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Phaseshift Technologies raises $4.1 million CAD to fuse material discovery with AI

Toronto-based advanced materials startup Phaseshift Technologies has closed $3 million USD ($4.1 million CAD) in seed financing as it looks to develop new advanced engineering materials with artificial intelligence. AI-focused venture firm Innospark Ventures led the round, with Draper Associates and returning investor First Star Ventures participating alongside angel investors from the Hustle Fund’s Angel […]

Thomson Reuters acquires American portfolio company Materia AI

Toronto-based business information services giant Thomson Reuters has acquired New York-based Materia AI for an undisclosed amount.  Founded in 2022, Materia’s artificial intelligence (AI) assistant automates and assists in research and workflows for accounting uses such as taxes and audits. The platform can analyze and search through a centralized inventory of accounting documents, allowing users […]

Québec’s early-stage ecosystem eyes American investment amid fundraising woes

As a harsh fundraising landscape and a reliance on public funds plague the Québec startup ecosystem, founders and VCs are looking southward to find their footing. That was one of the takeaways from a live podcast recording of the Flagship Podcast, hosted by Amiral Ventures at Espace CDPQ in Montréal on Oct. 10. Panels of […]

Free Agent is building a LinkedIn-style career marketplace for athletes

A new Vancouver-based startup wants to help professional and collegiate-level athletes with their next big career move. Free Agent is developing an online career marketplace that connects athletes with potential employers for their post-sport careers. The startup recently opened a waitlist for companies and athletes to sign up for a closed beta test of the […]

PacifiCan and PrairiesCan commit $17.7 million to companies in Western Canada

Western Canada’s federally-funded economic development agencies, PacifiCan and PrairiesCan, committed a collective $17.7 million CAD to help companies in Richmond, BC and Calgary develop and commercialize their technologies last week.  The British Columbia-focused PacifiCan provided a repayable $4.7 million CAD across two Richmond-based companies, Ideon Technologies and Lucid Vision Labs, while PrairiesCan dispersed $13 million […]

Family office software MyFO secures $3.5 million seed round led by Rhino Ventures

Vancouver-based MyFO has secured $3.5 million to scale the operations of its wealth management platform tailored for family offices.  “While many tech companies are joining the AI-hype, MyFO remains focused on its goal of thoughtful innovation.” MyFO statement The round was led by Vancouver-based early-stage venture capital fund Rhino Ventures. MyFO did not disclose any […]

Champagne and Conservatives point fingers as Canadian cleantech startups suffer continued SDTC funding delays

The sluggish restart of embattled federal cleantech investment agency Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) has left some of the early-stage cleantech startups the organization was designed to support still waiting for promised funding. With those startups cutting staff and projects to reduce burn, Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne traded barbs with Conservative counterparts last week as […]

Georgian Partners isn’t the only one

It was only a matter of time. The Globe and Mail said the quiet part out loud on Friday, with new reporting from Sean Silcoff indicating Georgian Partners—Canada’s largest independent VC firm with $5.6 billion USD in assets under management—wrote down 28 investments in 21 companies across five funds, representing a whopping $430-million USD loss […]

Does Canada have the leverage to regulate Big Tech?

Google is a monopolist. That’s according to a US federal judge who ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. The Department of Justice (DOJ), which levied the case, just dropped proposed solutions, which include forcing Google to sell off parts of its business, such as […]