In the past 15 years, Canada’s innovation ecosystem has taken off. Startups, accelerators, incubators, investors, and forward-thinking policies have created a true hotbed of entrepreneurship. Bold ideas are flourishing, transformative ventures are thriving, and Canadian technology is reshaping industries, driving growth at home and societal impact worldwide.
We could look back and self-applause our progress, but let’s be radically transparent: major challenges remain and there is still a lot left to be done. A majority of our technology companies are not achieving the global scale they legitimately could attain. They do not achieve their full potential; frequently selling prematurely instead of being the market consolidator and building for the long term.
A central cause of this problem is the lack of early-stage venture leadership and risk-taking at the true “inflection point” - when startups have early revenue, signs of product-market fit, and are ready to scale. Canada has no shortage of funds willing to follow on, but far too few are prepared to lead Seed and Series A rounds: to structure financings, set valuations, negotiate terms, and define the conditions for success.
The “Death Valley” is real. Canadian venture capital lacks leadership, and needs to contribute more expertise.
The “Death Valley” is the critical scaling stage that most companies fail to overcome. It happens as a company attempts to bridge the gap between early commercial success and achieving significant revenue scale.
In 2024, roughly six in ten Canadian seed rounds included foreign investors, a dynamic that intensifies by Series A and beyond. Half of that was led by US
Too often, the most promising Canadian startups saw their early rounds led by U.S. VCs.
While we welcome foreign investors, global connections strengthen our ecosystem, Canada simply lacks enough lead investors to keep ownership at home. For early-stage and scale-up companies, the shortage of funding alternatives is a major barrier. Many of our best founders head south in search of stronger capital partners.
The gap is readily filled by international investors, and who can blame them? Canadian founders are known to outperform and to be more capital efficient than their U.S. peers. The best founders will always attract global capital and seek out the strongest partners.
But this comes at a cost. Every time leadership is ceded abroad, Canada loses ownership of its most successful businesses. An ecosystem of “follower investors” produces an economy of subsidiaries, when what we need are global leaders.
The problem is twofold: not enough Canadian capital to lead at the inflection point, and not enough seasoned expertise to scale our champions.
If you believe, as we do, that local technology champions will be the cornerstone of our future economic prosperity, then our ecosystem must level up. We need more early-stage capital that doesn’t just follow, but leads. Equity financing must evolve to deliver not only dollars, but expertise, resources, and technology to nurture local champions.
Understandably so, when they lead funding rounds, most Canadian VC firms will either focus on the pre-seed stage, where the power-law is magnified and placing many small bets is more important than bringing expertise, or the growth stages (Series B+) where significant risk is already behind and larger checks drive the outcomes.
A paradigm shift is required. New organizations must emerge that add real value and aren’t afraid to take the lead at the Seed stage. This is why we are launching Amiral Ventures.
Amiral Ventures is a new venture capital firm on a mission to empower Canada’s most ambitious founders with dynamic capital and scaling expertise, building the next generation of technology flagships with lasting societal impact.
Vaisseau Amiral (French for Flagship):
A ship or building that is recognized for its size and strength, making it the pride of a fleet or an organization
As entrepreneurs ourselves, we have utmost respect for the founder journey. We don’t just invest, we aim to deserve the right to partner with them along the way. Amiral creates the ecosystem where visionary founders thrive, with capital, expertise, global networks, and technology to fuel their growth. We’ve built scale-ups, felt the entrepreneurial highs and lows, and now channel that experience into backing the founders solving the world’s toughest problems.
Prosperity Decoded
Backing Canadian founders at seed to series-a to drive enterprise productivity, sustainability & resilience
The challenges we face, low productivity, climate urgency, and fragile infrastructure, are systemic. But they also represent one of the greatest investment junctures of our time. New enterprise technologies, powered by AI and software, can equip leaders with transformative, mission-critical solutions.
Productivity. Canada’s productivity gap is real—our workers produce only ~70% of what their U.S. peers achieve. The answer isn’t more talk, it’s action: applied AI, automation, robotics, and digital platforms. We back Canadian founders building these solutions at home and scaling them worldwide.
Sustainability. Profitability and environmental impact can no longer be at odds. The transition to renewables and the optimization of energy use are urgent. Software and AI will be the linchpins of this shift, from clean energy production to efficient consumption.
Resilience. Supply chains, industries, and critical infrastructure are under strain. Building resilience means more autonomy, security, and sovereignty, enabled by smart industry, robotics, digital twins, cybersecurity and intelligent manufacturing.
More than just capital.
Founders-led and founders-backed.
Amiral Ventures will focus on leading early-stage rounds between theSeed and Series A and will actively support companies to achieve a strong global position. Capital is a commodity, expertise is not. An integral part of our investment thesis is having a dedicated impact team that will create value post-investment.
Our initial focus is helping portfolio companies expand globally and seize international opportunities to scale. Over time, Amiral’s impact team will operate like a service organization, combining internal expertise, external networks, and proprietary technology to empower founders. Our goal is clear: every dollar invested by Amiral should deliver a measurable impact on a founder’s trajectory.
Beyond the Amiral team’s expertise, we are surrounding ourselves by an unprecedented group of investors who are themselves founders, CEOs, CTOs, CROs, and not only share our vision but are eager to roll up their sleeves to help our flagship companies.
Building an enduring franchise
We are proudly Québécois but our market is much wider. We believe that for Québec & Canada to succeed, we must expand beyond our borders just like the Admiral butterfly.
Papillon Amiral (French for Admiral Butterfly):
Emblem of Québec, it is known for its rapid flight, its impressive migration, resilience and its noble appearance.
Building a dynamic, resilient, and cleaner economy means securing local ownership while scaling globally. Amiral is an investment firm with an entrepreneurial mindset, built to create value for the next generation of innovators. We stand on the shoulders of the Canadian venture pioneers who came before us.
History will mark the early 2020s as an inflection point. Technologies once magical are now everyday tools. The means to create prosperity are in our hands. But good is no longer good enough. High-paying jobs, economic development, and new technologies are necessary but we must also increase Canadian ownership in our champion companies, deploy smarter capital, and elevate our ecosystem.
The “Death Valley” for Canadian startups must be crossed. Ambitious founders are ready to take flight on the global stage. Let’s build the next generation of Canadian flagships.