Toronto-based artificial intelligence (AI) manufacturing startup Basetwo took a major prize at Elevate’s 2025 CIX Summit and will represent Canada at the Startup World Cup this October.
Basetwo was among the 24 CIX Startup Award recipients recognized at the event, held this week at the Design Exchange in Toronto. Basetwo will be among the regional winners from around the world convening in Silicon Valley to give a four-minute pitch to Startup World Cup judges and investors for a chance at a $1-million USD investment.
The win follows Basetwo closing an $11.5-million USD ($16.5-million CAD) Series A round to develop its AI-powered copilot for manufacturing engineers this past January.
RELATED: Basetwo closes $16.5-million CAD Series A round to optimize manufacturing with AI copilots
The CIX Startup Awards annually recognize the top early and growth-stage Canadian startups, plus a new “emerging” category for startups with less than $1 million CAD in annual revenue this year.
The lists are compiled by the CIX Selection Committee, composed of more than 100 global investors and experts who evaluate submissions based on business model, quality of offering, innovation, market opportunity, management depth, and the diversity, equity and inclusion commitments of leadership.
Basetwo was among this year’s recognized early-stage startups (defined as having annual revenue between $1 million and $10 million CAD), a category it shared with the likes of Edmonton’s Artificial Agency, Vancouver’s MyFO, and Calgary’s Carbonova.
Recognized growth-stage startups included established Toronto-based FinTech firms Float and Brim Financial, as well as Calgary-based cleantech firm Summit Nanotech. Finally, beneficiaries of the new emerging category included AI-powered knowledge-sharing platform EZee Assist, cleantech startup Relocalize, and emergent water-cleaning startup Xatoms, which also won the FemStem Pitch Competition at CIX Summit.
Xatoms has been winning various awards as of late, recently taking home a top prize at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) pitch competition and three prizes at last year’s Startupfest.
Jack Newton, founder of legaltech software company Clio, also received CIX’s Innovator of the Year award, which is selected by the CIX advisory board to recognize companies that have “profoundly disrupted and transformed their industries.” Clio, which recently made what Newton claimed was one of the company’s largest acquisitions, closed a $900-million USD (then $1.24-billion CAD) Series F last year at a more than $4-billion CAD valuation. Past recipients of the award include Shopify, Wattpad, Lightspeed, and last year’s winner, Cohere.
Feature image courtesy Elevate.