Many founders picture their company’s exit at the far end of the growth curve. A new report from business law firm Fasken suggests the decision point often arrives much sooner.
“Founders might be saying, ‘we can IPO or make this company into a massive player in our market,’ and you might have VCs saying, ‘I have to return capital to my LPs. There is an intrinsic tension there.”
Fasken’s upcoming Exit InSights Study analyzes more than 250 deal points from Canadian tech M&A transactions completed between 2019 and 2024. It pulls together information that usually stays buried inside transaction documents and turns it into a view of how companies here are actually bought and sold.
It’s the first time this depth of Canadian tech M&A data has been compiled into a single study, and for founders thinking about an exit in 2026, it offers a reference point for when buyers tend to appear and what the landscape looks like when they do.
Constantinos Ragas, a partner in Fasken’s Emerging Technology and Venture Capital group and self-described “deal geek,” has advised on Canadian M&A deals for over 15 years. He led the work to track what’s happening inside Canadian tech exits because he wanted founders to have a realistic sense of the market they are growing toward and the conditions they are likely to meet in 2026.
According to Ragas, the dataset points to one consistent theme, that exits in Canada tend to happen before companies reach full scale.
“It’s a healthy market, but it’s very much a mid-market jurisdiction,” Ragas said of Canada’s M&A landscape. “Our companies are getting transferred fairly quickly and at a point in their development where they’re not the behemoth on the block.”
More than 75 percent of exits in Fasken’s dataset fall between $50 million and $500 million. Only 2.5 percent of deals exceed the $1-billion mark. Many of those transactions closed within 30 to 60 days, and 45 percent signed and closed on the same day. In other words, most Canadian founders meet a buyer while the company is still mid-growth, and once interest is there, the process can move quickly.
Ragas sees that timing as a defining feature of Canadian tech M&A. “If we’re thinking about our ecosystem in Canada, and how we want to see that evolve, it would be fun to see some bigger guys that show up on our turf and make a big Canadian push, but there’s still lots of good that we see here.”
Foreign and domestic buyers feel comfortable pursuing acquisitions here because they can rely on predictable governance and a legal environment they understand. They also see a steady supply of healthy companies that are, in Ragas’s words, “ripe for transactions” before they dominate their markets.
For founders, that timing can expose fault lines. Early exit windows show up while management teams are still thinking about expansion, products they haven’t shipped yet, or markets they haven’t entered. Investors may be looking at the same company through a different lens.
“Founders might be saying, ‘We can IPO or make this company into a massive player in our market,’ and you might have VCs saying, ‘I have to return capital to my LPs,” Ragas said. “There is an intrinsic tension there.”
Tension often emerges beneath the exits captured in Fasken’s dataset. Buyers come with a defined sense of the stage they want and the pace they’re prepared to move at, while sellers bring expectations built over years of board and investor conversations.
Ragas believes founders planning for 2026 can expect a continued active mid-market, buyers that are comfortable acting on mid-growth companies, and short closing timelines.
Fasken’s full Exit Insights Study builds on this picture with data on the terms those buyers bring with them, including the indemnification structures they prefer, the jurisdictions they choose, the covenants they negotiate, and the other deal mechanics that define how Canadian tech transactions get done.
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Fasken’s Exit Insights Study maps how Canadian tech deals get done. Access the report next Tuesday on Fasken.com