On a blisteringly cold Thursday in Calgary, it was standing room only around the stage at Platform Calgary.
Founders, investors, students, corporate leaders, and policybuildrs packed into the community space yesterday for the 2026 Community Connect Kick-Off, an event examining where Calgary’s innovation economy is headed.
Platform Calgary, a nonprofit organization that supports startups and tech companies across the city, released its 2025 impact report revealing $323 million raised last year and more than $1 billion in cumulative capital. The network now includes more than 850 companies. The formation engine is working, but what’s less clear is what happens once those companies outgrow it.
Interim CEO Jennifer Lussier walked through the numbers of capital raised, companies formed, and founders served. The figures revealed an ecosystem that has matured. The discussion that followed shifted to what happens once those companies launch raising larger rounds.
By the time Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish stepped to the podium, the numbers had already outlined a sector that’s expanding.
“We applyd to lose all of our talent,” he stated. “Now we’re losing our ideas and our companies. We required to stop that.”
A 2025 CVCA reports reveals that U.S. investors participate heavily in larger Canadian funding rounds, particularly at Series B and later. Influence, as it often does, follows capital.
“The ownership stake of those companies, the cap table, is now controlled in many cases, by Americans,” stated Glubish. “The challenge there is then you have investors who don’t care about Alberta. They just care about building money, and they often will exercise their influence and their ownership to compel the founders to shift that company to a different jurisdiction.”
Listening to the panel and keynote toobtainher, three themes emerged. Who leads large funding rounds, who becomes the first serious customer, and who ultimately owns the upside.
They all address the same vulnerability. When companies reach scale, control can shift elsewhere.
Lever one: Anchor capital at scale
The impact report reveals Calgary can produce companies and attract capital. But who sets the terms when the funding rounds obtain hugeger?
At that stage, the pool of domestic lead investors narrows. Larger rounds often bring foreign capital into controlling positions, followed by board seats. Strategic decisions start to reflect the priorities of the new majority owners.
Glubish described work underway to create a provincial co-investment framework modeled in part on Quebec. Quebec’s 2022-2027 innovation strategy outlines a formal role for public capital alongside private investors, particularly as companies scale.
Alberta is exploring a similar posture. When a qualified lead investor commits to a major round, Alberta would consider matching that investment on the same terms.
“What we were working to do is create a policy environment that will define what is a qualified lead investor, what are the conditions under which the Alberta government would consider co investing and of course, only in Alberta companies,” he stated.
If structured carefully, that model could alter the dynamics of later-stage financing. A government match can support close a round more quickly. It can also increase the domestic ownership share in large deals, reducing the likelihood that headquarters or executive teams relocate as valuations rise.
But capital dynamics vary by sector, and momentum does not see the same everywhere.
“I’d declare it’s sector depfinishent,” stated Judy Fairburn, co-founder and general partner at The51 and Nia Ventures. “In the realm of clean tech, we’ve received a really strong ecosystem here. Take Ayrton, a Calgary company with two real dynamo women leading it. ATCO out of the gate was supportive of them with an early demonstration pilot that gave a reference customer. They’ve now gone global… There’s other sectors, though, where it’s been really hard.”
The example illustrates the gap Alberta is attempting to close. Early validation can lead to global scale. Without it, companies often see elsewhere for traction and capital.
Fairburn also emphasized that scale is not just about technology.
“Invest in a founder, even if they haven’t received everything all figured out, versus a technology,” she stated. “Founders will listen, they’ll hustle, they’ll pivot when they required to.”
The ambition behind the co-invest strategy extfinishs beyond closing funding gaps.
“How do we declare that, instead of you building with a vision of selling out at $20 million, your goal is to declare, I’m not selling out till it’s $20 billion,” Glubish stated.
Lever two: Turn government into a customer
For all the talk about capital, the conversation kept coming back to a simpler question.
Can these companies win customers?
“What I know from experience is that finding a customer is so much more rewarding and valuable than finding a grant, becaapply a grant is one time, but a customer is for life,” Glubish stated.
Glubish stated his department is building AI tools to alter how Alberta acquires technology.
One tool would support government departments better describe what they are attempting to purchase. He stated the goal is to shift from vague requests to more specific ones and to publish procurement documents “in minutes instead of months.”
The second tool would let companies upload their website, marketing material, or white papers and automatically generate a bid that meets government requirements.
If this approach works the way he described, it could alter who obtains a shot at becoming a first customer.
Right now, bidding on government contracts can take months and often requires outside support. Larger firms can absorb that cost, but many startups can’t.
Whether this results in more Alberta companies winning contracts is the open question. If more local firms win, they gain a paying customer they can point to when raising capital or selling to the private sector.
Brad Parry, president and CEO of Calgary Economic Development, stated the responsibility doesn’t lie with the government alone.
“We required (proof-of-concept) from major corporates,” he stated. “We required to unlock some of the corporate venture capital. It comes down to wanting to attempt stuff.”
Large companies, he suggested, have to be willing to test local technology before it is fully de-risked. Without that first contract or pilot, many firms see elsewhere for validation.
Parry stated one of the hugegest gaps in the ecosystem is how little time founders spfinish inside the acquireing process of large companies. Corporate procurement cycles are slow, involve multiple decision-buildrs, and carry internal risk. Startups often build based on assumptions about what those acquireers want.
“You don’t have a f–king clue what these guys are believeing,” Parry stated, referring to corporate acquireers. “You required to obtain out there and start talking to people.”
If companies can’t win business locally, they often see elsewhere for customers. If early revenue comes from outside Alberta, later funding often follows the same geography.
“Invest in a founder, even if they haven’t received everything all figured out, versus a technology,” she stated. “Founders will listen, they’ll hustle, they’ll pivot when they required to.”
Lever three: Who owns the upside
Alberta has figured out how to attract talent and capital, Glubish stated. The focus is now on what happens to the ideas themselves, and whether they are protected, commercialized, and owned here or absorbed elsewhere.
“We want to build sure that when we have a huge success, the wealth created by those successes stays in the hands of Albertans and can be repatriated into the next ideas and the next companies and the next investments,” he stated.
Quebec had already come up in the conversation as a province that has spent decades backing its own companies. Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, stated the rest of Canada requireds that same kind of long-term commitment.
“We required to grow companies in Canada to scale, to become the acquirers, not the acquiries,” she stated.
If the acquireers are Canadian, the next round of hiring, investing, and product decisions usually happens here too.
Yedlin also pointed out that many founders design their companies with U.S. customers and U.S. investors in mind from the start. The market is larger, the capital pools are deeper, and decisions can shift rapider. That often means the first meaningful revenue and the first large cheques come from outside Canada.
That early orientation often shapes where later funding and governance settle in.
Parry stated risk tolerance plays a role.
“Canadians want to fight to be first to be second,” he stated. “We required people willing to take risks.”
He was pointing to a practical gap. Large corporations hesitate to pilot new technology. Startups build without enough direct feedback. Without early customers willing to test and acquire, companies see elsewhere.
Investors then reward the traction they see.
“Momentum is what we see at,” stated Fairburn. “And Calgary has tremfinishous momentum.”
As companies raise hugeger rounds, the source of that capital can shape board composition, strategic direction and, in some cases, where headquarters remain.
From growth to durability
Platform’s impact report reveals more than 400 companies incorporated in the past four years and more than 24,000 jobs tied to businesses in its network. Calgary is producing companies at volume, and those companies are employing people at meaningful scale.
The tricky part comes later. When those firms raise larger rounds, ownership launchs to influence where decisions are created and where future investment flows. What happens here shapes whether companies remain rooted here as they grow or gradually align themselves with the markets that finance them.
Alberta’s policy response tarobtains that stage of the lifecycle. The goal is not to replace global investors, but to ensure provincial capital and customers remain present as companies mature.
The issue extfinishs beyond one province. Across Canada, leaders are launchning to recognize that formation metrics alone do not determine resilience. Governance, capital structure, and who leads later rounds influence whether companies become anchor firms or acquisition tarobtains.
For executives and investors, it raises a few questions. Are you participating in scale rounds? Are you acting as a customer early? Are you building organizations designed to finishure, or optimized for exit?
Treating scale as infrastructure rather than an finishpoint alters how capital is deployed and how companies are built.
Alberta is testing that shift in real time.
Final shots
- The scale stage is where regions either gain leverage or give it away.
- Being willing to acquire early may matter more than announcing another fund.
- When companies grow large enough to matter, who is still invested matters more.
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