{"id":894905,"date":"2026-09-14T02:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T02:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/894905\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T02:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T02:34:14","slug":"ai-financier-intrepid-growth-co-led-by-ex-cppib-ceo-mark-machin-raises-us525-million-for-first-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/894905\/","title":{"rendered":"AI financier Intrepid Growth co-led by ex-CPPIB CEO Mark Machin raises US$525-million for first fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Intrepid Growth Partners leaders (from left) Ajay Agrawal, Mark Machin and Mark Shulgan, in the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus at the University of Toronto in Toronto, on Sunday. Their team steers the firm\u2019s investment portfolio toward cutting\u2011edge AI research and innovation.Alejandro Gomez Garcia\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Intrepid Growth Partners, an AI-focused financier co-founded by ex-Canada Pension Plan Investment Board chief executive officer Mark Machin, has raised US$525-million for its first fund.<\/p>\n

The firm, which is based in Toronto and London, will announce the fund closing, US$25-million above its target, on Monday, at the start of a week of events in Toronto, anchored by a summit hosted by Prime Minister Mark Carney, showcasing big-ticket Canadian financing opportunities for global investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada has been a leader for decades in AI and has an opportunity to be one of the most interesting markets\u201d as the technology transforms the global economy, Mr. Machin said in an interview. \u201cIf Canada handles this correctly, it will continue to punch well above its weight on this important shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian AI firm Cohere in advanced talks to raise up to $3-billion, sources say<\/a><\/p>\n

Intrepid, which has made nine investments, including four in Canada, raised most of its backing from foreign investors, among them Temasek, Abu Dhabi Investment Council and four other sovereign wealth funds. Mr. Machin said investors from Asia and the Middle East accounted for 30 per cent of funds raised, while 15 per cent came from Europe (including the U.K. government\u2019s British Business Bank) and 10 per cent from the U.S.<\/p>\n

The remaining backing was from domestic sources including Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Nova Scotia, HarbourVest Canada Growth Fund, Northleaf Capital Partners and Telus Corp. Crown corporations Export Development Canada and Business Development Bank of Canada also participated. <\/p>\n

Intrepid is one of a small but growing number of Canadian allocators of \u201cgrowth capital\u201d \u2013 money earmarked for fast-growing companies that have matured past startup size \u2013 competing against foreign investors that dominate later-stage financing here. Domestic players include Georgian, Inovia Capital, Radical Ventures, Maverix Private Equity, BDC and EDC. The federal government in June announced a $500-million Canadian Tech Growth Fund and last week, Royal Bank of Canada unveiled<\/a> a $1.4-billion growth fund to back Canadian tech leaders.<\/p>\n

Mr. Machin co-founded Intrepid in 2023 with Mark Shulgan, who previously led growth equity for CPPIB and Ontario Municipal Employees\u2019 Retirement System, and the University of Toronto\u2019s Rotman School of Business professor Ajay Agrawal, founder of the Creative Destruction Lab accelerator and co-author of two books on the economics of AI. <\/p>\n

UK-born (and based), Mr. Machin pushed CPPIB, during his time as CEO from 2016 through 2021, to invest more in technology and innovation. On his watch, CPPIB backed Deep Genomics, a University of Toronto spinout that uses AI for drug discovery, and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s driverless car unit Waymo. <\/p>\n

Intrepid\u2019s advisers include Turing Award winner Richard Sutton, a pioneer of reinforcement learning; Shopify Inc. president Harley Finkelstein; and Sir Mike Wigston, former chief of air staff with Britain\u2019s Royal Air Force.<\/p>\n

Intrepid invests up to US$50-million per company in sectors including industrial automation, design and robotics, financial services, health care, cybersecurity\/defence and legaltech. <\/p>\n

Its investing thesis is that AI will continue to rapidly advance and that the winners will be companies that expand beyond selling \u201cpoint solutions\u201d offering narrow benefits, said Prof. Agrawal in an interview. They will instead evolve into providers of \u201csystem solutions\u201d that transform workflows and processes with AI. <\/p>\n

Intrepid believes those companies can grow in size to rival what are known as the \u201cMag 7\u201d (tech companies valued at more than US$1-trillion, including Alphabet and Nvidia). Prof. Agrawal said the future \u201cMag 100\u2033 would feature \u201cvery large companies across almost every industry,\u201d centred around AI. \u201cWe look at companies to make the case how we imagine they could be\u201d in that group.<\/p>\n

The firm focuses on Canada and Britain as each country has robust AI sectors, but also less competition for deals than Silicon Valley, and smaller-sized funding rounds. Its Canadian portfolio includes StackAdapt Inc., Beacon Acquisition Corp. (known as Beacon Software), CoLab Software and Blue J Legal Inc. <\/p>\n

Intrepid\u2019s thesis and vision impressed Beacon co-founder Nilam Ganenthiran \u2013 former president of grocery delivery giant Instacart \u2013 who is building a rival to software consolidator Constellation Software with a plan that leans into arming acquired companies with AI tools. <\/p>\n

Mr. Ganenthiran said in an interview that while Intrepid was a late joiner to a US$225-million growth funding this year, it has emerged as a key adviser to Toronto-based Beacon, which has bought 45 businesses and is approaching US$200-million in annual revenues. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re one of my first three calls and they don\u2019t even have a board seat or board observer rights,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are integral partners in the Beacon build.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intrepid\u2019s fund close comes as concerns grow about AI, including a valuation bubble. \u201cThere will certainly be bubbles as there have been in any prior technology transformation,\u201d Mr. Shulgan said. \u201cThe enduring value will be captured by companies that can emerge to be category leaders and that have founders at the helm that will drive them and be resilient\u201d during periods of market turmoil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Intrepid Growth Partners leaders (from left) Ajay Agrawal, Mark Machin and Mark Shulgan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-894905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}