U.S. firm investing in Canada’s tech talent to build next generation of AI companies

Jonah Midanik, managing partner at Forum Ventures, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the company's investment in Canada and their bet on Toronto's AI scene.

A U.S.-based venture capital firm with a studio in Toronto says it will tap into Canada’s “massive pool of artificial intelligence talent” to help build it’s next generation of AI companies.

Forum Ventures launched the Toronto studio in 2023 and plans to hire Canadian talent to help launch 18 companies in the next two years, Managing Partner Jonah Midnaik told BNN Bloomberg in an interview. He said they’ve launched 17 companies so far.

“So for this one, we’ve raised about US$25 million and you know, we’ll be back out on the street hoping to add to that tally,” said Midnaik

“The goal is to build more international champions right here out of Toronto.”

Midnaik said some of the best AI advances came out of Toronto.

“Open AI’s CTO was out of Toronto,” said Midnaik. “Geoffrey Hinton famously invented neural nets here in Toronto. So that massive pool of artificial intelligence talent is what we’re betting on.”

Despite Canada’s past success in producing AI talent, he said there are challenges as many founders move to the U.S. due to lack of capital and support. He said the trend has been accelerating.

“Only $2.1 billion was raised for venture funds last year in Canada, the lowest number we’ve had in years” said Midnaik. “And there’s 25 times more venture backed businesses in the U.S., up from 11 times in 2015.”

Midnaik said he is working to convince founders that they can build a winning company, such as Shopify, in Canada by surrounding them with best-in-class talent.

“We’re hoping we can show them they can stay here, build global winners here and add more Canadian jobs here,” said Midnaik.

He said the response has been great and downstream investors are investing in Canadian businesses.

“We’ve had some of the biggest venture capital firms in the world invest in some of these businesses and back some of our Canadian founders, and some of our builds, and we’re hoping to see that trend continue,” said Midnaik.