After years of planning and the loss of a community hub, Montréal finally has a new space to serve its tech ecosystem.
On June 9, more than 300 members of Québec’s tech community, along with government officials and startup support organizations, inaugurated the opening of the long-awaited entrepreneurship hub Ax.c.
“The magic is already happening,” Geneviève Leclerc, director of Ax.c, said in an interview with BetaKit. “We have been able to get all of these promising startups with strategic actors around to help them.”
“You bring anybody here and there’s a wow effect.”
Richard Chénier
Québec Tech
Built on the former trading floor of the Montréal Exchange, the 100,000-sq. ft. space takes up two floors overlooking the Place Victoria tower, a stone’s throw from the Google and Shopify Montréal offices in the city’s business district. Ax.c’s stated ethos is to offer a space where startups can connect with every part of the innovation ecosystem, from mentors to technical talent to investors.
The innovation campus has been in the works for roughly seven years, since the city commissioned a study in 2018 to look into the creation of a central space to showcase local innovation. Through a project by École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) incubator Centech, the idea for Ax.c was born.
In 2023, federal, provincial, and municipal governments pledged $48 million toward its construction. The Québec government contributed the lion’s share of $38.5 million through its 2022-2027 strategy to support research and innovation. Last fall, the project received $5.25 million in private funding from Bell, Google Canada, Desjardins, and Fonds de solidarité FTQ to sustain its operations until at least 2029.
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The hub rents out space to startups, investment firms, corporate partners, and community organizations. Startup space is in highest demand: 40 companies have been initially selected as tenants after more than 100 applied. Leclerc said that those not chosen can still make use of open coworking spaces.
Richard Chénier, CEO of government-backed nonprofit Québec Tech, has been involved with the project since its early days. Chénier said that the ideal startup tenants are those with five to 12 employees and some market traction. The goal is to cycle through tenants as startups scale and move on to needing more office space.
“We want to see growth in the companies [that] have an office here,” Chénier said. “If you are a zombie [company], we don’t want to see that.”
According to Carlos Leitão, the newly appointed secretary to the minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions (CED), Mélanie Joly, the priorities of the federal government in providing funding align with those of the Québec government: supporting promising startups in scaling internationally.
Success for Ax.c, Leitão told BetaKit, would be to see one firm grow into a major player at a global scale.
“It’s not impossible,” Leitao said. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm. What we lacked was an opportunity to collaborate.”
A nod to Notman
Ax.c’s opening marked the first opening of an innovation hub in Montréal since the closure of Notman House, which provided a grassroots community space for the tech ecosystem.
“People are back to building in Montreal.”
Nectarios Economakis
Amiral Ventures
Though some social media posts pointed out that the Ax.c launch event’s formal vibe, the focus of the evening remained on supporting startups, even with government and corporate players. Multiple attendees told BetaKit that the space reminded them of Notman, but scaled up and with improved amenities—like air conditioning.
“It’s nice to have a brand-new space with all the luxuries,” Gabriel Sundaram, co-founder of Attain, a FinTech platform focused on homeownership, told BetaKit. “I used to say this about Notman [too], but the community space is about the community, not about the physical space.”
“It’s of a scale of a city that really believes in technology,” said John Stokes, managing partner at Real Ventures and board chair of the OSMO Foundation, which ran Notman House.
Notman House was forced into a sale by creditors Investissement Québec and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) in 2023 after claiming unpaid mortgage fees from the OSMO Foundation. Members of the startup community put together a bid to buy it back, but were ultimately unsuccessful. The Trottier Foundation purchased the heritage building and intends to turn it into a philanthropy hub.
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For Nectarios Economakis, partner at Amiral Ventures, it’s not a bad thing that Ax.c won’t be exactly the same as Notman House.
“Ax.c is complementing a groundswell of community-led efforts like 555, North Star, AI Salon, and many others,” Economakis told BetaKit. “People are back to building in Montreal.”
The slick look of Ax.c will allow startups to network and pitch to investors in a space that will immediately be seen as professional, Chénier said, enhancing the chances of them securing deals.
“You bring anybody here and there’s a wow effect,” he added.
Venture capital (VC) investors also have a dedicated lounge at Ax.c. Firms that have already booked spaces include Boreal Ventures, McRock Capital, and White Star Capital.
Corporations and mature tech companies also have a footprint at Ax.c, a key connection for startups that Sundaram said has been lacking in the Québec ecosystem. Marc Boyer, national director of acquisitions and regional sales at Google Cloud, said Google will give tenant startups access to tech resources such as artificial intelligence (AI) and compute credits, data analytics platforms, and infrastructure.
“We also plan to organize events where Ax.c members can connect with Google leaders, product teams, and a broader community of innovators,” Boyer told BetaKit.
Maria Julia Guimaraes, CEO of Totum Tech, a hardware startup and new Ax.c tenant, said she’s thrilled to get to be under the same roof as dozens of other startups and use amenities such as the fabrication laboratory.
“It’s built for enhancing collaboration, exchanging minds, extending spirits,” Guimaraes said. “Not only as founders, but as future leaders in tech.”
With files from Aaron Anandji. Feature image courtesy Caroline Clouâtre.