Vancouver was the second-hottest city in Canada for venture capital financing deals through the first half of 2024, a new report has found.
The city of Vancouver saw $246 million in VC financing across 45 deals, the second-most deals behind Toronto’s 112, data from CPE Analytics reveals.
In terms of dollars invested, Vancouver ranked fourth behind Calgary and Montreal. Other municipalities in the region also performed according to this metric: Burnaby (6th), Richmond (8th), and Surrey (10th) all cracked Canada’s top 10 for venture capital.
However, CPE’s report also revealed nationwide concerns.
While there are signals of strength regarding venture capital flow in Canada, one major worry is that a small percentage is private capital from within the country.
Foreign investment dominates the landscape, for example, with U.S. financing alone accounting for a majority of the total. From 2017 through 2021, however, that figure was always well below 50%.
In addition, public sector financing within Canada is outpacing the private investment badly, which is not economically sustainable, according to experts.
The current top Canadian VC? The government—by far.
“The private VC fund industry in Canada could be regarded as a quasi-government entity in all but name,” warns Richard Rémillard, who serves as President of Rémillard Consulting Group, which conducted the report alongside CPE Analytics.
VC is a big deal in Vancouver, where tech workers make up nearly 9% of Vancouver’s total workforce, the second highest rate in Canada behind Toronto (10%), CompTIA found last year, observing 4,500 tech companies operating in the city.
Canada-wide, there were more than 350 deals in the first half of 2024, CPE found.
CPE Analytics was founded by Ted Liu in 1992.
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