Dominion Dynamics secures $4 million to modernize Arctic surveillance

Ottawa-based Dominion Dynamics is making the most of Canada’s defence tech surge as it secures $4 million in pre-seed funding.

“We haven’t had a [Canadian] company built from the ground up to deliver modern capability at the speed of relevance.”
Eliot Pence,
Dominion Dynamics

The pre-seed was raised on a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) and backed almost exclusively by Canadian investors, with participation from Golden Ventures, Garage Capital, Afore Capital, Side Door Ventures, and strategic angel investors. While Afore and Side Door are American firms, the partners that led their investment are Canadian, Dominion founder Eliot Pence told BetaKit. The only two American investors in the round, Pence’s family and friends, contributed less than $50,000, he added.

While Canadian pre-seed investment activity has continued to slump this year, Dominion raised its funding within five months of its June founding. The company intends to raise another round of funding to grow its headcount from below 10 employees to around 40 by the end of Q1 2026, Dominion COO Mitch Carkner told BetaKit last month.

Dominion Dynamics’ platform connects off-the-shelf sensors across land, sea, air, and space into a data fabric for coordination and data sharing across allied networks. The company is focused on the Arctic, where melting ice has revealed alluring new trading routes that place Canada’s continued control over the region into question. Last month, Dominion struck a three-year partnership with the Arctic Training Centre in Whitehorse to develop and test its systems in the “extreme” environment.

Carkner previously told BetaKit that Dominion will be able to create a mesh network to detect vessels in the Arctic within 12 to 18 months. He claimed this network should come at a lower price point than a modernization of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).

Dominion’s founder, Pence, is a native of Victoria, BC. He led the international team of Anduril Industries as it grew from an American defence tech startup to a defence tech giant between 2018 and 2022. Carkner told BetaKit that Dominion will emulate Anduril’s operational model by anticipating and building the defence tools it thinks will be required in the future, rather than waiting for specific procurement orders.

“We are ultimately planning on building a sovereign defence prime [contractor] for Canada [that] can compete with the American primes and European primes,” Carkner said.

On top of its Canadian cap table, Dominion’s advisory board is filled with notable Canadians. Former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole chairs the advisory board. He is joined by a former chief of the Defence Staff, General Wayne Eyre; a former vice-chief of the Defence Staff, Lieutenant-General Mike Rouleau; and former PSP Investments CEO Neil Cunningham.

Dominion is benefiting from the increased venture and government defence tech spending as the ongoing trade war with the United States renewed Canada’s focus on its sovereign and military capabilities. The federal government has committed to spending five percent of its GDP on defence by 2035, launched a new agency to overhaul military procurement, and begun encouraging banks and pension funds to invest in the sector.

“Canada’s defence future cannot be outsourced,” Pence said in a statement. “We have the talent, the government’s commitment, and the stakes, but we haven’t had a company built from the ground up to deliver modern capability at the speed of relevance.”

A wave of new accelerators aiming to support dual-use (civilian and military) startups has been springing up across the country as the defence tech industry gets hotter. Matt Lombardi, the co-founder of defence innovation network and newsletter The Icebreaker, joined the BetaKit Podcast last month to break down why the sector is exploding in Canada.

Feature image courtesy Dominion Dynamics