and legaltech scaleup Clio. 

RELATED: Clio tops $4-billion CAD valuation with largest software funding round in Canadian tech history

He also served as vice president of technology banking at Silicon Valley Bank and helped found Vancouver innovation advocacy organization Frontier Collective and the AI Network of British Columbia.

Lowry said he hopes to use his experience and network to build Broadsight into “a one-stop shop” for professionals to communicate with journalists and manage their teams.

To date, Broadsight has largely been self-financed, raising less than $100,000 CAD in external funding from friends and family.

According to Lowry, the now nine-person startup has grown 10 percent month-over-month during the last six months, caters to 15 large clients—including four of Canada’s top 10 universities by enrollment and a number of health authorities—and is approaching profitability.

RELATED: Hootsuite to acquire social media analytics firm Talkwalker

Lowry indicated that Broadsight is looking to raise $500,000 in pre-seed financing this year, but is mindful of current market conditions and has not yet fully committed to the venture capital route.

Broadsight is currently targeting large organizations faced with managing inbound requests and public scrutiny. In the future, Lowry sees potential for it to meet the needs of clients of all sizes.

Lowry also believes there is more room for Broadsight to deploy AI tools, noting the startup is already using the tech to analyze and summarize emails from journalists and help generate key messaging. The goal is to remove busy work and free up communications professionals to focus on crafting responses and building relationships.

Feature image courtesy Broadsight.

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Oxford, UK and Toronto-based Oxford Cancer Analytics (OXcan) has set out to help spot one of the deadliest forms of cancer earlier.

The doctor-led, pre-revenue medtech startup has secured over $11 million USD ($16 million CAD) in Series A funding to fuel the development and deployment of its protein-based blood test product for early-stage lung cancer detection, which it hopes to begin rolling out in the United States (US) later this year, pending regulatory approval.

“It’s good to have that stamp of approval from the specialized VCs.”

Dr. Peter Jianrui Liu, OXcan

In an interview with BetaKit, OXcan co-founder and CEO, Dr. Peter Jianrui Liu, noted that while it is not the most common type of cancer, by number of deaths caused, “Lung cancer is number one.” Liu said a big part of the reason why is that lung cancer is typically not detected until later stages because earlier stages are often asymptomatic.

Early lung cancer detection is paramount to ensuring survival. By using proteomics and artificial intelligence to analyze liquid biopsy tests, which look for tumour cells and cancer DNA in bodily fluids like blood, OXcan hopes to play a role in identifying lung cancer earlier, ensuring access to more treatment options and saving lives.

“We’re starting [with] lung cancer because it is one of the biggest unmet needs in this space,” Liu said, noting that OXcan intends to tackle other types down the road.

OXcan’s all-primary, all-equity Series A round closed this month and was co-led by We Venture Capital, the corporate venture capital (VC) arm of large Spanish diagnostic firm Werfen, and Toronto’s Cross-Border Impact Ventures, which targets women and children-focused healthtech startups and announced the final close of its first, $90-million fund around this time last year.

“It’s good to have that stamp of approval from the specialized VCs,” Liu said, noting that he expects We Venture Capital’s expertise and resources to prove especially helpful as the startup looks to launch its product in the UK and European Union in the future.

The financing was also supported by fellow new investors DigitalDx Ventures, Macmillan Cancer Support, Aurelium Ventures, and OKG Capital, existing backers Eka Ventures and Civilization Ventures, and several undisclosed angels. It brings OXcan’s total funding to $16.7 million. Liu declined to share the company’s valuation.

We Venture Capital senior investment manager Gemma Sturt and CBIV managing partner Annie Thériault have joined OXcan’s board of directors.

RELATED: CBIV surpasses $135 million CAD in final close to back women, children-focused healthtech startups

OXcan was founded in 2020 by two Oxford University graduate students, Liu, a Canadian medical doctor by training with experience in cancer research, and president and COO Andreas Halner, who holds the Oxford equivalent of a PhD in clinical medicine and machine learning (ML). 

The startup is developing a proteomics and ML software platform and blood test solution that searches for specific protein biomarkers associated with lung cancer and assesses patients’ molecular risk of having the disease. OXcan is currently working with over 20 healthcare centres across three continents to develop its tech.

According to Liu, using proteins for early cancer detection has demonstrated improved outcomes compared to more traditional DNA-based approaches. He claimed that OXcan’s patent-filed approach is also more cost-effective because it relies on existing laboratory infrastructure, rather than requiring the company to build its own specialized labs.

Liu described OXcan’s offering as a detection tool rather than a diagnostic one, noting patients that receive a positive indication from OXcan are referred to existing clinical pathways for further assessment. “We initially want to use this as a way to improve screening for lung cancer,” he said.

RELATED: Kisoji raises $57-million CAD Series B to advance cancer antibody therapy

While OXcan is headquartered in Oxford, the startup is also incorporated in Canada, where it has conducted some of its research in collaboration with the University Health Network’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and others. OXcan currently has a presence in Toronto—where Liu and CPO Daniel Szulc are located—and plans to grow its now 15-person team’s Canadian division going forward.

To aid its efforts to take its tech to market, OXcan has also hired Heinrich Roder as senior vice-president of research and development. Roder brings expertise in proteomics specifically as it relates to liquid biopsy for lung cancer, having previously founded and led Nasdaq-listed American diagnostic firm Biodesix as CTO.

“Having developed blood-based proteomic tests for lung cancer for over two decades, I appreciate the difficulty of detecting cancers early through liquid biopsy,” Roder said in a statement. “Convinced that OXcan’s unique approach can address this clinical need, I feel privileged to join the team.”

Feature image courtesy Oxford Cancer Analytics.

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Vancouver-based Aspect Biosystems has raised a $115-million USD ($165 million CAD) Series B round to realize its ambitions of bringing 3D-printed tissue therapies into clinical use.  

Aspect has developed 3D-printing technology more at home in the realm of science fiction than Canadian hospitals: it designs and produces 3D-printed living tissue implants in hopes that they will one day be able to replace diseased or damaged tissue inside the human body. Aspect wants to bioprint healthy cells and tissues to treat diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and genetic or acquired liver disease. 

“We were quite fortunate in the backdrop of a very difficult biotech climate.”

Tamer Mohamed
CEO of Aspect Biosystems

The financing was led by Dimension, a New York and San Francisco-based firm that focuses on young biotech companies. Other investors included returning Toronto-based Radical Ventures, Crown corporation InBC, Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, Pallasite Ventures, Pangaea Ventures, Rhino Ventures, T1D Fund, and one undisclosed investor. Aspect declined to disclose whether the round consisted of any debt or secondary financing. 

Dimension closed a $500-million USD fund in December to invest in the intersection of tech and life sciences. Nan Li, founder and managing partner at Dimension, is joining Aspect’s board.

“We were quite fortunate in the backdrop of a very difficult biotech climate,” Aspect co-founder and CEO Tamer Mohamed said in an interview with BetaKit. The round came together in a couple of months, he added, and closed “very recently.” 

Indeed, Canada’s biotech sector has seen a funding downturn since 2021, according to PitchBook data, and it has persisted amid a tough fundraising environment for venture capital overall in Canada. 

Mohamed told BetaKit that the Series B financing brings the company’s total funding to over $260 million USD. The round will allow Aspect to bring its living tissue printing to the clinic for trials in humans and help expand Aspect’s tissue therapeutic platform, which it says uses AI to power its design tools for printing tissue implants. 

RELATED: Feds, BC invest nearly $73 million into Aspect Biosystems to establish biomanufacturing facility

Aspect Biosystems develops tech to print the cells and tissues that make up organs. Its tissue implants are made out of a combination of living cells, derived from stem cells, and biomaterials such as hydrogel polymers. These polymers attract water, giving them a soft and pliable quality similar to human tissue. 

For example, the pancreas in Type 1 diabetes patients lacks healthy beta cells that sense glucose and release the hormone insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. Aspect prints healthy beta cells into a tissue implant, with the goal of eventually allowing diabetics to generate their own insulin. 

The company believes tissue implants may still be able to function even if they are placed nowhere near the original, damaged organ in the body, Mohamed explained.

“Sometimes the solutions may not be obvious from a human intelligence perspective, and AI could get us to functional tissues that would otherwise be very difficult to get to with purely human intelligence,” Mohamed said.

Mohamed said that Aspect is currently a pre-clinical stage company that hopes to develop into a clinical-stage company over the next few years. This means that the tech has not yet been tested in humans.

Founder and CEO Tamer Mohamed has likened the technology to Star Trek’s replicator, but instead of food and drink on demand, Aspect’s tech would create healthy tissue on demand to replace, repair, or support biological functions that have gone awry. 

The public sector is also betting on the biotech. Aspect is slated to open Canada’s first clinical biomanufacturing facility, a $200-million project funded in part by the BC government and the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund.

The facility is a continuation of a partnership struck between Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk and Aspect in April 2023. Novo Nordisk, the maker of diabetes and obesity drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, was granted access to Aspect’s bioprinting technology to develop up to four drugs for diabetes, obesity or both. In return, Aspect could receive up to $650 million USD in future milestone payments per product. 

The market for bioprinting is expected to grow to over $5 billion USD by 2030, according to a 2024 report from market research firm Meticulous Research, as chronic diseases become more prevalent and a larger share of people are living longer. BC represents a hot market in particular, with VoxCell Bioinnovation developing a high-resolution bioprinter and Axolotl Biosciences replicating brain tissue. 

Despite significant US investment, Mohamed said he is “adamant” about keeping Aspect’s operations in Canada as the company targets global growth.

“I’ve been quoted before as saying we want to build a $100-billion anchor company here, and I wasn’t bluffing,” he said.

Feature image courtesy Aspect Biosystems.

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Toronto-based Humi has been acquired by fellow HR software company Employment Hero, as the embattled Australian company looks to gain a foothold in Canada.

In a statement, Humi said the deal is “estimated to be worth north of $100 million CAD.” However, sources close to the company indicated to BetaKit that the acquisition was worth $155 million CAD.

“In a lot of ways, the partnership with Employment Hero is like a better version of a Series C for us.”

Kevin Kliman
Humi

In an interview with BetaKit, Humi co-founder and CEO Kevin Kliman declined to disclose the exact purchase price, but said the acquisition was made with a mix of cash and equity. 

Following the acquisition, Kliman said that Humi will become the Canadian hub for Employment Hero, while remaining branded as Humi for the time being. He added that the combined company plans to retain all of its current employees and materially grow its presence in Canada.

“In a lot of ways, the partnership with Employment Hero is like a better version of a Series C for us,” Kliman said. “We get the funding that we otherwise would have gotten to grow the next stage of our company, incredible mentorship from a team that has just done what we want to do, and all the leadership within Humi is staying in place.”

Founded in 2016 as a cloud-based web app to store employee data, Humi has since expanded to support employers in managing HR, benefits, and payroll. The startup raised a $15-million CAD Series A round led by Tribe Capital in 2020 and a $31-million CAD Series B round led by Kensington Capital Partners in 2022.

Kliman claimed in a blog post announcing the deal that more than 150,000 Canadian workers are using Humi, and that the platform has facilitated over $7 billion in wages to date. 

Employment Hero offers many of the same HR features as Humi, but both platforms will benefit from filling their respective gaps, according to Kliman. He said that Humi will bring the local knowledge and features that are required to support Canadian companies to Employment Hero, while Humi will benefit from Employment Hero’s five-year head start in the space, allowing it to “leapfrog” its less mature onboarding, recruiting, and payroll tools. 

Kliman added that he felt like the culture fit of the two founder-led companies “could not be better.”

“Humi’s mission is to become the largest employment platform in Canada, while Employment Hero’s mission has become the biggest employment platform in the world,” Kliman said. “So the two are very well matched in mission and in culture.” 

RELATED: With Nmbr, former Humi execs want to power embedded payroll products across Canada

Despite this sentiment, Employment Hero has been under fire from the Australian press on multiple fronts over the past few months, principally with allegations of a toxic workplace culture.

In October, Australian publication Capital Brief reported that Employment Hero co-founder and CEO Ben Thompson was facing criticism from women leaders in Australia’s startup scene for a post made on X that said: “WiseTech CEO Richard White is allegedly bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘seed capital.’” 

The post, which Capital Brief reported that Thompson downplayed as a “bad dad joke,” referred to allegations that White had expectations of sexual favours in exchange for business investment, and had been sending crude and suggestive messages to female entrepreneurs. 

In the ensuing months, Capital Brief reported numerous stories on Employment Hero’s allegedly toxic workplace culture, including a rowdy offsite gathering that resulted in the termination of four employees, with multiple former employees describing the company as a “vile workplace” ruled by a “fear culture.” Current and former staff also complained to the outlet about Employment Hero’s series of abrupt strategy changes in the past few months, including scaling back an expansion, pausing development on several projects, and making layoffs. 

Kliman said he disagreed with the reports, and that he had “spent time with tons of people on [Employment Hero’s] end.” 

“I can say for certain that the culture is fantastic, they’re incredibly caring people and treat people as such,” Kliman said. “The culture within the company has been nothing but positive from what I’ve seen.” 

Feature image courtesy Humi. 

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Iain Klugman might best be known for championing Kitchener-Waterloo’s tech scene. But in recent years, the former Communitech CEO has been taking a closer look at another tightly-knit ecosystem.

A Dalhousie University graduate and Advisory Board Member at the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub, Klugman has trained his eyes on Atlantic Canada, where he sees emerging strength in hard tech verticals.

“There are companies in this region that have such massive potential to impact our lives for the better.”

Talis Apud-Martinez, Emera ideaHUB

“There’s such a determination right now in Atlantic Canada, whether it’s things like fixing healthcare or saving the planet,” said Klugman. “There just seems to be an urgency and drive that gets me really excited.”

As the global economy tilts toward hardware innovation, major Canadian hubs like Toronto and Montréal might seem like the obvious leaders in the deep tech race.

But Klugman, as well as Talis Apud-Martinez, Associate Director of the Emera ideaHUB at Dalhousie University, and others are encouraging a closer look at Atlantic Canada, pointing to the region’s unique combination of labour conditions, research environment and proximity to industry.

“We are seeing a lot of really interesting hard tech emerge from this region,” Apud-Martinez said. “It’s an important time for Canadians to see that, whether you’re an investor or a founder, it’s worth looking at the opportunity out here.”

With just over two million people spread across a landmass the size of France, Atlantic Canada might seem like an unlikely contender. But many tech sector stakeholders inside and outside of Atlantic Canada see the region betting big on an industry where the stakes are higher, the timelines are longer, and the rules are fundamentally different.

Support that doesn’t take a slice

Hardware innovation is a heavy lift, with high costs and long timelines for research, prototyping, and scaling.  But in Atlantic Canada, that burden can be considerably lighter.

Startup Genome puts Atlantic Canada in the global top 15 of tech ecosystems that deliver bang for buck, a distinction Apud-Martinez attributes to the region’s ability to balance affordability with ambition. 

“Being based here means you can keep costs low while targeting global markets, which makes the numbers work really well,” she said.

This affordability stems from several factors. Commercial real estate is more available, talent costs are competitive, and regional governments have prioritized business-friendly policies and non-dilutive funding opportunities.

Nova Scotia, for example, offers tax credits covering up to 50 percent of eligible research and development expenditures, which significantly reduces the financial burden on startups developing research-intensive hardware.

Jennifer Wagner, former president of Dartmouth-based CarbonCure Technologies, which embeds captured CO2 into concrete, has credited government funding programs as critical to the company’s early success, stating that without them, “there would be no CarbonCure.”

Apud-Martinez noted that provincial programs and federal programs like the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and NRC-IRAP offer a deep pool of non-dilutive funding to help cover the hefty upfront costs faced by deep tech companies.

Halifax, Atlantic Canada’s largest city, the second-most affordable location for operating a life sciences research centre in Canada and the United States, and has been recognized for having the most affordable ocean tech sector in Canada.

Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, told BetaKit that Atlantic Canada’s close ties to the maritime industry, combined with extensive ocean-focused support programs and organizations, are transforming the region into an oceantech powerhouse.

“The economic opportunity, certainly from an oceans perspective, is very significant here, and I think the rest of Canada should be paying attention to that opportunity in Atlantic Canada,” MacDonald said.

A natural testbed

In addition to funding, deep tech startups grapple with unique hurdles in product development. 

Unlike software companies that can fix lines of code and iterate quickly, hardware startups rely heavily on early customers to test and validate their technology—a process that is often far more complex than it sounds.

Atlantic Canada, according to Apud-Martinez, is uniquely positioned to support these early-stage efforts.

“The thing that really struck me, when I was out there, was seeing this real momentum around deep tech from a product and a company formation perspective.”

Iain Klugman

“There’s this really interesting combination of low operating costs, a super supportive ecosystem, abundant non-dilutive funding, and opportunities to pilot deep tech right here,” Apud-Martinez explained.

Several startups have already taken advantage of this environment. Halifax healthtech startup Myomar Molecular, for example, piloted its muscle health diagnostic tool with the Nova Scotia’s population before officially launching the product earlier this fall.

Much of this innovation is happening at the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub, which connects researchers, clinicians, and startups to test and implement new healthcare ideas, often harnessing its direct ties to the public health system to pilot innovations in real-world settings. “They’re doing stuff that I would argue is leading the country,” Klugman said.

The Center for Aquaculture Technology in Prince Edward Island was one of the first to test Dartmouth-based DeNova’s sustainable fish feed made from greenhouse gases. Halifax-based Planetary Technologies also partnered with Dalhousie University to conduct the first trial of its technology that reduces acidification in the ocean. 

Shelley King, founding CEO of Natural Products Canada, told BetaKit that launching and piloting hardware is easier out east thanks to the region’s collaborative and tightly connected community.

“You’ll often see companies that are not in the same sector collaborating, and it’s easier to do that given the smaller geographic footprint that we have here,” King added. “Everybody seems to know everybody.”

Atlantic Canada also offers a robust support system for deep tech startups seeking space, resources, mentorship, or a network, including the Ocean Supercluster, Lab2Market, Propel, Startup Atlantic, and pilot opportunities through agencies such as Invest Nova Scotia. 

The Emera ideaHUB is also among these resources. The incubator, which takes no equity from deep tech startups, offers wet and dry labs, hands-on guidance, and access to industry partnerships. 

“We provide not just technical support but also strategic advice,” Apud-Martinez said, noting this includes designing for supply chain, manufacturing, or scaling materials.

The deep tech learning curve

While Atlantic Canada is rich in grants, incubators, and government-backed support, private investment lags behind other Canadian regions. For deep tech startups, transitioning from software to hardware amplifies these challenges, particularly when it comes to investor education. 

According to Apud-Martinez, one of the biggest hurdles is the steep learning curve investors face when navigating hardware ventures. The region has seen a few sizable software exits in its history, such as Verafin’s $2.75-billion Nasdaq acquisition and the $276-million sale of Radian6. But deep tech is a different ball game.

“The templated model of B2B SaaS just doesn’t work,” Apud-Martinez explained. “You need investors who are comfortable evaluating intellectual property from universities, understanding founders with deep technical backgrounds, and what it really takes for them to scale.”

Hardware investments require more than just capital, she said. They call for specialized due diligence, different valuation models, and most importantly, patience. For investors accustomed to the speed and simplicity of software deals, Apud-Martinez said investors need to understand deep tech can take up to 40 percent longer than software investments to mature. 

“You can’t just invest in hardware the way you always invested in software,” she added. “It’s not going to be the same.”

Still, she believes this learning curve is worth the climb. These investments may demand patient capital and a willingness to learn, but they’re already translating into global success stories. 

Mount Pearl, NL-based oceantech startup Kraken Robotics, works with global military agencies, including the Canadian Navy to hunt remote sea mines with its advanced robots and sensors.

Apud-Martinez said while Atlantic Canada is poised to become a global leader in deep tech, ambition alone won’t make it happen. It will require investors who are ready to support purpose-driven companies that don’t fit the typical software startup mould.

“There are companies in this region that have such massive potential to impact our lives for the better,” she added.

For his part, Klugman sees many parallels between the Waterloo Region and Atlantic Canada. 

“We tend to look at our small size not as a constraint, but as an asset,” he said. “The thing that really struck me, when I was out there, was seeing this real momentum around deep tech from a product and a company formation perspective.”

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Emera ideaHUB empowers deep tech founders to turn bold ideas into reality.

With mentorship, resources, and funding, we help innovators tackle product development and startup challenges. Ready to launch? Learn more today.

All images provided by Emera ideaHUB.

The post Deep tech is thriving in the Maritimes first appeared on BetaKit.

Just over four years after going public, struggling Montréal healthtech firm Carebook Technologies has struck a deal with its largest shareholder to become private once more.

Last week, majority shareholder UIL Limited agreed to acquire all common Carebook shares that UIL or its affiliates and associates do not already own for $0.10 CAD apiece in cash. This marks a 122 percent premium relative to the closing price of Carebook’s shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) on Jan. 2, the day before the agreement was announced.

Reprivatizing alleviates Carebook from the “financial and administrative burden of remaining a reporting issuer in … a challenging capital markets environment.”

Since debuting on the TSXV, Carebook has grown its business through acquisitions but continued to lose money and faced difficulty winning over public market investors. The company’s stock price has fallen by more than 95 percent from its high of $2.04 in Oct. 2020 to less than $0.05 prior to this deal, and Carebook currently boasts a market capitalization of approximately $7 million—a fraction of the $23 million combined it paid to acquire Kelowna’s CoreHealth Technologies and Winnipeg-based InfoTech back in 2021.

Carebook’s leadership team, board of directors, special committee, and second largest shareholder MedTech Investment LP have agreed to support the move. The transaction, which remains subject to court approval and customary closing conditions, is expected to close in Q1 2025, after which Carebook’s common shares will be delisted from the TSXV.

In a statement, Carebook CEO Michael Peters characterized the agreement as “a positive outcome” for the business, noting that it comes at a significant cash premium and delivers immediate liquidity to Carebook’s shareholders.

“As a private company, Carebook will have the flexibility and resources to continue to implement its strategic vision without the added financial and administrative burden of remaining a reporting issuer in what remains a challenging capital markets environment,” Peters added.

RELATED: Clio’s record-breaking funding round explains 2024’s public market exodus

Carebook sells digital health products to businesses, employers, pharmacies, and insurance providers. The healthtech firm went public on the TSXV in late 2020 via reverse takeover amid a pandemic boom in new tech listings. Peters replaced Pascale Audette as CEO a year later.

Now, Carebook is set to join the wave of Canadian tech companies that went public during that mid-2020 to late 2021 period and have since opted to return to private markets. This group includes CloudMD, Copperleaf Technologies, MDF Commerce, Nuvei, Q4 Inc., and TrueContext, and has expanded in recent weeks with the addition of Payfare and Softchoice.

BetaKit recently reported on this public market exodus, which marked one of the Canadian technology sector’s biggest stories of 2024. As experts have told BetaKit, going private is cheaper and comes with less scrutiny for companies when they cannot put together the results necessary to satisfy public market investors.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by National Cancer Institute.

The post Carebook joins parade of public Canadian tech companies returning private first appeared on BetaKit.

Victoria-based Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies (COAST) has teamed up with Founders Factory and Blue Action to launch a Canadian chapter of the oceantech-focused Blue Action Accelerator under the name Blue Action Canada. 

“We’d like to see this widen out to Canada-wide [and] launch the second cohort towards the end of this year.”

Jason Goldsworthy
COAST

The accelerator’s pilot cohort will support eight British Columbia-based blue economy startups within its areas of interest, which include offshore energy, ocean monitoring and data collection, aquaculture, and coastal resilience. 

COAST executive director Jason Goldsworthy told BetaKit in an interview that these areas of interest are where he thinks the blue economy is going to thrive.

“The oceans have the ability to have a huge impact on our climate and, regardless of which way you want to look at it, they’re very important in regulating the [Earth’s climate],” Goldsworthy said. “I think any of the technologies that are really focusing on that are going to be key in the future, the hard part is how to commercialize those and how to turn them into businesses.”

Launched in 2021 and financially backed by BC’s Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions and federal regional economic development agency PacifiCan, COAST has a mandate to support technologies and innovations focused on ocean sustainability, also known as the blue economy. As part of that mandate, Blue Action Canada’s four-month program is looking to support established early-stage ocean companies that are members of COAST, and have a physical presence in British Columbia.

The accelerator will coach founders on their operations, product development, technology, customer discovery, and commercialization, with an emphasis on fundraising.

RELATED: Planetary Technologies secures $15.8-million CAD Series A to alkalize the oceans and fight climate change

The original Blue Action Accelerator launched in 2023 as a collaboration between London, United Kingdom-based venture studio Founders Factory and Bahamas-based ocean hub Blue Action. 

As part of the program, Blue Action is providing a platform to access its network of ports around the world to explore pilot projects and testing grounds. Goldsworthy said that Blue Action brings an environmental conservation focus that COAST found to resonate with the BC oceantech community. 

Additionally, Goldsworthy said Founders Factory provides a “high net worth” investor network interested in the sector, while COAST provides resources, mentors, and potential customers from its BC network. 

COAST has already filled out the pilot cohort with eight of its 61 member companies. Goldsworthy added that the intention is to make the accelerator available across Canada and potentially support two or three cohorts annually. 

“This is Canada’s first dedicated blue economy accelerator, that’s only for Canadian companies,” Goldsworthy said. “So we’d like to see this widen out to Canada-wide [and] launch the second cohort towards the end of this year.” 

Feature image courtesy COAST via LinkedIn. 

The post New Blue Action Canada oceantech accelerator launches backed by COAST and Founders Factory first appeared on BetaKit.