As defence spending grows in Canada, a Montréal AI startup is hoping to serve the education and training gap between contractors and the military.
The news: Bloomsco, which is developing a software platform that defence contractors can use to create training materials for the military, announced on Thursday a $1-million pre-seed equity round from BDC Capital’s Seed Venture Fund and Montréal-based Telegraph Ventures.
The company said it will use the funding to grow its engineering team and refine its tech for use in classified and air-gapped environments (meaning it’s isolated from the internet).
From the source: “The whole focus of a military is training people well to do the work they need to do,” Bloomsco co-founder and CEO Hugh McGuire said in an interview with BetaKit. “With more complex technologies that are changing fast, how do we build a training system that is able to adapt?”
The context: Bloomsco uses AI to turn technical manuals, data, and product specs into training plans, learning materials, and simulation scenarios that the end customer can adapt as they see fit. It has already secured a contract with the Department of National Defence (DND) to create a qualification standard and training plan for an officer role.
McGuire founded Bloomsco alongside CTO Hadrien David, who was a founding engineer at healthtech company Dialogue. Though neither has a background in defence, they found validation in their idea through retired Vice-Admiral Ron Lloyd, a former commander of the Royal Canadian Navy and a former chief data officer at the Department of National Defence (DND), who is now a Bloomsco adviser.
Final thought: With new military spending, the Canadian Armed Forces is set to buy a flood of new equipment and technology. For example, Canada started a new defence drone procurement initiative to fast-track buying uncrewed drone and counter-drone systems. Bloomsco is betting that there’s enough demand for learning how to use this technology that it will create more contracts.