The Calgary Stampede has always been equal parts corporate and cowboy. For every bull rider (or, say, haybale-tossing robot), there are usually ten party tents filled with suits that have swapped a tie for a turquoise-studded bolo. But over the past few years, attendees can increasingly count more folks from tech at those events than from legacy oil-and-gas firms.
This week, the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth once again served as a showcase to attract investment. Executives from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon rubbed elbows and shared Caesars with local founders and government officials.
Local officials tell me that Calgary has added more than 900 tech companies since 2021, bringing the total headquartered in the city to more than 1,200. The Herald’s Chris Varcoe noted that 2021 also marked the genesis of Alberta’s plan to court data centres, after Amazon Web Services announced it would build a cloud computing hub in the Calgary area. Three years after that announcement, at another Stampede event, Premier Danielle Smith first teased that she was hearing strong interest from data centre developers.
Those years of courting US tech giants have led to results. This week, Meta announced it would build Canada’s largest data centre here in Alberta, while Anthropic lauded Alberta’s use of AI as a “case study” for other governments.
But amid excitement over investment, there is also economic uncertainty. A recent Calgary Chamber of Commerce report notes that Alberta’s separatist movement threatens a hit to the province’s GDP and a business exodus, should it succeed.
Alberta has proven that it can draw Silicon Valley’s attention. The trickier challenge now might be holding the confidence of those at home.
Manufacturing Innovation Could Qualify for SR&ED
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Top stories from BetaKit
The man behind Super
Toronto-based Super.com officially became a unicorn this past week. BetaKit sat down with co-founder and CEO Hussein Fazal to unpack the “savings super app” journey and his vision to save customers $100 billion.
Octagons and earnings calls
Annual Montréal tech conference Startupfest kicked off with an unlikely fireside chat pairing Shopify president Harley Finkelstein with hall of fame fighter Georges St-Pierre. While the two compared notes on fear, focus, and ambition, the event was interrupted by a pro-Palestine protestor.
Not Delaware’s waiting room
In an op-ed for BetaKit, Tailscale co-founder and CEO Avery Pennarun reminds Canadian businesses that, while the United States is an enormous technology market, there’s a unique advantage in selling to the rest of the world.
Feds revamp procurement rules
For years, procurement reform has been near the top of Canadian business leaders’ wish lists. This week, the federal government announced changes to the process that, if implemented right, could be a “turning point for Canadian innovation,” one industry advocate said.
Remembering Gerry Pond
Gerry Pond, a former telecom exec who received countless awards for his pivotal work in building Atlantic Canada’s startup ecosystem, died this past Wednesday. He was 82 years old.
Sponsored stories
How Québec startups turned VivaTech into a foothold in Europe
Québec Tech led a record-breaking delegation of nearly 100 Québec-based startups to VivaTech 2026 in Paris to secure key European partnerships, accelerate their expansion to foreign markets, and strengthen Canada-Europe ties.
Canada is spending on defence tech. Markham wants to build it
As Canada’s defence and industrial tech enters a boom, the City of Markham is positioning itself as a premier hub for the industry to help companies such as Emergent Solutions build and scale their product globally.
Deals and dollars
Who’s cashing in, or out, this week:
- Well Health will spin out and list its Wellstar subsidiary on the TSXV later this year. (Vancouver)
- Alberta will invest $50 million into the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute over the next five years. (Edmonton)
- Online community rollup company VerticalScope invests $6.1 million in AI company AltaML. (Toronto/Edmonton)
- Cohere lands its first compute deal outside North America with Saudi Arabia’s Humain, reports The Logic. (Toronto)
- MDA Space is buying a majority stake in French earth observation company CLS for 567 million euros. (Brampton)
- Assent made its first-ever acquisition with the purchase of German firm IPoint to improve supply chain compliance software. (Ottawa)
- CoLab released the 4.0 version of its collaborative AI engineering platform. (St. John’s).
Data point
33
That’s the number of Canadian Football League fields that could fit inside the new Meta data-centre campus that will be built north of Edmonton.
The refresh
The revenge of the philosophy majors
Philosophy hasn’t, historically, been the most monetizable college major. However, as The New York Times reports, AI labs are now desperate to recruit workers as well versed in utilitarianism as they are in neural networks, in order to approach some of the sector’s thorny ethical questions.
We Don’t Want Your Pitch Deck!
We are offering you 90 minutes of direct conversation with funders who can actually write the cheque..
That’s what the Investors’ Breakfast is for. At 8 a.m. sharp on Sept. 21, at Mississauga Convention Center. Where: the Canada Startup Association and the Global Angel Investor Network are hosting a curated group of global funders and Canadian founders.
90 Minutes: A unique opportunity to talk to international angels, family offices, and Canadian VCs and open conversations to build trust and relationships. Best deals rarely start with a pitch, they start with a conversation someone was actually paying attention to. Seats are limited, and allocated by invitation. If you are an enthusiastic founder, we would like you to join the Investor’s Breakfast.
BetaKit Podcast · July 12
“The Arctic is the hardest operational environment on Earth for anybody. For any country.”
Dominion Dynamics CEO and BetaKit Most Ambitious honouree Eliot Pence joins to discuss his company’s plans to become Canada’s first defence neoprime, why the Arctic is so important, and why he came back to Canada to build. Listen now ›
Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).
Feature image courtesy Calgary Stampede via X.