Panache Ventures is a venture capital firm specializing in pre-seed and seed-stage startup investments. It seeks to invest in sectors that play to Canada’s strengths: artificial intelligence (AI), fintech, digital health, enterprise software, and blockchain.

Panache Ventures

Inovia Capital is a venture capital firm that works with founders to create influential and permanent businesses. The team leverages an operator mindset to provide founders with support, mentorship, and access to a worldwide network. Inovia manages over US$2.2B with operations in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, San Francisco, and London.

Inovia Capital

Real Ventures is an early-stage venture firm focused on serving daring entrepreneurs with the ambition to create successful, global companies. Since 2007, Real Ventures has dedicated itself to building the Canadian startup ecosystem on the belief that people, not money, build game-changing companies. Real Ventures provides stage-specific guidance, mentorship, and access to networks and resources to fast-track founders’ personal and company growth. Real Ventures manages $325 million across five funds and its active portfolio of 100+ companies is currently valued at $10 billion. www.realventures.com

Real Ventures

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a no-fee/no-equity organization that delivers an objectives-based mentoring program for massively scalable, pre-seed stage, science- and technology-based companies. Its nine-month program allows founders to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success. Founded in 2012 by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the program has expanded to thirteen sites across seven countries: Seattle, Oxford, Paris, Atlanta, Estonia, Wisconsin, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Berlin, Melbourne and Halifax.

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL)

BoxOne Ventures is a privately held investment firm that focuses on early-stage companies across all markets: biotech, fintech, agtech, healthcare, data, engineering, and AI/ML. We strive to balance the best elements of patient angel capital with the value-add often found at venture funds. You will often find us as the first cheque into a company. We invest our own capital and bring our experience as operators that have scaled many startups from founding to exit. We like partnering in the earliest days and continuing to support entrepreneurs with capital, expertise, and our network across their entire journey while making sure to never get in their way.

BoxOne Ventures

N49P is a venture capital firm focused on ideas to seed-stage Canadian technology startups.

N49P

HumanFirst

HumanFirst is the playground for prompt and data work. Experiment with raw data, surface business-specific insights, and build reliable AI workflows with speed, accuracy, and trust. With a low-code platform and enterprise-grade security posture, HumanFirst empowers enterprises to transform every team into AI experts.

HumanFirst is a Montreal-based software company that provides a low-code data productivity platform for analyzing and leveraging conversational data. The company's core product, Atlas, allows organizations to extract insights from unstructured data sources like customer support tickets, emails, texts, and call transcripts. Using natural language understanding (NLU) and large language model (LLM) capabilities, HumanFirst enables businesses to identify trends, automate responses, and build AI-powered applications without extensive coding knowledge.

HumanFirst unveils new enterprise platform to accelerate AI in clinical research

HumanFirst Announces New Market Expansion To Bring GenAI-Powered Data Productivity to CPaaS Providers

HumanFirst Offers Access to Industry's Largest Decentralized Clinical Trial Database

Why I Am Joining HumanFirst

How Deloitte partnered with HumanFirst & Google to accelerate contact center transformations

Introduce Your Data To Your Prompts

The Conversational AI Landscape & HumanFirst

Creative Destruction Lab

HumanFirst Raises CAD$5M in Seed Funding

HumanFirst Raises $5M to Transform Conversational Data into Better Business and Artificial Intelligence with Low-Code Data Productivity Suite

Montreal startup HumanFirst raises $5M to transform organizations’ conversational data into no-code AI

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

HumanFirst facilitates prompt engineering and data management at scale for LLMs, allowing users to simultaneously deploy curated prompts across adaptive datasets and test them on multiple data points. Users can select various foundation models, including OpenAI and Cohere, to experiment with GenAI in a business-focused playground.&nbsp;

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

HumanFirst and Infobip Announce a Partnership to Equip Enterprise Teams with Data + Generative AI

Google Cloud

HumanFirst collaborates with Google Cloud to transform unstructured text data into actionable insights and robust AI applications, integrating Google Cloud tools for enhanced data interpretation and AI capabilities.

Solutions that enable real-time conversation through chatbots or automate ticket routing to relevant agents.

HumanFirst is a Montreal-based software company that provides a low-code data productivity platform for analyzing and leveraging conversational data. The company's core product, Atlas, allows organizations to extract insights from unstructured data sources like customer support tickets, emails, texts, and call transcripts. Using natural language understanding (NLU) and large language model (LLM) capabilities, HumanFirst enables businesses to identify trends, automate responses, and build AI-powered applications without extensive coding knowledge.
The platform offers features for clustering similar content, topic modeling, and intent analysis to help companies better understand customer interactions at scale. HumanFirst integrates with various conversational databases and NLU engines, allowing flexibility in implementation. The company positions its technology as a bridge to help organizations unlock value from their conversational data and deploy AI more effectively, particularly for use cases like improving customer service and optimizing contact center operations.

Reduct is a cloud-based video editing and storage platform that enables users to transcribe, organize, and edit video content through text-based interfaces. The platform uses automated transcription technology to convert video and audio files into searchable text transcripts. Users can then highlight, tag, and edit these transcripts to create video clips and reels. Reduct's key differentiator is its ability to edit video by manipulating the corresponding transcript text, allowing for efficient review and compilation of interview footage and other video content. The platform supports various file formats and integrates with video conferencing tools like Zoom for direct import of recordings. Reduct also offers collaborative features, allowing multiple team members to work on projects simultaneously. In addition to its core editing capabilities, Reduct provides unlimited cloud storage for video files, making it a comprehensive solution for video post-production workflows.
Key customers and partnerships
Reduct caters to a range of industries and professionals, including researchers, content creators, marketers, and corporate teams. The platform has developed integrations with popular video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro, enabling users to export their Reduct projects as editable sequences in these applications. Reduct also supports Final Cut Pro through XML export.

Reduct

MonkeyLearn is an AI-powered text analysis and data visualization platform that enables businesses to extract insights from unstructured textual data. The platform offers both pre-built and custom machine learning models for tasks such as sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, topic detection, and intent classification. MonkeyLearn's no-code interface allows users to clean, label, and visualize customer feedback data without requiring programming skills. The platform can process various types of text data including customer reviews, surveys, social media posts, and support tickets. MonkeyLearn integrates with popular tools like Excel, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Zendesk, allowing users to connect their existing data sources. In 2023, MonkeyLearn launched an all-in-one text analysis and data visualization studio that provides instant insights with greater granularity. The platform offers customizable dashboards and templates for different business scenarios, enabling users to create visualizations tailored to their specific needs.

MonkeyLearn

Keatext is an AI-powered text analytics platform that specializes in interpreting customer feedback. The company's cloud-based solution synthesizes large volumes of unstructured feedback data from multiple channels, including open-survey questions, online reviews, support tickets, chats, and social media posts. Keatext's platform utilizes deep learning and natural language processing to analyze, cluster, correlate, and track customer opinions autonomously, providing actionable insights through a comprehensive dashboard.
The platform is designed to minimize response time and requires no setup, featuring multilingual analysis and context-sensitive, industry-agnostic understanding. It automatically visualizes correlations and trends, offering immediate report-sharing capabilities. Keatext's technology adapts to various industries without requiring algorithm customization, eliminating the need for keywords, lexicons, and semantic dictionaries.
Founded in 2010 by Narjès Boufaden, Keatext initially operated as a professional services provider. In 2015, the company transitioned to a product-based model with the launch of its cloud-based AI-powered text analytics platform. Keatext's solution helps businesses optimize profitability through customer feedback analysis, enabling them to move from assumption-based decision-making to data-driven, research-based strategies. The platform significantly reduces the time required for analyzing customer feedback, with users reporting that tasks that previously took eight hours can now be completed in 10 minutes using Keatext.

Keatext

Aircover is a sale assistant tool that leverages conversational AI and real-time technologies to enhance the efficiency of sales teams. The platform integrates with virtual meetings, providing sales representatives with up-to-date messaging and positioning information. This approach aims to reduce ramp time for new representatives and products, shorten sales cycles, and increase win rates. Aircover's AI-powered system enforces best practices throughout sales meetings, offering real-time answers to representatives and potentially reducing the number of follow-up meetings required per prospect. The tool is designed to serve a wide range of users, from individuals to large enterprises. Aircover also features a relationship management component, allowing users to store notes and track roles within deals. By putting sales enablement on autopilot, the platform seeks to streamline the sales process and improve overall performance.

Aircover

NeuralSpace is an AI SaaS company that specializes in providing advanced text and voice AI technologies in over 100 languages. Founded in 2019, the company focuses on delivering language AI solutions, particularly for Arabic, Indian, and other low-resource languages predominantly spoken in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. NeuralSpace's platform offers a suite of products including speech-to-text, machine translation, entity recognition, transliteration, data generation, language detection, and text-to-speech conversion. The company's flagship product, VoiceAI, launched in October 2023, provides highly accurate call transcription, translation, and speech analytics for Arabic and Indian languages and dialects, achieving an average accuracy rate of 91%. NeuralSpace utilizes proprietary speech-to-text technology trained on a dataset of 40,000 hours of audio data, which it aims to increase to 100,000 hours. The company's no-code modular toolkit enables enterprises to train and deploy AI models for language processing applications without extensive coding knowledge. NeuralSpace's technology leverages modeling techniques such as transfer learning, multilingual learning, and data augmentation to work effectively with limited text or speech data. The platform can be accessed through a command-line interface, REST APIs, or a no-code GUI, making it versatile for various integration needs.

NeuralSpace

Solutions that use techniques such as named entity recognition, part-of-speech tagging, or summarization to produce insights from unstructured textual documents.

Platforms that summarize conversations, audio, or video files including reactions into text formats.

Tools to identify and analyze the opinions or emotions expressed in survey responses or reviews to produce actionable insights.

Platforms that decipher search queries by analyzing structured and unstructured data based on user intent and behavior.

Tools that automatically translate text from one language to another.

Tools that detect plagiarism, punctuation errors, or style errors in text.

Companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for natural language processing.

NLP tools such as chatbots are used to cater to each individual

NLP tools are built using AI/ML technologies

Some NLP tools are built using foundation models

NLP tools are provided for other companies to integrate into their workflows

HumanFirst facilitates prompt engineering and data management at scale for LLMs, allowing users to simultaneously deploy curated prompts across adaptive datasets and test them on multiple data points. Users can select various foundation models, including OpenAI and Cohere, to experiment with GenAI in a business-focused playground.&nbsp;The platform also includes features for data collection and exploration from diverse sources, along with capabilities for clustering, labeling, tagging, and saving generated data. It offers a conversational interface where users can chat with LLMs, select specific segments of generated output, and regenerate content for iterations. The system incorporates human-in-the-loop validation, enabling users to verify outputs against source data and fine-tune prompts for improved AI performance.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2024, notable enterprises using the platform included Google, Deloitte, and Nesto.

<div>
 
 Founded in Israel, NeuReality specializes in providing hardware infrastructure to streamline computation processes to accelerate the development of AI applications. Its technology assists AI inferencing deployment by offering a comprehensive system solution that seamlessly supports a vast array of deep learning models.
 
 
 NeuRealitys&rsquo; infrastructure includes an architecture called the Network Addressable Processing Unit (NAPU) to maximize the capabilities of Deep Learning Accelerators (DLAs). This design facilitates inference through purpose-built NAPUs that are specifically crafted for AI inference tasks, enhancing performance and efficiency.
 
 
 The NR1 AI Inference Solution by NeuReality is a comprehensive system comprising architecture, hardware, and software platforms. Launched in November 2023, it intends to simplify the installation, utilization, and management of AI, making it accessible and manageable for users.
 
 
 The hardware offerings of the solution include,
 
 
 1. 
 NR1 Network Addressable Processing Unit
 : A network addressable inference Server-on-a-Chip with an embedded Neural Network Engine, which is a workflow-optimized hardware device with specialized processing units, native network capabilities, and virtualization capabilities
 
 
 2. 
 NR1-M&trade; AI Inference Module
 : A full-height, double-wide PCIe card containing one NR1 Network Addressable Processing Unit (NAPU) system-on-chip and a network addressable Inference Server that can connect to an external Deep Learning Accelerator (DLA)
 
 
 3. 
 NR1-S AI Inference Appliance
 : An optimized design for an inference server that contains NR1-M modules with the NR1 NAPU, which enables disaggregated AI service in a scalable and efficient architecture
 
 
 The software component of the solution is designed to be compatible with any trained model from any development environment. It includes tools that handle the entire AI pipeline and enable seamless connection of AI workflows to any environment.
 
 
 NeuReality differs from traditional AI chip connectivity in replacing CPU-centric support with an AI-centric platform. This allows components to communicate directly with AI accelerators, eliminating the need for commands to pass through a central processing unit. Additionally, the technology enables AI accelerators to connect with each other, enhancing efficiency and performance in AI applications. It also claims its AI-centric approach reduces complexity, cost, and power usage. The firm claims it can reduce inference costs by 90%.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In November 2021, NeuReality teamed up with IBM to develop advanced AI inference technology by enhancing its NR1 chip and system for use in IBM's Hybrid Cloud.
 
 
 In September 2021, the company partnered with Xilinx to develop AI-centric platforms that improve real-world AI applications. This collaboration was intended to focus on NeuReality's AI-centric inference platform NR1-P and address existing issues with AI deployment including cost and complexity.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27745">
 March 2024
 </a>
 , NeuReality secured USD 20 million in funding led by The European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund. The funds were intended to accelerate the deployment of NeuReality&rsquo;s NR1AI Inference Solution.
 
 
 In December 2022, it secured USD 35 million in a Series A funding round led by Samsung Ventures, with Cardumen Capital, Varana Capital, OurCrowd, XT Hi-Tech, and others as participants. The funding was used to launch its flagship AI inferencing solution.
 
</div>

NeuReality

<div>
 
 Accubits is an AI and BLOCKCHAIN focused development and solutions company based in Washington DC with its development offices in India and Dubai. Pioneering as a custom Blockchain solutions provider delivering solutions ever since 2012, Accubits is one of the oldest and experienced Blockchain dev house in the market and is featured as one among the top 13 Blockchain companies in India by INC42. We are a big family of engineers, innovators, inventors and many others continually working to help our customers in leveraging their business and adding value to their lives. Over the past 6 years, We have delivered more than 600 projects, for over 200 clients worldwide. Several of Fortune 500 companies in sectors from Retail to Health are being powered by our solutions to streamline and leverage their growth.Our portfolio for AI solutions includes intelligent conversational tools, RPAs, CRMs, SIPs, real-time video and image analytics systems, state of the art ALPR systems and many more being used enterprises, startups across North America, Canada, Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, India &amp; Sweden. Our portfolio of Blockchain development includes custom DApps and smart contracts, crypto token and exchange development, integrated blockchain services and ICO platforms.
 
</div>

Accubits

<div>
 
 LeewayHertz is a leading software development company delivering tailor-made digital solutions to businesses worldwide. Our team of 250+ full-stack developers, designers and innovators has designed and developed 100+ digital solutions across industry verticals. As a close-knit team of AI and web3 experts, designers and full-stack developers, we undertake collaborative research and development to create next-gen applications and solutions perfectly suited to the evolving tech space. As a technology pioneer with deep knowledge and expertise in AI, blockchain and other advanced technologies like IoT, LeewayHertz believes in helping companies overcome their most complex tech challenges and drive business growth. Our motto, &lsquo;You Dream It: We Build It,&rsquo; reflects our business philosophy. From putting flesh on your idea to delivering the expected end product, we do whatever it takes to make your project successful. Having worked with 30+ top fortune 500 companies and created various on-demand solutions, we boast an impressive work portfolio demonstrating our expertise.
 
</div>

LeewayHertz

Databricks, a data and AI company established by the original developers behind prominent Big Data solutions such as Delta Lake, Apache Spark, and MLflow, and provides organizations with AI and data analytics tools for efficient management of their data.Databricks' primary product is the Databricks Lakehouse platform, a unified data intelligence platform that merges a data warehouse and data lake to provide developers with efficient access to data and enables enterprise customers to create their AI models—similar to a ChatGPT-style AI system—using only their internal data.Databricks Unity Catalog, part of the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, provides unified governance for structured and unstructured data, machine-learning models, notebooks, dashboards, and files across various environments, offering automated monitoring, proactive alerts, and seamless data sharing through Delta Sharing integration. Furthermore, Databricks offers an open architecture that streamlines the AI development process, allowing the integration of various LLMs such as Llama 2, Azure OpenAI, and Anthropic, enabling customization with enterprise data for tailored model creation.Notably, Lakehouse leverages NVIDIA technology for accelerated data processing and AI model generation. Databricks also offers industry-specific solutions like Databricks Lakehouse for Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, and Manufacturing.Databricks has expanded its offerings through multiple acquisitions, including MosaicML ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19683">July 2023 </a>), Arcion ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23041">October 2023 </a>), Okera ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18197">May 2023 </a>), and Datajoy (October 2022). Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2023, Databricks served a global customer base of approximately 10,000, including notable customers such as Comcast, DuPont, Honeywell, Rolls-Royce, Shell, and Tata Steel.Notable partnerships include collaboration with NVIDIA to incorporate NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM into its inference service and a partnership with Hevo-Data to automate data integration into the lakehouse for mutual customers (October 2022).Databricks also partnered with Karini AI to accelerate GenAI deployment for enterprises (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33687">September 2024</a>)Databricks also provides an LLM Mesh partner program; it has partnered with firms such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24218">Dataiku </a>where an emphasis is placed on comprehensive data access, enabling tight integration of GenAI applications with enterprise data.

Databricks

<div>
 
 Labelbox offers a data-centric AI platform for enterprises, enabling them to develop, optimize, and use AI to solve complex problems and power new products and services.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 Labelbox&rsquo;s platform offers capabilities for building, optimizing, training, fine-tuning LLMs, and AI-enabled data labeling automation.&nbsp;
 
 
 Its products include&nbsp;
 
 
 1) Catalog: A platform for building AI applications with features such as advanced search capabilities and optimizing data for labeling budgets
 
 
 2) Annotate: A data labeling solution designed to streamline and accelerate labeling operations using automation tools and pre-labeling techniques
 
 
 (3) Model: Offers tools for data enrichment, model-assisted labeling, and custom Foundry Apps to automate data management tasks and improve AI model performance&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 (4) Boost: Offers fully managed tailored solutions such as on-demand data labeling services to enhance AI development speed and efficiency.&nbsp;
 
 
 As such, Labelbox enables companies to streamline the fine-tuning and alignment of LLMs and enables the validation of outputs through techniques such as reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF), reinforcement learning from AI feedback (RELIEF), and evaluation. This incorporation of human expertise ensures more accurate, contextually relevant, trustworthy, and secure results from LLM systems.
 
 
 The platform is offered through a SaaS subscription model with packages ranging from free subscriptions with limited usage and custom pricing for enterprises.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The firm's solutions have use cases across diverse industries, including retail, consumer internet, healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services. Labelbox has a large portfolio of customers, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Blue River Technology, a smart AgriTech company that used Labelbox's model-assisted labeling suite to enhance its See &amp; Spray technology in smart agriculture, resulting in herbicide cost savings of 70%&ndash;80. Labelbox's customers also include several Fortune 500 companies, such as Walmart, P&amp;G, Audi Adobe, Airbnb, Bayer, and Bosch.
 
 
 Key partnerships include a long-term collaboration with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21770">
 Google Cloud
 </a>
 to facilitate digital transformations in retail, consumer internet, financial services, and manufacturing and logistics.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In January 2022, the firm raised USD 110 million in Series D funding led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2. The company planned to utilize the funds to finance company expansion.
 
 
 
</div>

Labelbox

Integrated solutions that handle various processes such as model training, fine-tuning, model deployment, monitoring, and maintenance in working with and deploying LLMs

Platforms that provide hardware such as high-performance CPUs, GPUs, or TPUs, including cloud-based solutions that are commonly used to train and run GenAI models efficiently

Platforms that assist with fine-tuning pre-trained GenAI models or custom models tailored to specific use cases. Includes services that train models from scratch or use existing models

Platforms that store and retrieve training data in vector databases for access during the model training phase

Services to deploy GenAI models (on-premises or cloud-based) into production environments and integration tools to support existing systems and workflows

Ongoing monitoring of GenAI models to ensure performance. Includes regular model retraining, performance optimization, and troubleshooting

Platforms that assist in designing and refining prompts or instructions to GenAI models to get the desired responses or outcomes

Platforms that enable safe, responsible, and ethical GenAI deployment, ensuring compliance with regulations and/or protection against GenAI-based cybersecurity threats.

All services offered by these companies provide support to AI/ML

NLP is a key component of generative AI which is the core focus of this hub.

All companies within this space are offering infrastructure for generative AI

Generative AI infrastructure hub covers companies that deploy and run these foundation models.

HumanFirst

Sources

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless