Adam Froman is founder and CEO of Delvinia, and a board member of the Council of Canadian Innovators.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: we are heading into 2026 with more uncertainty than any technology scale-up founder or CEO in Canada has seen in a long time, if ever.
The trade and tariff wars have only begun to bite. Capital markets are cautious. Customers are delaying decisions. Governments are signalling ambition but struggling to deliver. Even with billions flowing into artificial intelligence, there is a lot of uncertainty about whether there will be a return on all that investment or whether it is a bubble waiting to burst, and if so, when. The Bank of Canada’s latest Business Outlook Survey reports that more than 60 percent of firms expect weaker or highly uncertain sales growth, the highest reading in more than a decade.
Canada’s economic future depends disproportionately on a very small group of companies—scale-ups that have grown beyond the startup stage and need to expand in Canada or be taken over by foreign firms.
Scale-ups represent less than eight percent of all Canadian firms, yet they account for an outsized share of job creation, productivity growth, and innovation. Their CEOs are usually the founders of these companies, which are among Canada’s highest performing businesses, typically earning between $10 million and $500 million in annual revenue.
Research from the University of Toronto’s Innovation Policy Lab shows that scale-ups are more likely to export, invest in R&D and generate patents than the average Canadian business, making them the country’s most innovation-intensive and economically consequential firms.
The current uncertainty is particularly destabilizing for chief executive officers of scale-ups. The challenge is not simply making bigger decisions. It is that as companies grow, forces outside their control exert greater influence.
Scale-up CEOs look over their shoulders at interest rates, government policy shifts, procurement delays, changing risk appetites at financial institutions and global volatility. Of course, these affect everyone across the economy, but with a scale-up, a single external shock can erase months of progress. The larger you get, the more exposed you become.
As a founder and CEO who has scaled companies in Canada, I have experienced how unpredictable the terrain becomes as you grow. It is not fear that rises, but awareness of what can go wrong and how bad it can get. When you are small, you can move quickly. When you scale, the stakes widen and the variables multiply.
Reasonable apprehension
As we enter 2026, I have not felt this much uncertainty since 2009, when we were navigating the effects of the financial crisis and subprime mortgage collapse. I know I’m not the only person with CEO experience who feels this. It’s not panic, but it is reasonable apprehension. The distinction matters.
Leadership in uncertain times also carries a weight that is often invisible. As former US President Barack Obama once said, leaders, “get all the blame and little of the credit.” That is exactly what it feels like to run a scaling company right now.
I know the CEOs of Canadian scale-ups will absorb the pressure quietly. They stay steady because others depend on them. They make the hard calls even when the ground keeps shifting.
Here’s a comfortable truth. Canadian founders have always punched above their weight. They have built companies with limited capital, navigated policy friction and scaled despite systems that move slower than they do. Their resilience remains one of Canada’s strongest economic assets.
But resilience alone will not carry our scale-ups through 2026 with ease. They, and the business leaders who run them, will need more support.
The institutions around our scale-ups must move at the pace of these businesses. It’s time for the government to match the urgency that CEOs live with every day, and especially now.
Financial institutions must support momentum instead of tightening. Canada’s governments are calling for a stronger innovation economy. That means not allowing its own systems to slow it down.
I have confidence in our Canadian scale-up CEOs, and that gives me some optimism. As we enter 2026, I know they will navigate coming uncertainties with discipline, apprehension, and demonstrated leadership.
Let’s make sure our governments and the financial community help. In the midst of uncertainty, we have the opportunity to turn this into the year of scale-ups—if the rest of our economic ecosystem steps up with the same resolve.
The opinions and analysis expressed in the above article are those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of BetaKit or its editorial staff. It has been edited for clarity, length, and style.
Feature image courtesy Isaac Sloman via Unsplash.