Canada's Tech Strategy Starts with Scaling Up at Home

Key announcements and domestic scale

The broader message from Vancouver was that Canada wants to move from being a source of talent and research to becoming a place where major technology companies are built, financed and scaled.

One of the biggest announcements came from Cohere, which agreed to acquire Germany’s Aleph Alpha in a deal that will create a transatlantic AI company with global headquarters in Toronto and a European base in Berlin.

Cohere and Aleph Alpha are positioning the combined business as a sovereign AI provider for governments and enterprises that want advanced models without handing core workloads to US hyperscalers. The combined company will keep the Cohere brand, with Aidan Gomez remaining CEO.

Telus (TSX:T,NYSE:TU) also unveiled a major BC AI infrastructure plan, with a planned expansion of its Kamloops data centre. Construction plans for two new sites in Vancouver were also announced, one in Mount Pleasant and one downtown.

The buildout is expected to support more than 60,000 GPUs and over 150 MW of capacity by 2032, with the company pointing to clean power, liquid cooling and heat recovery as part of its sustainability strategy.

Additionally, Photonic, a Coquitlam-based quantum computing company, said it closed more than C$200 million in new funding at a C$2 billion valuation. The round underscored the strength of Canada’s quantum ecosystem, drawing support from major backers including BDC, EDC, Bell Ventures, InBC and Mubadala Investment Company.

Photonic is building quantum and photonic hardware that could eventually improve how data centres move and process information, making it a very relevant player to both the AI boom and the next generation of compute infrastructure.

On the policy side, the province’s venture capital agency, InBC, also announced the SFU Innovates Venture Fund, a C$20 million commercialization vehicle for early-stage companies emerging from SFU research, particularly within the deep tech, clean tech, and life sciences sectors.

The fund launched with C$7.5 million in contributions from both InBC and SFU, with an additional C$5 million expected, bringing the total to C$20 million.

BC Minister for Jobs and Economic Growth, Ravi Kahlon described the fund as a strategic tool to bolster the provincial economy and ensure local businesses can thrive at home despite a challenging global capital environment.

Canadian companies were also on display at Web Summit Vancouver, with Moment Energy and General Fusion among the standout names.

Moment Energy used the conference to unveil plans for a new battery-repurposing facility in Surrey, which CEO Edward Chiang described as the world’s largest of its kind. The new site is expanding on its existing Metro Vancouver manufacturing base.

Second-life batteries can provide lower-cost energy storage while cutting emissions, easing pressure on raw-material supply chains and supporting a more circular clean-energy economy.

General Fusion, meanwhile, used the stage to pitch the long-term commercialization case for fusion power, with CEO Greg Twinney saying the company believes an operational plant could be running by 2035.

The company’s global headquarters is near Vancouver International Airport on Sea Island in Richmond, where it has been building and operating parts of its magnetized target fusion program, including the LM26 demonstration machine.

The company is trying to commercialize fusion power, taking a magnetized target fusion approach. It has been developing hardware to prove the concept at scale in Vancouver, while also advancing a separate demonstration plant in the U.K. The company says its goal is to move fusion from the lab toward a practical source of clean power.

The Vancouver site would anchor the company’s Canadian R&D base and support the technical work needed to de-risk commercialization.

Ultimately, Web Summit Vancouver underscored Canada’s commitment to transforming its technology and business landscape.

Evidence of a coordinated effort through strategic initiatives sent a clear message: Canada is open for business and ready to scale its globally competitive technology.