All 14 of the startups participating in the sixth Canadian edition of the Google for Startups Accelerator focus in some way on artificial intelligence (AI).
“[The cohort] is pretty diverse, but it’s all in the realm of this new age of AI.”
Iran Karimian
Last year’s Canadian accelerator cohort featured 10 AI-enabled startups out of 14. This cohort marks the first made up entirely of AI-native or AI-enabled startups. Iran Karimian, Google Canada’s head of accelerator and startup ecosystem, told BetaKit that Google looks for companies building with AI or machine learning, or have a “very clear case of how they plan to implement it in the near future.”
The 14 startups cover a range of verticals, including workplace management, healthtech, and fintech.
“[The cohort] is pretty diverse, but it’s all in the realm of this new age of AI,” Karimian said. “A lot of the startups that were admitted into the cohort this year are looking to adopt Gemini into their workflows from beginning to end.”
The 10-week hybrid program provides a mix of mentorship sessions and technical expertise from more than 500 Google volunteer mentors. Startups also have are also offered access to Google Cloud credits as well as help in migrating their existing data to Google’s cloud. The program does not provide equity funding to the selected startups.
To be eligible for the program, startups should be generating revenue, sit between seed and Series A funding stages, and have a deeply technical focus that preferably uses AI or machine learning.
“The biggest differentiator between selecting companies is a really clear, technical ask of how Google can help,” Karimian said.
Companies that graduate from the program can still access support and mentorship from Google through monthly virtual events and an alumni network, Karimian said.
The latest cohort included five Montréal-based startups, a record for the city, which boasts strong ties to the Canadian AI research community. Gym management software startup FLiiP will be participating, following a $4.4-million seed round raised earlier this year to expand into the US and incorporate AI. Chief growth officer Oss Ouahdi said that FLiiP plans to use the accelerator to add a suite of AI features to its platform for fitness businesses, with the goal of rolling them out when the program ends.
Ouahdi said the startup is looking to get “strategic support to align our go-to-market and product roadmap around adoption, not just AI for innovation’s sake.”
Kitchener–Waterloo-based ConeLabs, which offers AI-powered building and infrastructure inspections, plans to use Google’s AI and cloud expertise to boost its algorithm that detects structural defects.
Anderson Petergeorge, co-founder and CEO of Toronto-based Quanto, said he hopes to focus on compliance and security during the program while scaling up his automated bookkeeping platform.
“A key challenge is balancing innovation with responsible AI implementation, ensuring our automation is both cutting-edge and reliable for our customers,” Petergeorge said in a statement.
The accelerator cohorts are not the only component of Google for Startups that has shifted focus towards AI. It even rebranded its popular “Founder Fridays” hybrid community meetups to “AI Gatherings,” Karimian confirmed.
Last year, Google for Startups made Founder Fridays a quarterly event, experimented with live editions in Toronto and Montréal, and centred the events around AI implementation.
“In terms of our content and our thought leadership, everything took the lens of AI into consideration,” Karimian said.
According to Karimian, the event’s new focus was so well-received that Google decided to officially rename it. In particular, the October 2024 edition in Montréal saw its best attendance ever, both in person and online.
The full list of companies is below:
- 4Point (Toronto)
- Agentnoon (Richmond Hill)
- ConeLabs (Kitchener)
- ElephasCare (Waterloo)
- FLiiP (Montréal)
- Happly (Montréal)
- Luxsonic (Saskatoon)
- MarketMind Technologies (Toronto)
- Numr (Markham)
- Quanto (Toronto)
- Simmunome Inc. (Montréal)
- Singularity Health (Vancouver)
- Tedy (Montréal)
- Waveshaper AI (Montréal)
Karimian said the Canadian accelerator program has supported 120 Canadian companies since February 2020, which in turn have raised $480 million and created over 1,000 jobs.
Feature image courtesy Google.