Vancouver’s APOLLO Insurance has closed an oversubscribed $13.5 million Series A financing round. Launched in April 2019, APOLLO is redefining the distribution of insurance and now offers the largest selection of online insurance in Canada through thousands of digitally enhanced agents and embedded finance partnerships. APOLLO’s proprietary technology platform, the APOLLO Exchange, transacts insurance business in […]
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Hootsuite Acquires Digital Customer Engagement Platform Sparkcentral
Vancouver-headquartered Hootsuite has acquired Sparkcentral, a customer service SaaS platform that enables 1:1 conversational messaging through Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, SMS, and Chat. The acquisition is Hootsuite’s thirteenth since being founded in 2008 and is its first since 2017. Based in Belgium and with an office in New York, Sparkcentral is a social […]
AbCellera Plans To Hire Hundreds In Vancouver
Vancouver’s AbCellera emerged last year as a leading early stage company in the race to bring COVID-19 treatments to market when their Pandemic Prevention Platform team brought the first COVID-19 antibody to clinical trials in under 90 days. Their herculean efforts were acknowledged when the pharmaceutical upstart was named the winner of Fast Company’s Innovative Team […]
Shopify To Double Engineering Team In 2021 By Hiring 2,021 New Technical Roles
Shopify has tapped industry veteran Cathy Polinsky as the company’s new vice president of engineering as it plans to double the size of its engineering team this year. As the newest senior leader on Shopify’s engineering team, Polinsky will lead Shopify’s efforts to build its e-commerce infrastructure and will lead the company’s efforts to double […]
Virtual Production Ready For Its Moment In The Spotlight
Technology used in Mandalorian gaining adoption The pandemic has spurred technology adoption across many sectors, and it appears it is also accelerating the use of virtual production and augmented and virtual reality enabled data in the film industry. While it has been promised for years, the application of AR/VR technology is getting a new focus […]
Nintendo To Acquire Next Level Games
Nintendo is acquiring Vancouver game developer Next Level Games, a studio that has worked on some of the company’s major franchises. Next Level is already a second-party partner, meaning it only makes games for Nintendo platforms, but Nintendo says the acquisition will help secure internal development resources and boost collaboration. Next Level is best known […]
SFU Researchers Developing Cellular Service For Space Missions To The Moon
Think getting good cellular service on Earth is difficult? Try doing it on the moon or Mars. A team of Simon Fraser University researchers is working hard to make LTE/4G and Wi-Fi communications systems on the moon a reality by 2022. A group of nations is presently working on humans’ return to the surface of […]
EMERGE Commerce Makes First Post-IPO E-commerce Acquisition
Well, that didn’t take long. After a successful TSXV launch last month, EMERGE Commerce has made its first post-IPO acquisition. In its largest e-commerce acquisition to date, EMERGE has acquired meat subscription service truLOCAL for $16.8 million. Founded in February 2016 in Kitchener, truLOCAL is a direct-to-consumer, locally sourced meat subscription service in Canada, with […]
Techcouver’s Most Read Stories of 2020
It’s fair to say 2020 will not be remembered fondly. The COVID-19 pandemic dominated tech – like all else – with many of us spending more time than ever in front of screens. Techcouver had a banner year with site traffic growing every month during 2020. As we look forward to a much better 2021, […]
Cryptocurrency Custodian Coinbase Coming To Vancouver?
Bitcoin is trading at all-time highs and its bull move since October has been sizzling. Coinbase, the largest broker and custodian for cryptocurrencies in the United States, recently filed for an IPO (Initial Public Offering) which will make it the only pure-play way for investors to get exposure to this asset class via public markets. […]