After receiving $5M in federal funding, Markham’s ventureLAB to pick ‘first cohort’ companies

The investment is to commercialize 15 new products used in smartphones or autonomous vehicles for example

Yorkregion.com
July 8, 2019
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Markham’s ventureLAB is in the process of picking the “first cohort” of companies in the next six months after receiving $5 million for a new lab and incubator.

This new investment will allow ventureLAB to add a new hub called Hardware Catalyst Initiative (HCI), designed to support companies producing foundational technology in fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantum computing. It is the home to 45 tech companies.

“The lab will be located within ventureLAB's innovation hub in Markham,” Justine Kintanar, ventureLAB’s Director, External Relations and Communications, told Yorkregion.com, adding “this project will support 40 growing and scaling southern Ontario-based companies over the five year project, approximately five to 10 each year.”

Kintanar added, “We expect to on-board the first cohort of companies within the next six months - these will be SMEs from around Southern Ontario, but at this point, we cannot say which companies those will be.”

The government said that the incubator will help commercialize 15 new products.

When asked about these products, Kintanar said these “future products commercialized could range from chip development, advancement to circuit or logic board developments that serve as foundational technologies in consumer goods like smartphones, autonomous vehicles, or gaming systems to transformational technologies like health care devices.”

On June 27, Canada’s Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion Mary Ng, who is also the MP for Markham-Thornhill, made the announcement of the funding on behalf of Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.

The five-year program will allow participating companies to have access to tools and resources, dependent on their needs as well as advisory services from industry experts and the hardware ecosystem lab with access to tools and equipment.

The 50,000-square-foot facility ventureLAB employs 300 people. It's in Markham, considered to be the second provincial tech cluster after Toronto.