InBC Investment Corp. is evolving.
Established in 2021 with $500 million CAD from the Government of British Columbia (BC), the evergreen, stage-agnostic fund was tasked with providing startups and other funds with “patient capital”—long-term investments where InBC isn’t expecting immediate returns.
Now, with new leadership at the helm, the organization is becoming more of a strategic investment fund focused on economic development.
Since its founding InBC has operated independently from BC with a “triple bottom line” mandate, measuring its financial performance alongside social and environmental outcomes. During this time, it has deployed $196 million across 16 BC companies and 12 venture capital (VC) funds that have backed 24 BC firms.
“We wanted to help, but we wanted to do so in a way that was complementary to the private market.”
Thomas Park joined InBC as chief investment officer last September, shortly after inaugural CEO Jill Earthy left. In recent months, InBC has created two new funds focused on supporting spinouts from the University of BC (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU), invested in Vancouver-based quantum computing company Photonic, and backed Toronto VC firms Staircase Ventures and life sciences-focused Lumira Ventures, all while revising its investment strategy under new leadership.
BetaKit sat down with Park to unpack that evolution, what he’s been up to over the past nine months, InBC’s latest commitments, and the government’s role in supporting VC.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Canada’s VC market faces some big challenges right now, and there’s a lot of debate about the role the government should or should not play in the sector. How do you see InBC fitting into the picture?
Given what’s happening on the trade front and the geopolitical tensions, governments are playing a much more active role in technology, especially taking a strategic interest into these companies. It’s quite remarkable that the United States government is now taking equity stakes into quantum computing companies and potentially AI companies. The European andAsian-Pacific countries, everyone’s taking a stake. So we need to, because we recognize that the next frontier geopolitically is technology.
InBC is shifting from being a purely triple-bottom line, environmental, social, and governance-screening investment shop when it was first created, to being a much more strategic investor for the province focused on economic development. We’re a capital platform to help attract capital and mobilize it quickly. With this SFU joint venture, we’re doing the due diligence work for these partners who were always on the sidelines historically to help bring them into the ecosystem.
That up to $20-million fund with SFU is one of two new investment vehicles that InBC has recently co-created to support BC university spinouts, alongside an up to $40-million fund with UBC. Tell me a bit more about how these funds came to be.
We’re going through a pretty severe market correction in VC in general, and there’s a lot of economic headwinds, so one thing we wanted to address was the university-commercialization gap.
[Editor’s note: Despite garnering significant research funding—UBC secured more than $923 million during the latest fiscal year, while SFU received $286 million in fiscal 2024/25—the rate at which Canadian universities have been able to turn their discoveries into commercial innovations has remained stubbornly low.]
UBC and SFU recognize there’s a gap. We wanted to help, but we wanted to do so in a way that was complementary to the private market.
RELATED: UBC and InBC launch new fund to support university spinouts
The first thing we wanted to do was make sure that, if we do something with the university, they had skin in the game. Having these universities come as a partner, especially on the capital side, is a big win that makes sure we’re all committed to the success of the fund. Both universities really stepped up. With UBC, it’s big enough for us to hire an independent general partner. With SFU, I’m essentially white-labelling our direct investment team.
It’s been about nine months since you joined InBC as chief investment officer. What have you been up to since then?
The first nine months have been about developing the new investment strategy. We’ve had very good conversations with the BC government about their priorities and vision. InBC also aims to figure out how we can be a model for the rest of the country.
We’ve had some team turnover. We had a great team before, but as we shift towards being a strategic investor, we’re bringing in people with much more of a deeper investment experience.
InBC recently invested in Staircase Ventures and Lumira Ventures. Tell me why those commitments were important.
Our fundamental strategy is to create tech champions, so companies that can generate revenue north of $100 million per year. To get that, you have to support the highest potential entrepreneurs, and the people that are best suited to do that are top-quartile performing funds like Staircase and Lumira. For us, it really came down to, are you a top-performing fund, and will you build a community here?
Walk me through why InBC decided to back Photonic.
I was coming in with a deep-tech investing background. Photonic was, for me, an obvious company for a provincial crown to support. British Columbia is a centre of excellence for quantum technology, with D-Wave, and now we have Photonic, 1QBit. With Don Mattrick as CEO and Steph Simmons as co-founder and chief quantum officer, this is honestly a dream team. InBC, the government Crown corporation, is backing our local champion.
You mentioned D-Wave, which moved its HQ from Burnaby to the US. Canadian startups have long faced pressure to move south, including in quantum—which the federal government recently launched a program to help address. Do you see a role for InBC and other government-linked entities to play in ensuring our tech champions stay here?
Our goal is to back the highest-performing tech champions. Later-stage investments are a key part of the new investment strategy. I will also say, because we’re a strategic investor looking at economic development in the province, VC is not the only game in town. We are also exploring how do we best support the economy outside of Vancouver, and leverage other instruments in private capital to augment the industrial base.
Feature image courtesy InBC.