Three Canadian startups have secured fresh funding to fuel their growth, including Data Sentinel, AltaML, and Commit. Here’s the latest on who raised, how much, from whom, and what they’ll be putting the new funds toward.
Data Sentinel secures $3.6 million seed round
Vaughan, Ontario-based startup Data Sentinel has secured $3.6 million in seed capital to help develop its sensitive data management software.
The round was led by Brightspark Ventures, with participation from Texas-based AI investor Sentiero Ventures and Delbridge Capital Partners. Undisclosed “high value” angel investors also participated in the round.
Data Sentinel has developed a data trust and compliance platform that helps businesses manage their data privacy compliance, governance, and quality. Using deep learning, Data Sentinel monitors and measures the data to ensure compliance with company policies and evolving regulations.
“Data Sentinel has been built with the goal of helping companies produce correct, compliant, well-governed data to manage their businesses,” said Mark Rowan, CEO of Data Sentinel. “We illuminate the true contents of an organization’s data, measuring the risk, the quality, and the critical data elements, enabling our customers to trust their data, trust that it is being managed within compliance of company policies.”
The startup plans to use the proceeds from the funding round to expand its customer base and further develop its product offering. Data Sentinel stated it is already accelerating its product roadmap and making “considerable new investments” in its technology development, customer success, sales and marketing teams.
AltaML to receive federal funding through Western Economic Diversification Canada
AltaML, the Edmonton-based machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) company, has signed a contribution agreement with the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification Canada (WD).
The agreement is for repayable financing of up to $1 million dollars over three years. It comes through WD’s Business Scale-up and Productivity (BSP) program, which provides capital to high-growth, small and medium-sized businesses that are scaling up and producing innovative goods, services, or technologies.
AltaML, an AI-focused software company that partners with organizations to co-develop solutions. AltaML’s customers are primarily enterprise-level organizations undergoing digital transformation. AltaML is also developing AI software products it plans to launch into “large markets.”
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The startup plans to use the capital to accelerate the development of its AI-powered products by hiring additional staff. Repayment will begin one year after project completion by which time, AltaML said, product revenue streams will have been established. AltaML recently appointed two new Ontario-based team members as the firm looks to expand its presence in Ontario and eastern North America.
“We have a generational opportunity in Canada to become a global leader in AI,” said Cory Janssen, co-Founder of AltaML. “AI is not just happening in places like Silicon Valley and Beijing; it’s happening right here, in Edmonton and Calgary. AltaML’s core advantage is local AI talent that is scarce in most parts of the world, and we are applying AI to solve real problems. WD’s investment allows us to build out key teams faster so that we can get products to market sooner, and begin to create wealth from export of our ingenuity.”
Commit rasies $6 million seed round
Vancouver startup Commit has secured $6 million in seed funding, bringing its professional network for engineers out of private beta.
Commit, founded in 2019, offers a professional network for startup engineers. It touts itself as a first-of-its-kind remote community that supports the career and community needs of engineers. Its offerings span real-time peer-to-peer support, career development resources including mentorship and coaching, and full-stack career transition services.
According to Techcrunch, the round was led by United States-based Accomplice, with participation from Kensington Capital Partners, Inovia, and Garage Capital. Commit called the seed round oversubscribed.
Commit was founded by CEO Greg Gunn and CTO Beier Cai, both formerly of Hootsuite. Cai wrote the first line of code at Hootsuite, while Gunn helped launch Hootsuite’s go-to-market strategy. Gunn also previously helped build market research company Terapeak, which was acquired by eBay.
