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North America · Country profile

Canada

North America · Pop. 41.3M · #6 startup ecosystem by EV

A public taster of the full Canada ecosystem on Dealroom — request a demo for live deal flow, founder pedigrees, AI-talent maps, and the full cap table for every company below.

$571B+57%
Combined startup EV
$5.9B
VC invested (last 12mo)
9,480
Tracked startups
#14/ 67
Unicorns per 1M people · world rank
🦄 Unicorns
81
81 live · +5 new in 2025 (incl. 0 new decacorns)
💎 Decacorns
3
$10B+ tier
🐎 Thoroughbreds
51
Top 1% growth · $500M+

Enterprise value · 2015–2025

Canada grew 16.3× since 2015

Combined enterprise value of every tracked startup headquartered in Canada that's still operating today — public and private companies combined, totalled by founding-year cohort.

0 $150B $300B $450B $600B Canada · $577B 2015 2018 2021 2024 2025

Adjacent ecosystems by EV

Startup hubs

Inside Canada: top 12 startup hubs

Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value, paired with their 5-year growth multiplier.

By enterprise value
1 Ontario $379B
4 British Columbia $82.4B
5 Vancouver $74.9B
6 Quebec $70.6B
7 Montréal $59.3B
8 Alberta $24.8B
By 5-yr EV growth
2 Ontario 15×
3 Vancouver 10×
6 Alberta 4.7×
7 Quebec 3.8×
8 Montréal 3.5×

Startup funnel

Canada's power-law funnel

From the first cheque written to a $10B+ outcome. Each arrow shows what fraction of companies at one stage graduate to the next, tracked by founding cohort.

Pre-Seed
2,107
Seed
1,720
Series A
1,281
Series B
601
Series C
298
Unicorn
76
Decacorn
3

* C→Unicorn and Unicorn→Decacorn rates are derived from current counts (no founding-cohort data); the four mid-funnel rates use Dealroom's cohort tracking.

Notable companies

Top private companies in Canada

Up to 20 names per tier from Dealroom's tracked dataset. Decacorns are valued $10B+, unicorns $1B+, thoroughbreds have crossed $100M in revenue.

Decacorns $10B+ valuation 3
LululemonCohereConstellation Software
Unicorns $1B+ valuation 76
CopperleafWaabiAlphawave IPNeo FinancialVerafinTrillium TherapeuticsMagnet ForensicsThinkificShareworks (formerly Solium Capital)BlockstreamZymeworksXanaduTruliooNuveiDoceboLion ElectriceSentireGalvanizeRational GroupSonder+56 more
Thoroughbreds+ $100M+ revenue 46
Constellation SoftwareShopifyLululemonNuveiLightspeedTilrayPropel HoldingsStackAdapt1PasswordClioKnight TherapeuticsAurinia PharmaceuticalsSystem1DoceboLion ElectricBitfarmsApplyBoardD2LAssentCanopy Growth

Academia

Canada's academic flywheel

Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to Canada.

University-linked startup formation
1,091
University spinouts
7,245
Total alumni-founded companies
4,672
Of which startups (<$15M raised)
1,931
Breakouts ($15M-100M)
642
Scaleups ($100M+)
Top universities producing founders tied to Canada
  • 🇨🇦 University of Toronto Toronto · 65 alumni unicorns
    Notable alumni-founded: Shopify (founder team)CohereWealthsimple
  • 🇨🇦 Waterloo Waterloo · 55 alumni unicorns
    Notable alumni-founded: OpenTextFaire

Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems

How Canada stacks up

Peers chosen from the same North America cluster within ±70% of Canada's combined EV. The scatter plots growth × current size for the wider continent — outliers in the upper-right are ecosystems compounding fastest.

Combined enterprise value
$884B
$600B
Canada
$571B
$439B
$414B
$410B
$359B
EV growth (5-yr ×) vs current EV
peer median 8.2× 2.1× 172.3× 342.6× $10.7B $575B $31T EV growth (5yr ×) Combined enterprise value (log) United States China United Kingdom India Israel Canada South Korea France Germany Singapore Netherlands Australia Sweden Japan Brazil Switzerland Hong Kong

Top overview

North America ecosystems — combined view

Top ecosystems in North America ranked by combined EV. Canada's row is highlighted.

# Ecosystem Combined EV 5-yr EV growth Unicorns VC invested Tracked startups
1 United States $31T 6.8× 2,059 $284B 112.7K
2 China $5.8T 3.2× 479 $33.4B 24.5K
3 United Kingdom $1.2T 4.6× 211 $24.1B 20K
4 India $884B 7.1× 125 $13.9B 13.3K
5 Israel $600B 5.6× 128 $10.7B 4,762
6 Canada $571B 9.6× 81 $5.9B 9,480
7 South Korea $439B 15.6× 41 $8.2B 7,931
8 France $414B 5.6× 65 $8.4B 9,082
9 Germany $410B 4.0× 86 $8.3B 8,710
10 Singapore $359B 9.6× 38 $3.3B 3,900
11 Netherlands $347B 2.7× 39 $3.2B 3,887
12 Australia $294B 9.3× 44 $3.8B 4,984

Patent intelligence

Canada startup IP portfolio: 29.9K patent families

Granted patent families assigned to startups headquartered in Canada. Aggregated across the country's hub-level filings — Bay Area, Boston, etc. roll up under the United States row, the same way Tokyo and Osaka roll up under Japan.

Granted patent families
29.9K
Filed by tracked startups headquartered in the country.
724 patents per million residents · #21 globally
Top patenting hubs
1 Toronto-Waterloo 16.1K
2 Montréal 4,853
3 Edmonton 2,849
4 Vancouver 2,620
5 Ottawa–Gatineau 1,807
6 Calgary 1,510

Sector concentration

Where Canada punches above its weight

Sectors in which Canada's share of the global unicorn pool is bigger than its overall share. A 5× over-index means Canada is 5× more represented in that sector than in the global average. Source: top-hub aggregation across the 18 simplified sectors.

📣 Marketing
2.55×
2 unicorns · 5.3% of global sector
🤖 AI
1.67×
11 unicorns · 3.4% of global sector
1.43×
9 unicorns · 3.0% of global sector

Premium analytics

What we don't show on this page (yet)

Sector breakdowns, founder origins, AI-talent leaderboards and live deal flow are gated to logged-in Dealroom users. Book a demo to access the full Canada dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.

Sector breakdown
Where Canada's unicorns concentrate
Fintech
AI / Enterprise SW
Health Tech
Biotech
Cybersecurity
Consumer
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Capital autonomy
Canada's domestic vs foreign capital mix
% domestic VC by stage
Cross-border lead investors
Sovereign-fund participation
Foreign-LP exposure
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Recent momentum
Canada's VC investment trajectory by stage
2024 vs 2025 by stage
Round-size trends
Stage-conversion deltas
Quarterly velocity
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Founder origins
Where Canada's startup founders come from
By country of origin
Per capita
Top universities
Top alumni-factory companies
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AI talent
Top employers of AI talent in Canada
Core AI roles
Frontier AI roles
YoY hiring growth
Senior + lead engineers
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Deal flow
Live deal flow & funding rounds in Canada
New rounds last 30 days
Stage breakdown
Active investors
Round-size trends
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