Toronto-based Radical Ventures has launched a “multi-billion-dollar” venture capital (VC) fund geared towards backing AI scaleups in Canada and abroad with a first close of “well over” $1 billion USD ($1.4 billion CAD).
Jordan Jacobs,
“Canada has never had a shortage of world-class AI companies. What we have lacked is capital at the scale required to keep them here as they grow.”
Radical Ventures
Radical announced its new Radical Breakouts Fund on Tuesday at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto. The AI-focused VC firm secured this amount from a group that includes some of the country’s largest pension funds and banks.
While Radical did not disclose its exact target for the fund, this first close puts it roughly on par with Georgian’s more than $1-billion USD 2021 alignment fund. Should Radical meet its multi-billion-dollar mark, the Radical Breakouts Fund would be Canada’s largest VC fund by a wide margin, according to Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association and PitchBook data.
“Canada has never had a shortage of world-class AI companies,” Radical co-founder and managing partner Jordan Jacobs said in a statement. “What we have lacked is capital at the scale required to keep them here as they grow. For decades, that meant our best companies looked to the United States to fund their most important years, and much of the value they created went with them. The Radical Breakouts Fund closes that gap.”
Radical moved beyond its early-stage roots into later-stage investing in 2024 with an $800-million USD growth fund.
Its latest fund marks the latest on a growing list of big-dollar commitments made by major Canadian institutions, including a planned $1-billion USD fund from the Royal Bank of Canada to help Canada’s next tech champions scale, and a $525-million USD fund from newcomer Intrepid Growth Partners designed to provide growth funding to AI firms here and in other countries.
The Radical Breakouts Fund’s limited partners include the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP), TD Bank Group, BMO Financial Group, CI Global Asset Management, and OPTrust, among others.
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PSP Investments, CPP Investments, TD, and BMO have made other promises towards Canada in the lead-up to Carney’s summit. BetaKit is tracking them here.
The fund plans to focus on companies “on a path to becoming the next trillion-dollar businesses.” Radical said it is designed for a market where some of the world’s most valuable companies are staying private for longer and entering public markets at higher valuations.
Radical, which backs AI startups from early to late stages, has invested in some of Canada’s most promising AI firms, from large language model maker Cohere to autonomous driving firm Waabi. Its multi-billion-dollar Radical Breakouts Fund will target AI scaleups on a path to becoming “trillion-dollar businesses.”
The firm said this fund is designed for a market in which the most valuable companies stay private far longer than they once did, raising successive large private rounds and reaching the public markets already worth $100 billion or more. Capturing that value requires private capital at a scale that Radical said has, until now, existed almost exclusively in the US.
“The result is a Canadian firm investing in Canada and globally, with the returns coming home,” Jacobs said.
Feature image courtesy Radical Ventures.