Funding Roundup: Finn AI, Foxquilt, Alliance Magnesium, exactEarth

October 26, 2018

It’s been a busy week of funding for Canadian technology companies. Here are the top financing rounds you may have missed.

Finn AI

Vancouver-based Finn AI received CAD $14 million (USD $11 million) in Series A funding. Yaletown Partners and Flying Fish Partners led the financing round, with additional funding from BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Fund, 1843 Capital, and angel investors.

“We’ve seen great progress in our business over the last twelve months, doubling our team to over 50 across North America and acquiring a number of major new customers and partners,” said Jake Tyler, Finn AI’s Co-Founder and CEO. “As the market moves beyond early experiments into scale production deployments we are seeing greater demand for our proven enterprise-grade Conversational AI platform.”

Finn AI is a conversational AI platform for banks, and has previously partnered with some banking powerhouses including BMO. With the support of this financing round the company plans to add increased personal finance and banking capabilities to its core offering. The funding will also contribute to helping maintain Finn AI’s growth across North America and Europe.

Foxquilt

Foxquilt, a Canadian FinTech company, has closed a CAD $1.2 million (USD $913 thousand) seed round investment. The initial funding round was led by Extreme Venture Partners, a Toronto-based seed and pre-seed venture firm.

“We were determined to build a sharing platform leveraging AI and behavioural science to help unite like minded consumers to save money while eliminating the pain of accessing the product,” said Mark Morissette, CEO and Founder of Foxquilt. “We go downstream to help the consumer before they’ve even started their buying journey. With Foxquilt, consumers will be able to easily access the power of their communities to reduce their premiums and deductibles.”

Foxquilt leverages big data and AI to offer consumers a way to save on insurance. The seed round of funding will help Foxquilt to continue their technology innovation and expand marketing and sales efforts to grow their customer base.

Alliance Magnesium

Quebec cleantech company, Alliance Magnesium, has received an investment of CAD $12 million (USD $9.1 million) from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), a government organization focused on supporting Canadian cleantech innovation.

“We are very happy to receive this major financial contribution from the federal government. It shows that the government recognizes the value of AMI’s work in developing green technologies and reducing GHGs in the transportation and light metal alloy industries,” said Dr. Joël Fournier, President of Alliance Magnesium.

The federal government’s investment in Alliance Magnesium will help the company demonstrate the second phase of its clean magnesium production technology, and create 70 direct new jobs. The investment is one of many that the Government of Canada will be making to help position the country as a leader in cleantech innovation.

exactEarth

Ontario-based exactEarth, a provider of satellite Automatic Identification System (AIS) ship tracking services, has received a CAD $7.2 million (USD $5.5 million) investment from the Canadian government.

“This funding will have an important impact on our ability to implement and enhance exactView RT–the world’s first full global real-time vessel tracking satellite system,” said Peter Mabson, CEO of exactEarth. “This innovative capability can be utilized for such important functions as increasing maritime safety, conducting Arctic monitoring, protecting marine life, monitoring tanker traffic in real time and reducing vessel carbon emissions.”

This investment will go towards research and development for exactEarth, aid in the creation of 67 new jobs, and help the company become a global leader in AIS ship tracking services.

The Government of Canada’s commitment to supporting innovative technology companies was evident this week, and investments will continue to be made as part of the government’s Innovation and Skills plan. Canada continues to solidify its place as a global leader in technology innovation, this week primarily in AI and cleantech sectors.