Waterloo Tech Highlights for July 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.

Cobionix raised US$3M in a round led by TitletownTech, Lions Investment and others. They have pilots underway in Saskatchewan and the UK.

TitanFile raised an undisclosed amount from Seva Growth Capital.

Cavelo raised C$5M from Inovia Capital. Inovia also put in $5M two years ago. They’ve added 50 customers in the past 2 years.

Dejero received $567,000 from the Province of Ontario and other industry partners. They’ll use the funds to build autonomous vehicle connectivity for public safety agencies. It’s all very confusing really. Great win, terrible press release.

Intellijoint performed their first live surgeries in India.

KA Imaging installed their mobile imaging device at Toronto General Hospital.

Skywatch added Eagleview’s aerial imagry to their data platform.

Nicoya received a $2M grant from the NRC and Innovate UK through a collaborative R&D Initiative.

P&P Optica secured their first European installation and a distribution partnership with a European automation company.

Chris’ Thoughts

Cars aren’t as expensive as you probably think.

There’s an increasing frequency of incidents that make me feel old. I recently came across a pile of receipts that showed me how the relative value of things has changed.

My box included university-era receipts for a new 1994 Dodge Neon, my first term of engineering tuition and residence, a desktop computer, a pay stub from my 4th co-op work term, an entry for a 15k road race and my first road bike, a pink Miele Tempo.

Yes, they’re more expensive now, but how much have relative prices changed looking at an inflation adjusted price relative to buying a new item today. For example, a term in Engineering at UW today costs $9,000 and the present value of my tuition is $2,600, so tuition has risen 5.6x faster than inflation. Here’s a quick summary of the relative price changes:

price increases

The increases tell me that the relatively low inflation of the past 30 years has been from declining electronics prices (Moore’s law), moving manufacturing offshore (globalization) and keeping wages stagnant. The relatively small increase in the price of a car and the relatively large increase for a bike surprised me. Many already speak about the unsustainable increases in tuition.

Here’s another great example of relative inflation: In the early 1960’s my grandfather sold a 5-acre island he owned in cottage country and used the money to put in wall-to-wall carpeting and buy some furniture for his family’s 1,200 square foot Toronto house. The price was $3,000. Today that island is probably worth $1M, yet putting wall-to-wall carpeting in that house probably costs the same $3,000.

This is a chart of the impact of globalization. It will be interesting to see how the various efforts at unwinding globalization will play out in the next three decades. If I had to guess, I’d say that cars, carpets and computers will lead the list of prices that increase the fastest.

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Chris Wormald @cwormald