BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, has committed another $200M to support Canadian startups developing technologies for legacy industries such as manufacturing, transportation, energy, and natural resources.
The new allocation builds on the firm’s earlier Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, which launched in 2019 with $250M to back companies modernizing traditional sectors. With this expansion, BDC aims to accelerate adoption of AI, automation, robotics, and sustainability-driven solutions in industries critical to Canada’s economy.
Supporting scale-up ambitions
BDC said the additional funding will help startups scale faster, win enterprise customers, and expand internationally—addressing a well-known funding gap for companies serving capital-intensive markets.
“Canadian entrepreneurs are developing technologies that can dramatically improve the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of our most important industries,” said Jerome Nycz, Executive Vice President of BDC Capital. “This fund is about giving them the long-term capital and strategic support they need to succeed at global scale.”
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Filling an investment gap
BDC’s earlier investments from the Industrial Innovation Venture Fund include companies like Clearpath Robotics, Mavennet, and CarbiCrete. The new $200M will continue to focus on companies with deep tech and applied research roots, often overlooked by traditional VCs due to longer commercialization cycles.
With this move, the Investment Firm strengthens its position as one of the largest backers of Canadian industrial tech startups, aiming to position the country as a global leader in applied AI, cleantech, and advanced manufacturing.
