Last fall, a shipment of smart emergency lighting components arrived quietly at a warehouse outside Toronto. For ConNexTube CEO and Founder Xin Wu, it marked the first step in turning a long-held idea into a presence on the ground.
Wu’s startup designs modular lighting systems to turn passive backups into life-saving infrastructure. The system senses risk, reroutes evacuees, and stays live through blackouts.
“If you have a stronger community, every individual member of that community will benefit from that strength.”
Sep Assadian, ventureLAB
For Wu, a deep tech founder from Shanghai, China, getting to Canada meant confronting different rules, new gatekeepers, and the need to prove himself all over again.
“Without a track record in the local market, we also faced the typical trust gap that many deep tech startups encounter when entering a new country: building credibility with distributors, partners, and customers, especially for life-safety systems,” Wu said.
“We knew we had a strong value proposition, but we had to prove it in a way that fit the local mindset and ecosystem.”
Just six months later, ConNexTube is actively engaging with distributors, system integrators, and early adopters for pilot testing, and is building its local team and sales network in Markham, Ont.
ConNexTube’s shift from pitch deck to pilot-ready was made possible by ventureLAB’s Canada Catalyst program. Designed for HardTech and deep tech startups, the program pairs international founders and teams with resources, talent networks, and infrastructure inside one of the country’s most concentrated hardware hubs.
Participants in the program receive customized advisory support from seasoned mentors and experts who understand the nuances of Canada’s regulatory landscape, customer expectations, and procurement practices, all critical for HardTech and deep tech commercialization.
It’s part soft landing, part springboard. And in the current climate, it’s beginning to resonate more deeply with international founders.
A lift for global builders
Canada Catalyst didn’t start as a response to global uncertainty, but the timing now feels prescient.
Launched in 2021, the program was designed to bring high-impact international startups into Canada’s HardTech and deep tech ecosystem and give founders working in advanced hardware, semiconductors, and connected devices a foothold in the market through mentorship, infrastructure, and targeted support.
“We launched this to attract more founders, more technologies, and more talent to Canada, and to bring the country on the global HardTech map,” said Sep Assadian, Vice President of Founder Success at ventureLAB.
Canada Catalyst operates through two distinct programs. The first focuses on providing a soft landing for established companies that are expanding internationally and looking to put Canada on their map. This program, powered by York Region in partnership with ventureLAB, provides strategic support to help founders navigate the Canadian market, build local partnerships, and scale operations.
The second program supports entrepreneurs who are ready to fully relocate and use Canada as a launchpad for global growth through the federal Start-up Visa Program. This pathway offers a framework for founders to establish and grow their ventures within Canada’s thriving innovation ecosystem.
In both cases, the value of Canada Catalyst extends far beyond immigration. For startups navigating capital constraints, long sales cycles, or credibility challenges in their home markets, the program offers a critical springboard. Through tailored mentorship, access to state-of-the-art lab facilities, and meaningful local partnerships, Canada Catalyst aims to help founders gain early traction and accelerate their path to global success.
Startups get access to ventureLAB’s Innovation Space, a state-of-the-art facility designed for product development and acceleration. This includes a fully equipped Hardware Prototyping Lab, AI Compute infrastructure, and a dedicated MedTech Lab, offering startups the tools and space to build, test, and refine their technologies on-site.
Where hardware gets harder
Not far from ConNexTube’s new base, another startup is laying the groundwork for a different kind of expansion. This time, it’s in semiconductors.
VBtech, headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, designs chips for optical transport networks (OTN), the backbone of high-speed internet infrastructure. Its chips power the systems that move data across cities and continents.
In markets like Israel, the Netherlands, and China, its designs have already been validated. The decision to expand to Canada was, according to VBtech CEO Duc Do, about becoming part of Canada’s long-standing telecommunications sector.
“Canada has a deep-rooted legacy in optical communications and telecom,” Do said. “We aim to be part of the next wave of Canadian-led networking innovation.”
That legacy includes Nortel’s long shadow, and the deep bench of telecom engineers it left behind. VBtech saw an opportunity in that bench. With hubs in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montréal, the startup now has access to a distinct mix of optical systems talent and R&D infrastructure.
Do joined ventureLAB’s Canada Catalyst program in November 2024, and what stood out was the hardware lab. With over $12 million in prototyping infrastructure, ventureLAB offered the rare ability to iterate quickly on a product that’s notoriously expensive to test. For a fabless chip company, that kind of access both accelerates and de-risks development.
The move also opened doors on the business side. VBtech needed to navigate a B2B sales process that typically runs long and slow, especially in telecom, and even more so for hardtech startups.
With guidance from ventureLAB, the team plans to run pilots with smaller telcos to prove performance and build the kind of case studies that open doors with clients like Cisco and Ciena. The startup is setting up its Canadian entity in the third quarter of this year.
Participants of the program also gain entry into ventureLAB’s broader ecosystem of hardware startups, corporate partners, and R&D collaborators, fostering partnerships that accelerate prototyping, pilot deployment, and commercialization.
“As an OTN chip startup founded outside of Canada and aiming to scale up in Canada, we need more than just office space, and those expectations are supported by this program,” Do added.
The new northern pull
ConNexTube and VBtech arrived with strong ideas and early traction. What they needed was a way to plug in.
Assadian said Canada is a premier destination for global deep tech founders. “With world-class infrastructure, a concentration of hardware innovation hubs, and access to highly skilled technical talent, Canada offers the ideal environment for startups to scale and succeed,” Assadian added.
Right now, some of the most skilled founders in the world are looking for their next base. Many are already in the United States, building ambitious companies while sitting in immigration limbo, thanks to policy shifts and heightened enforcement under US President Donald Trump. At ventureLAB, interest from international founders based in the US, which was once rare, has started coming in organically.
“In the past, we barely had any interest from US-based firms, but in the last couple months, that has shifted,” Assadian explained. “We’re seeing more interest from founders in coming to Canada, instead of the US.”
The urgency cuts both ways. As Assadian puts it, attracting global deep tech talent is one way Canada can future-proof its tech ecosystem.
“This is top talent—people who moved to the US, graduated from top universities, and now they’re concerned about their future,” Assadian added.
Canada Catalyst didn’t set out to capitalize on this, but it has become a clear point of entry.
The program’s structure, which links immigration pathways to technical infrastructure and commercialization support, also makes it uniquely suited to HardTech. For chip designers and hardware builders, there’s no remote workaround. Facilities, talent density, and a physical presence matter.
The program connects founders to top-tier technical talent and hiring pathways through local post-secondary institutions and partner networks, helping international startups rapidly build and scale high-performance teams in Canada.
Assadian believes talent attraction and retention should be national priorities. And for Canada to stay competitive, he argued, the system needs to move at startup speed. Founders that bring ideas, experience, and investor attention all fuel a stronger tech economy in Canada, he said.
“If you have a stronger community, every individual member of that community will benefit from that strength.”
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Canada Catalyst serves as a launchpad for international companies aiming to enter the Canadian market and scale beyond borders. Learn more about the program today.
Photos provided by ventureLAB.