Canada?s growth as a top country for entrepreneurs in the North American region is noteworthy. The country boasts of several initiatives that have helped the startup ecosystem thrive in the various areas within it. The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is one of these attempts at creating a rich startup hub in Canada. The corridor comprises some of the most dynamic regions for business and houses more than 5,000 startups.
The tech sector in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is especially prominent. More than 150 companies took part in the funding rounds in 2018; the new funds received has helped several of these companies catapult their growth and become one of the top Toronto-Waterloo Corridor startups to watch for in 2019.
Top Startups in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor to Watch out for in 2019
Flexiti Financial
Toronto based startup Flexiti Financial is one of the highly funded fintech startups in the city. 2018 has been an outstanding year in which it crossed several financial milestones. The company acquired TD Financing Services in July 2018 for $250 million and raised $80 million in a debt financing round from Credit Suisse Asset Management AG a couple of months after the acquisition. It has become one of the top startups in Toronto in the fintech segment and has raised $116.3 million to date from four funding rounds. The company was founded by Peter Kalen and was established in 2013.
Know more about this top startup in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.flexiti.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/flexiti-financial
Twitter:? www.twitter.com/flexiti_fin
Ritual
Yet another startup to jump on to the food ordering and delivery bandwagon is Ritual, an innovative application helping working professionals pick up their food in a more convenient manner through a socialized process. That app allows people working in the same building or office order food by ?piggybacking? on each other?s order. Ritual was founded by Larry Stinson, Ray Reddy, and Robert Kim. The most recent funds came from its Series C round of funding in June 2018. Lead investor Georgian Partners along with Mistral Venture Partners, Biotech Insight Ventures, and Greylock Partners helped in increasing the total funds of the company by $70 million.
Know more about this top startup in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.ritual.co
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ritual-co
Twitter:? www.twitter.com/ritual_co
Kira Systems
Kira Systems is among the top startups in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor to find a strong customer base internationally. The trailblazing startup has developed a patented contract review and analysis software. The company was established in 2015 by Alexander Hudek and Noah Waisberg and holds CA $65 of total investments. The amount was raised in Series A round of funding from Insight Venture Partners last year. Kira Systems? award-winning software uses machine learning to identify the text in contracts and analyze them accurately.
Know more about this top startup in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.kirasystems.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/kira
Twitter: www.twitter.com/kirasystems
Rubikloud
Rubikloud, a top startup from the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor, is a leader in the AI segment revolutionizing the retail market. Founded by Dan Theirl, Frank Thomas, and Kerry Liu in 2013, Rubikloud offers AI retail technology to bring automation to more business processes and aspects of enterprise software. The last round of funding the company participated in was at the beginning of 2018. It raised $37 million in this round from iNovia Capital, Intel Capital (lead investors), Horizon Ventures, the OpenText Enterprise Apps Fund, and Access Industries. Promotion Manager and Customer LifeCycle Manager are two of the flagship applications introduced by the company.
Know more about this top startup in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.rubikloud.ai
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/rubikloud-technologies
Twitter: www.twitter.com/rubikloud
Integrate.ai
Steve Irvine founded integrate.ai in 2017; the company has risen to become one of the top Toronto -Waterloo Corridor startups for 2019 showing impressive growth in its two years of existence. The company offers an array of AI technologies and is a fast-growing SaaS platform company based in Toronto. Integrate.ai raised $30 million from its Series A round of funding. The round was led by Portag3 Ventures and featured Georgian Partners and Real Ventures as well. This top startup in Toronto has completed three rounds of funding so far raising $39.6 million till date.
Know more about this top startup in Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.integrate.ai
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/integrate.ai
Twitter: www.twitter.com/integrateai
ApplyBoard
Waterloo based startup ApplyBoard is a SaaS-driven marketplace facilitating admissions for international students in educational institutions in Canada. The edtech company completed its second round of funding in 2018. This was the Series A round which was led by Artiman Ventures and featured five other investors that helped ApplyBoard raise $13 million in this round. The total funds received by the company now stand at $13.5 million. ApplyBoard was founded by Martin Basiri and Meti Basiri in 2015, and the last funding round has made the company one of the top startups from the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor to be watched out in 2019.
Know more about this top startup from the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.applyboard.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/applyboard
Twitter: www.twitter.com/applyboard
ISARA Corporation
ISARA Corporation completed its Series A funding in November 2018 raising $10 million from Shasta Ventures.? This is the second round of funding for the company which is among the top startups in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor in the IT security solutions segment. ISARA Corporation was founded in 2015 by Mike Brown and Scott Totzke. It specializes in providing quantum-safe cryptography solutions and aims at promoting safe computing ecosystems to help enterprises leverage the best out of quantum computing.
Know more about this top startup from the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.isara.co
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/isara-corporation
Twitter: www.twitter.com/isaracorp
SkyWatch
The next company in our list of top startups in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor for 2019 is Waterloo-based SkyWatch. It is in the process of developing SkyWatch EarthCache which is aimed to offer better access to global remote sensing datasets. The company was founded by Dexter Jagula, James Slifierz, and Roland Sing in 2014 and has raised $4 million in seed money from lead investors Space Angels and Sinai Venture. The last round also featured Techstars Ventures, SK Ventures, Golden Ventures, Globalive Capital, Amadeo Brenninkmeijer, and the ARC Angel Fund.
Know more about this top startup in Toronto Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.skywatch.co
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/skywatch-space-applications
Twitter:? www.twitter.com/SkyWatchApps
DarwinAI
Located in Waterloo, DarwinAI completed its second round of funding in September. It raised CA $3.9 million from iNovia Capital (lead investor), Obvious Ventures (lead investor), Density Ventures, and Creative Destruction Lab.? DarwinAI is in the constant pursuit to develop technology for driving increased adoption of deep neural networks. This top AI startup was founded by veterans Alexander Wong, Arif Virani, Brendan Chwyl, Sheldon Fernandez, Mohammed Shafiee, and Francis Li. The company?s Generative Synthesis technology has been the ticket to success for the tech venture which is today one of the top startups from the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor to watch out for in 2019.
Know more about this top startup in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.darwinai.ca
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/darwinai
Twitter:? www.twitter.com/darwinai
Motion Gestures
Motion Gestures is the brainchild of Kashif Kahn who founded the company in 2017. The startup is one of the young and fast-growing companies among the top startups from the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor to be watched out for in 2019. Motion Gestures is in a bid to make gesture recognition accessible and affordable. The Human Machine Interface that it seeks to promote revolves around machine learning, gesture recognition, sensor fusion, and signal processing. One funding round has been completed by the company so far in which it raised seed money of $1.7 billion. The lead investor for this round was China Canada Angel Alliance and also featured Golden Triangle Angel Network, Keiretsu Forum, and Propel (X).
Know more about this top startup in the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor
Website: www.motiongestures.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/motiongestures
Twitter: www.twitter.com/motiongestures
The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor has been recognized among the top tech clusters by various reports including the Global Startup Ecosystems Report 2018 by Startup Genome. This year seems to be a promising one for these ten startups that are slated for impressive growth in the coming years with the help of the fresh funds received.