{"id":174394,"date":"2025-12-08T22:48:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T22:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/174394\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T22:48:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T22:48:12","slug":"entrevestor-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/174394\/","title":{"rendered":"Entrevestor"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we finally tally all the Atlantic Canadian startup funding for 2025, we\u2019re going to end up with two major groups: A. Newfoundland and Labrador, and B. everyone else.<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s not a surprise to anyone who\u2019s been paying attention this year, what is surprising is that Group A. will likely be almost four times as large as Group B.<\/p>\n

With a few weeks left to go in the year, innovation-driven companies based on The Rock account for almost four-fifths of equity funding booked this year. The main reason is the huge funding rounds by four St. John\u2019s companies: Kraken Robotics, Colab Software, Spellbook, and Sparrow BioAcoustics.<\/p>\n

In deals announced so far this year, Newfoundland and Labrador companies have raised $295.5 million, while those based in the Maritimes have secured $82.2 million. That means NL accounts for about 78 percent of this year\u2019s announced deals as of Dec. 8. What\u2019s more, Newfoundland and Labrador companies also accounted for more than half the funding in the region in 2024.<\/p>\n

Sparrow\u2019s recent announcement that it closed a $10 million funding round was somewhat overshadowed by the other NL raises. (We admit it: we missed the Sparrow round altogether.) But this young medtech company is one of the region\u2019s biggest magnets for investment, with this round coming just a year after it finished a $13 million, multi-tranche funding exercise.<\/a><\/p>\n

“This round ensures we can scale responsibly through this critical phase, supporting hospitals and patients with the same focus on quality and outcomes that brought us here,” said Sparrow CEO Mark Opauszky in the announcement. “It’s about maintaining the momentum we’ve built while continuing to deliver real clinical value where it’s needed most.”<\/p>\n

When we gather funding data at Entrevestor, we include any innovation-driven company based in Atlantic Canada as long as they\u2019re producing a product for global distribution. We look for funding from any one of six sources: founders; friends and family; angels; venture capital; strategic partners; and stock markets. Most of the data that we\u2019ve collected so far has come from major deals; we\u2019ll learn more about the smaller deals and stealth rounds as founders complete our 10-question survey.<\/p>\n

The funding news this year has been dominated by the four big rounds in Newfoundland:<\/p>\n

Kraken Robotics<\/p>\n

In July, the maker of next-generation sonar systems closed a $115 million, oversubscribed sale of shares<\/a> on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company said the new capital would position it to pursue strategic acquisitions and expand its global footprint. With its share price more than doubling this year, Kraken broke through the $1 billion valuation mark in September and is now worth $1.84 billion.<\/p>\n

CoLab Software<\/p>\n

CoLab in November announced a US$72 million (C$100.9 million) Series C funding round<\/a>, the largest VC financing in Atlantic Canada in the past two years. The Y Combinator alum makes collaboration software for 3D modelling and in June launched its first AI agent, which it calls AutoReview. The company said at the time it was on pace to nearly triple revenue in 2025.<\/p>\n

Spellbook<\/p>\n

Spellbook, which makes AI products for law firms, closed a US$50 million (C$70 million) Series B round<\/a> in October led by Khosla Ventures, one of the top venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. Based in St. John\u2019s and Toronto, Spellbook said the deal valued the company post-money at US$350 million, or C$490 million. About 115 people worked at Spellbook at the time of the deal, and CEO Scott Stevenson believes that number will double in the next year or two.<\/p>\n

Sparrow BioAcoustics<\/p>\n

Sparrow said the $10 million in new capital would support its next phase of growth as it aims to sell its FDA-cleared Stethophone platform to hospitals across North America. The company calls Stethophone the world’s first cardiac AI platform delivering bioacoustic detection of structural and rhythmic heart anomalies directly through a smartphone. “In the past year, about 40,000 patients and practitioners have used Stethophone, uncovering thousands of cardiac anomalies that might otherwise have gone unnoticed until later stages of disease,” said Dr. Yaroslav Shpak, the company\u2019s Chief Medical Officer. Killick Capital and Klister Credit led the round with participation from Pelorus VC, 98827 Newfoundland & Labrador Inc., and Brinex Capital.<\/p>\n

All of which is not to say there have not been big deals in the three Maritime provinces. In Nova Scotia, the two-year-old medtech company Sound Blade Medical, which has developed a handheld tool that cuts tissue with sonic waves, closed a US$16.5 million Series A funding round in January. And Mara Renewables, the Halifax company that produces omega-3 products from algae, raised US$9.1 million in July. (We did not include the $52 million raised by GoodLeaf Farms even though the company was founded in Halifax. It is now based in Guelph, Ont.)<\/p>\n

One final note about the provincial breakdown in funding is that this is the second year in a row that Newfoundland and Labrador has owned the podium, so to speak. In 2024, NL companies raised a total of $146.9 million, which was 57 percent of the $259.1 million raised by Atlantic Canadian startups in 2024.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another stat that\u2019s worth chewing over: Since Jan. 1, 2023, innovation-driven companies in Newfoundland and Labrador have raised $518.5 million. That\u2019s half-a-billion dollars of capital injected directly into the province\u2019s fastest-growing companies, substantially owned by Newfoundlanders. And that\u2019s on top of the benefits the province received from the landmark US$2.75 billion acquisition of Verafin by Nasdaq in 2021.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see what happens on The Rock in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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