Private Equity
ClickDishes Inc, a Canadian restaurant ordering app, has secured $1.6 million in financing. The round's backers were undisclosed angel investors based in Canada and Asia. Founded last year by Alec Wang, Tim Li, Vlad Sarpe and Vicki Zhou, the team responsible for online food service Nomme Inc, ClickDishes has developed a mobile app and platform that partners with local restaurants to help customers with take-out and in-restaurant ordering, including payment services. The company is planning to first launch its product in Calgary and Vancouver and then pursue North America-wide expansion.
3 min read · 25 January 2017
Venture capital invested in Canada in 2016 largely kept pace with trends of the year before, with more than $2.2 billion (US$1.7 billion) disbursed to 266 deals, according to the MoneyTree Report from PwC Canada and CB Insights. The report found Canadian investment activity last year contrasted "significantly with the global picture," where deals declined 10 percent and funding fell 23 percent relative to 2015. Chris Dulny, national technology sector leader at PwC Canada, said the domestic market's "standout" trends "underscore the strength of the Canadian tech sector."
5 min read · 25 January 2017
Pangaea Ventures, a Canadian pioneer of advanced-materials investing, has launched its fourth VC fund with an initial commitment from heavyweight strategic backers. In a newsletter issued this week, the Vancouver cleantech investor said Pangaea Ventures Fund IV secured roughly half its $105 million (US$80 million) target. If it raises the whole amount, Fund IV will be the largest in the firm’s 16-year history. The fund's initial limited partners included major corporations based in North America, Europe and Asia.
2 min read · 25 January 2017
NextAI, a NEXT Canada program intended to provide capital, mentorship and networking opportunities to Canadian artificial intelligence (AI) startups, has raised $5.15 million in funding. NextAI's corporate partners, Royal Bank of Canada, Magna International, BDC Capital and Scotiabank, made the investment. Founded last year, NextAI aims to bring global AI talent and entrepreneurs to Toronto, where they will work with corporate, academic and technology partners to create commercially-viable AI ventures. IBM Canada, Google and NVIDIA will back the program as technology sponsors.
5 min read · 25 January 2017
Financial technology startup Overbond Ltd is launching a service that will allow companies to issue bonds digitally, Reuters reported. The new service, called OverbondX, will allow clients to execute deals, either private placement or public offerings, based on the information found on its platform. Toronto-based Overbond, founded in 2015, raised $7.5 million in seed financing last year, one of the largest such rounds in Canadian startup history.
2 min read · 25 January 2017
Ironshore Pharmaceuticals and Development Inc, a subsidiary of Highland Therapeutics Inc, has closed a US$200 million private placement of senior secured notes. Ironshore said the deal's proceeds will support its evolution from a research organization to a pharmaceutical company. It will also fund pre-commercialization and launch strategies for HLD200, a novel formulation of psycho-stimulants used to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Highland, a pharmaceutical company and client of MaRS Discovery District, raised US$50 million in debt and equity funding from Eastern Capital and other sources in mid-2015.
3 min read · 24 January 2017
Canadian cleantech investor Chrysalix Venture Capital has been named "Financial Investor of the Year" as part of the 2017 Global Cleantech 100 Awards. The Vancouver-based firm won the award because seven of its portfolio companies were named to the 2017 Global Cleantech 100, the most of any venture investor. The companies were: Axine Water Technologies, Enbala Power Networks, GaN Systems, General Fusion, GlassPoint, MineSense and NanoSteel. Last year, Chrysalix launched a US$111.5 million robotics fund in partnership with RoboValley.
3 min read · 24 January 2017
Diagram Ventures, a new Canadian venture capital firm led by Founder and CEO François Lafortune and Chairman Paul Desmarais III, has closed a $25 million debut fund. The fund was backed by Portag3 Ventures, the fintech venture fund of Power Corp, and more than 50 angel investors, including Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes and former Rogers CEO Nadir Mohammed. Diagram will make a few, large investments in Canadian startups in financial, insurance and healthcare technology. It has already backed two companies: Dialogue, a Montréal virtual health and wellness platform, and Collage, a Toronto cloud platform that automates human resources and benefits.
3 min read · 24 January 2017
Meta Inc, a Toronto big-data company that uses machine intelligence to solve core research information challenges, has agreed to be acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. No financial terms were released. The acquisition is the first to be made by Chan Zuckerberg, a philanthropic organization launched in 2015 by Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan, TechCrunch reported. Meta was founded in 2010 by CEO Sam Molyneux and EVP Amy Molyneux. It was backed by Canadian venture capital firm iGan Partners, which led Meta's seed round in 2014, as well as Rho Canada Ventures, Solina Chau (Horizons Ventures), Everline Investments and angel investors.
3 min read · 23 January 2017
Ottawa’s Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP) program has so far leveraged $886 million in total investment in Canada's innovation ecosystem, according to data compiled by the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA). VCAP, launched in 2014, saw Ottawa invest $340 million to help privately-managed funds-of-funds raise $1.4 billion, $904 million of which came from private sources. VCAP-supported venture capital funds have so far invested $481 million in 163 technology companies and contributed to strong market growth in 2016, the data showed. CVCA said it will be important for the 2017 federal budget to include details of a follow-up VCAP program.
4 min read · 23 January 2017
