Online startup accelerator Propel has announced the 16 companies participating in its Vision and Validation program, which is its new training program for the founders of very early stage companies.

Six of the companies are from New Brunswick, five are from Newfoundland and Labrador, four are from Nova Scotia, and one is from Ontario. The program started July 12, and focuses on teaching new

St. John's-based Kraken Robotics said Wednesday it has inked a deal to raise $10 million by selling shares to a consortium of underwriters led by investment bank Canaccord Genuity Corp. It will also buy another Newfoundland and Labrador company, PanGeo Subsea, in a cash and stock deal worth more than $14 million.

Kraken shares, which trade on the TSX Venture exchange, fell more than 17 percent

Halifax-based respiratory therapy startup NovaResp has received Health Canada approval to conduct an “interventional study” at the city’s Queen Elizabeth II hospital, testing its sleep apnea treatment on 25 patients with the condition.

Founded by Dalhousie University PhD graduate Hamed Hanafi, NovaResp is developing software to use data from CPAP machines to predict when a sleep apnea patient

Halifax’s Coloursmith Labs, which is developing advanced optical  filters for contact lenses and eyeglasses, has closed a $2 million equity round, led by the female-focused investment fund, Sandpiper Ventures.

Sandpiper on Tuesday issued a press release saying its investment in Coloursmith is its second investment and the first investment round in which it was the leader. The other investors in

St. John’s-based startup hub Genesis has launched a new, intermediate-level accelerator to fill a gap between its Evolution program for early-stage companies and its Enterprise program for more advanced startups.

Dubbed Evolution+, the new accelerator eschews a cohort model in favour of rolling acceptance and graduation, with each company taking from one to six months to complete the program.

You really get an idea of how cool 3D BioFibR is when CEO Kevin Sullivan starts talking about bulletproof T-shirts.

Halifax-based 3D BioFibR aims to produce commercial quantities of nature’s “strongest, lightest and toughest” materials. The company was launched last year and closed a $550,000 funding round in its first six months.

Now the company has 16 employees and Sullivan is gearing up to

Dartmouth-based Global Spatial Technology Systems, which is developing cloud software for analyzing and predicting the movements of ships, has added three new members to its OCIANA Port Optimization Consortium -- a group of ports and marine industry organizations testing GSTS’s software.

The new participants are the Port of Halifax, the Port of New York and New Jersey, and the Laurentian

Three Atlantic Canadian startup support organizations will hold pitch competitions in the coming weeks: Halifax’s Volta, Moncton’s Venn Innovation and St. John's-based Genesis.

Startup incubator Volta will hold its quarterly pitch competition on August 11, with the application deadline of July 25 at 11:59 p.m.

Startup founders will have the chance to speak for three minutes in front of a panel

The University of New Brunswick held the virtual demo day Thursday for its Summer Institute accelerator, with five companies pitching.

Most startup accelerators teach lean methodology to innovation-driven businesses. The Summer Institute takes a different tack by seeking to back companies with positive social and environmental impacts.

Eight companies originally enrolled in the 13-week program,

Black female entrepreneurs have particular difficulty accessing funding, although many are highly educated and their ventures are growing, a national survey has found.

The FoundHERs survey, conducted by market research firm Pitch Better Canada, analyzed the investment and financing options for Black female founders. The research found that 59 percent of Black women entrepreneurs hold