Cleantech accelerator Foresight Canada has named 50 startups to its 2023 Foresight 50 list, which aims to showcase the country’s most “investable” cleantech ventures.
Companies were selected by Foresight 50’s panel of judges, which includes cleantech investors, based on their investability, potential economic and job growth impact, leadership team, environmental impact, and probability of success. The recipients were selected in Calgary this year, following one-minute pitches from each of the honouree ventures.
The companies named to this year’s list span a variety of verticals, including software, IoT, analytics, hardware, and proptech, and address a wide array of climate goals, such as decarbonization, sustainable construction, and waste management.
“We need to attract the capital required to support ventures through their scale up and growth journeys.”
Among this year’s Foresight 50 ventures is Burnaby, BC-based Acuva Technologies. The startup develops water purification systems using UltraViolet Light Emitting Diode (UV-LED) technology developed at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Acuva most recently raised $3 million from the federal government’s PacifiCan agency.
Also named to the Foresight 50 list was Toronto-based Brickeye, which just last week secured a $5-million tranche of convertible debt financing. The startup develops industrial IoT and data analytics for risk mitigation in construction and infrastructure management.
Intelligent City, which also cracked the Foresight 50 list, offers a three-pronged sustainable building design solution, which includes a software platform that designs buildings, an automated manufacturing process, and the use of mass timber. The startup raised over $30 million to date, including a $12-million Series A financing round in the spring of 2022.
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Three carbon capture startups were featured on the list: Gaia Refinery, CO2 Lock Corp, and Arca. Companies in this category focus on drawing carbon dioxide out of the earth’s atmosphere, thereby reducing the speed of climate change. It’s an emerging category, particularly in Canada—one of the largest carbon capture startups, Squamish, BC-based Carbon Engineering, was acquired in August for $1.1 billion USD.
According to a recent report from Export Development Canada, $1.2 billion was invested in Canadian cleantech last year, the highest levels seen in the last five years. However, that same report found that Canada struggles to scale its cleantech startups due in part to a lack of local investors and R&D spending.
The goal of Foresight’s list is to facilitate more of this investment. To that end, the Vancouver-based accelerator claims ventures named to its 2021 and 2022 lists have collectively raised over $1.67 billion.
“If we are going to harness the power of our homegrown climate innovations to their full potential, we need to attract the capital required to support ventures through their scale up and growth journeys,” Foresight CEO Jeanette Jackson said in a statement.
Image source Unsplash. Photo by Chinh Le Duc.
