The Canadian government is investing $25 million in the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab.
The government said the funding will create and maintain 125 jobs, and will involve 1,300 science-based ventures in a wider network across Canada over four years. The government estimates that these ventures could create up to 22,000 new jobs.
The investment is being made through the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund.
With the funding, CDL will carry out a research project to help startups access mentorship and angel funding. A joint media release from CDL and the Canadian government indicates that the research project will leverage AI tools to “facilitate CDL supporting business ventures that harness emerging technologies such as AI, clean tech, energy, health, smart cities and space and quantum technologies.” BetaKit has reached out to clarify the structure of this support.
“Creative Destruction Lab’s exciting project promises to unleash a new wave of start-up innovation across Canada, creating thousands of middle-class jobs and further securing Canada’s position as a world leader in the AI field,” said Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. “Our government is proud to make investments that will help turn hundreds of innovative ideas into the good jobs and companies of tomorrow.”
CDL will run experiments with startups at the following sites:
The investment is being made through the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund, a $1.26 billion program to support research and development and attracting new investments to Canada.
“The Creative Destruction Lab was founded in 2012 to address a failure in the market for judgment. First-time founders of science-based companies, while fully committed to the success of their venture and possessing deep knowledge in their technical domain, often lack the business judgment required to prioritize among the almost infinite list of to-dos required to successfully build and scale their business,” said Sonia Sennik, executive director of the Creative Destruction Lab. “Our structured and rigorous program helps them with that prioritization process. While we fully leverage market forces to provide prioritization guidance from individuals who themselves have built successfully scaled businesses, the coordination of those market forces requires non-market support.”