Daniel Zhao

🚀💰 HardTech is the new frontier for venture capital. Today’s #HardTechSummit 2025 investor panel explored what it takes to back Canada’s next wave of deep tech innovators, from long development cycles and government incentives to deal structures and scaling breakthrough technologies. The conversation featured Dejana Dua (ventureLAB), Chloé Archambault (Quantacet), Hamid Arabzadeh (RANOVUS Inc.), and Pierre-Luc Labelle, B. Eng. (Finalta Capital), who shared powerful insights on how investors can fuel the next generation of Canadian hardware innovation. #DeepTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #Hardware #Canada

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Nvidia recently acquired CentML, a homegrown Toronto startup If you’ve never heard of them: They help companies squeeze way more performance out of existing hardware which, in today’s GPU-constrained world, is a very big deal. What makes this exciting isn’t just the acquisition itself but rather the trend behind it. Toronto is building globally relevant AI infrastructure. We’re seeing: - World-class talent spun out of universities and research labs - Strategic bets from firms like Gradient Ventures, Radical, and Thomson Reuters Ventures - Technical founders solving real, high-leverage problems Congratulations to the CentML team and everyone helping grow this ecosystem. More of this, please.

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Shopify Acquires #EMERGE's #SHOP Domains Today's announcement below- EMERGE Commerce Ltd. (TSXV: ECOM) ("EMERGE" or the "Company"), a premium e-commerce brand portfolio, announced the sale of its premium web domains, Shop.ca and Shop.us, to Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP), for US$375,000, or approximately CA$536,000. Following the transaction, the Shop domains now automatically re-direct traffic to Shopify’s Shop App. Ghassan Halazon, founder and CEO, EMERGE commented, “The Shop domains had been idle and non-revenue generating in recent years under EMERGE ownership. As such, management felt that monetizing these dormant domains via a sale to Shopify, in return for non-dilutive cash proceeds to fund future growth plans made perfect sense.” EMERGE’s cash position exceeded $3.0M at year-end, compared to $1.6M at September 30, 2024, and $2.5M at December 31, 2023. “The sale of our Shop domains to Shopify marks a terrific ending to a transformative year for EMERGE that saw us re-ignite organic revenue growth, improve profitability, substantially reduce debt, and ultimately, grow our cash position year-over-year,” continued Halazon. Management is also advancing discussions to monetize other non-core/ legacy assets to further bolster the Company’s cash position, while doubling down on its growing grocery and golf brands in 2025. EMERGE Commerce (TSXV: ECOM) truLOCAL UnderPar #JustGolfStuff #CarnivoreClub

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Canada just dropped $25M into a single gap in the venture pipeline. CIBC and Women in VC announced a $25M fund targeting female-led SaaS companies. The data is simple: → Women-led startups get <3% of global VC funding → Yet they consistently show higher capital efficiency and stronger early retention → And still, they receive less than 3% of global venture funding → Most never raise again because they weren’t funded properly to begin with This fund is one of the first signals that Canada’s capital markets are starting to price talent with discipline. Because this isn’t about “supporting women.” It’s about investing in founders who are already outperforming, even when under-resourced. The bigger signal? → Founder profile ≠ founder potential → Capital is starting to chase performance, not pitch polish → SaaS isn’t just a sector - it’s systems. And women are building better ones. I’ve seen it first-hand: when capital sharpens, better companies emerge and cleaner GTM systems get built. Some of the best I’ve seen are led by founders the market still underestimates. It shows the ecosystem is stronger when capital chases performance over pattern. #femtech #womeninvc #womenintech #saas #femtech #womeninvc #womenintech #saas

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Otto is Framework Venture Partners AI powered data collection, scoring and matching service. Otto’s data corroborated Leaders Fund work. Startups in the software space in Canada peaked in 2018 at just under an estimated 20,000. As of the beginning of 2025 Otto estimates that number is below 10,000. While there is a rebound from the nadir, it is clear Canadian startups have had nearly a decade of decline. https://lnkd.in/g39A2Fqw

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