Waterloo Tech Highlights for November 2025
Our goal is to provide you with a monthly primer on significant news events from private Waterloo-based technology companies in 5 minutes or less.
Swish Solar raised US$1.5M in an oversubscribed round led by Friday Ventures and including Velocity Fund, Front Row Ventures, Alif Fund and Suno Growth. The company keeps solar panels clean of debris.
MedReddie raised US$1.5M in equity financing plus $500k in grants in a round led by MaRS IAF and includes New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, BDC’s Thrive Lab and unnamed angel investors.
Swap Robotics announced an additional US$1M raise from Array Technologies for hitting a technology milestone related to PV installation. Looks like they’re not just cutting grass.
RideCo has had a great second half of 2025, putting them over 100% annual growth. They won three more large city contracts in the states of Washington, New Jersey, and New York.
Smile achieved SOC2 certification and now operate in multiple languages.
Vena Medical strung together their first three cash flow positive months in a row. They also won their first capital equipment sale.
Skywatch added Spexi to their list of imagry suppliers. Spexi provides drone imagery for over 200 cities.
ENVGO will have their public launch at the Toronto Boat show in January.
Intellijoint performed their first knee replacement surgery in India.
Vidyard saw a significant increase in user engagement on their free accounts by enabling AI Video agents.
Dozr was forced to undergo an asset sale by a creditor. The company was bought by a couple Canadian entrepreneurs for an undisclosed sum. Ongoing operational plans remain unclear.
FluidAI has acquired the assets of locally based Emmetros to help enhance their patient education and engagement platform. Terms were not disclosed.
Biomiq has joined MIX.
Airfairness has gained access to the Law Society of Ontario’s Access to Innovation program. The company helps consumers navigate the maze of air travel compensation.
Chris’ Thoughts
I like sugar, and the genius ways people put it into foods. As a result, I carry ten more pounds than I’d like to. As somebody who participates in longer triathlons and other endurance events, I feel it every time I line up to start a race. Each year I set a race goal that’s 8 months away and tell myself that I’m going to maintain discipline around food, especially the empty calories my brain rationalizes so that on race day I can really put on my best performance. Then I see the box of Oreos in the drawer…
Circumstances in 2025 have conspired to force Canada to react on many fronts. One involves a surge of defense and security spending that will see Ottawa commit to increases from $30B to $180B over the next 10 years. Crudely speaking this spending surge can go one of two ways.
On one path, we can buy a bunch of expensive toys from large, mostly American contractors, especially more F-35s from Lockheed Martin and gear from other top defense suppliers like Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, Palantir and others, pushing them to do some job creation in Canada and throw some small scraps to Canadian companies. As always occurs, the IP, profits and taxes will go elsewhere.
The other path involves taking a page from America’s great investment in defense and silicon and thereby setting themselves up as the innovation hub of the world. [If you haven’t read Chip War, I highly recommend it, as the story of how Lockheed and defense spending catalyzed modern-day Silicon Valley and the California Tech ecosystem.] This kind of crisis and this kind of spending can help buy Canada a home-made defense industrial complex with all its attendant dual-use offshoots that we’ve lacked for decades.
But big ideas prove messy and I question Canada’s tolerance for messy. Investing in unproven companies creates turmoil and requires a collective resilience. Many fail and many more falter before finding their way and historically our country has shown a low tolerance for setbacks and risk. When it’s a government program it feels like as a friend put it “we spend 90 cents to account for each dollar of spending,” knowing that anything less will get hysterically amplified with the lens of hindsight by The Globe and Mail and Opposition Parties looking for political currency.
But that approach won’t work any longer.
I think about US President Kennedy’s galvanizing speech that launched the moon program and built enough public tolerance for failures and deaths to allow Apollo to ultimately succeed, creating a patriotism dividend that lasted at least 40 years. Maybe it’s the best example of a visionary leader convincing a group to accept temporary mess for a greater good.
I think about Winston Churchill’s “never surrender” speech, providing resolve and hope to a scared nation. He successfully convinced his people that the UK needed to endure the mess of bombed streets and sons in coffins and to withstand Nazi bombardment and losses in the darkest of hours.
How resilient is the collective will of Canadians to endure mess and accept sacrifice to enable a greater good?
Like my challenge to refuse the gratification of Oreos and maintain a disciplined state of denial that unlocks a greater good, Canada’s circumstances give us an opportunity to break from our Oreo habit and pursue a better version of ourselves.
My dream for 2026 is more collective tolerance for failure. For Canadians to embrace a bigger risk appetite and build more collective grit. To applaud those who try to do hard but noble things and show a willingness to give up a thing we love and know won’t last for the promise of something better and more enduring. To cheer the creation of nation-defining stories that ultimately puts us in a better place.
We won’t publish a newsletter at the end of December, so this is a wrap for 2025. Thanks for reading, for your support and for your constructive disagreements as well. I wish you a happy Christmas and a great end to the year.
Chris
Bonus reading
The Canadian Council of Innovators (CCI) have done an excellent job of beating the drum of strategic Canadian procurement for years now. I’m hopeful that this article reflects as a harbinger of mounting political will to change the status quo. We’ve seen a wave of Buy Canadian take hold at the consumer level. It’s time to demand the same for our tax dollars. The article is behind a paywall, but also available through Apple News if you subscribe for that.
https://thelogic.co/news/the-big-read/smaller-canadian-firms-government-contracts/
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Chris Wormald @cwormald