Venture capital firm Mistral Venture Partners is putting boots on the ground in Alberta, permanently.
The firm, which is headquartered in Ottawa with staff in Toronto, British Columbia, and the Montréal area, told BetaKit it has hired a full-time staff member to expand the firm’s reach and activities in Alberta.
“There are more than half a dozen companies that have matured, that have become centres of gravity within a growing ecosystem.”
Raif Barbaros, Mistral Venture Partners
“The person’s been hired and signed already, but they will start in the coming months,” said Raif Barbaros, a partner with Mistral.
Barbaros declined to provide the name of the new hire, but said they are known to the Alberta ecosystem and will be based in Calgary.
Barbaros, who lives in Toronto, said he sees in Alberta and Calgary the same type of energy he felt in Toronto as it transitioned from a burgeoning tech hub to an innovation stronghold in the late aughts.
“I left Toronto after the dot-com crash, and things looked really bleak. When I was coming back, it still looked bleak, but I saw something—an early inclination of promise—and here we are now, and Toronto’s established as one of the global centres for innovation,” Barboros said. “Honestly, I feel that 2009 energy in Calgary today.”
Beyond good vibes, Barboros said Mistral also recognized the maturation of the Albertan tech industry, with companies like ZayZoon and Helcim acting as catalysts for further growth.
“There are more than half a dozen companies that have matured, that have become centres of gravity within a growing ecosystem,” he said. “Now employees from those companies are starting companies … so for us, those are really important signs of an ecosystem on the up and up.”
With a focus on early-stage enterprise startups, Mistral already has a track record of investing in wild rose country, including investments in Calgary’s artificial intelligence (AI) powered architecture platform Bidaya AI and academic admissions coaching platform Youthfully.
“We’re investing out of our fifth fund, and we’ve had, I think, an Alberta company in each fund. Our Alberta attention and practice go back a long way,” Barboros said.
Most recently, the firm closed a $75 million fundraising round in 2025, which included $7.5 million from the Alberta Enterprise Corporation (AEC), a provincial organization that supports the development of Alberta’s venture capital industry through investment in venture capital funds that focus on the tech sector.
The AEC focuses on investing in funds that have strong ties to Alberta, including a full-time presence in the province—a box Mistral will soon be able to tick.
RELATED: Mistral Venture Partners closes $26 million of Fund II, invests in Blue J Legal
Kristina Williams, the president and CEO of the AEC, said the $7.5 million marked the first time the AEC has invested with Mistral, but said that its early-stage, enterprise focus aligned with the AEC’s mandate.
“We do an inventory of the province to see how many tech companies there are, where they’re located, what sector, and what stage they’re in, and then we try to bring the capital to the province or invest the capital towards where it matches demand,” Williams said. “About 43 percent of companies are in the pre-seed or seed stage, and that’s really the focus of Mistral … so that is a really nice match.”
Other investors in Mistral’s most recent fundraising round included the Business Development Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, Venture Ontario, and HarbourVest, among others.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.