BetaKit will establish a full-time presence in Alberta in 2025, hiring an Edmonton-based journalist to cover the Prairies region.
BetaKit announced its expansion during a busy week for Alberta tech, as the province hosts two major events: AI conference Upper Bound, organized by the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), and Alberta Innovates’ Inventures.
“You can’t talk about Canadian tech and innovation without talking about Alberta,” BetaKit CEO Siri Agrell said before her Upper Bound panel on Cultivating Canada’s Next Innovation Frontier with Edmonton Unlimited’s Ken Bautista. “From energy and AI to biotech and agriculture, there is so much important work happening here, and BetaKit is focused on telling more of those stories.”
With this expansion, BetaKit will now have journalists in British Columbia, Québec, Ontario, and Alberta.
The role will be funded for two years through an innovative partnership with YEGAF, a not-for-profit entity supported by some of the region’s leading startup organizations and economic development agencies, including Edmonton Unlimited, Explore Edmonton, API, MNP, the ERIN, Startup TNT, Diplomat Consulting, Sprout Fund, AEC, the University of Alberta, and the Accelerate Fund.
“This initiative came together at the speed of entrepreneurship,” said Nathan Mison, one of the founding members of YEGAF. “Community leaders got together and committed to taking immediate, concrete, and direct action to tell the Edmonton story and the broader Alberta story.”
The funding group will have no influence or oversight on story selection or editorial content, as the partnership arrangement prioritizes and enshrines journalistic independence. With this expansion, BetaKit will now have journalists in British Columbia, Québec, Ontario, and Alberta.
“Our mission is to report locally from every Canadian tech hub and connect those stories to the national conversation,” BetaKit Editor-in-Chief Douglas Soltys said prior to his Inventures panel on Building Well-Informed and Connected Communities with Taproot Publishing CEO Mack Male. “This partnership will allow us to truly embed in the Alberta tech sector and tell more stories that matter to our audience.”
BetaKit’s expansion to Alberta comes at a time when the province is making a lot of news in Canadian tech.
Alberta Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish has set aggressive targets to attract $100 billion in investment to the province through six AI data centres.
The latest numbers from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) also show that Alberta is having a notable year, attracting $140 million of venture capital in the first quarter of 2025. That number puts the province in the third spot after Ontario and Québec. Alberta also ranked second in average deal size for the quarter.
The largest deal in Alberta this year was a $52-million fundraise by Edmonton-based Nanoprecise, which uses AI to anticipate and prevent industrial equipment failures in industries like mining, oil, and gas. Last year, the biggest venture capital deal in Alberta was led by Calgary-based FinTech firm Neo Financial.
Alberta also displaced BC as the province that experienced the highest amount of interprovincial migration. According to Statistics Canada, Alberta saw the highest net gains from people moving between provinces between July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023. In contrast, every major metropolitan area in Ontario saw a net loss from interprovincial migration in the same period.
To express interest in joining BetaKit’s team in Alberta, please send your CV to editor@betakit.com with the subject line “Prairies Bureau.”