The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation invested about $4.35 million in equity funding rounds for the province's startups in its 2020-21 fiscal year, as it focused on inking deals to stabilize its existing portfolio companies during the pandemic.

In its 2020-21 annual report, NBIF said the venture capital investments accounted for just under a third of its $13.64 million total spending. Another

Fredericton-based startup accelerator Energia Ventures has announced its five-company fall cohort -- the second this year, as the program moves to offer more frequent programming in response to increased demand.

The accelerator is run by the University of New Brunswick’s J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management & Entrepreneurship, commonly known as TME. Energia accepts companies from

Industry group Digital Nova Scotia has honoured five people or organizations for their contributions to diversity and inclusion in Nova Scotia’s tech sector in a ceremony held as part of the Centre for Women in Business’s Innovate online event.

Digital Nova Scotia, which represents the IT industry in the province, started the annual awards in 2016 to highlight influential women in the tech

Halifax data analytics startup Affinio and its 12-person team are being bought by fellow big data company NowVertical Group in a deal worth US$7.3 million or about C$9 million.

The purchase price includes US$6 million cash and US$1.3 million of shares in NowVertical, currently trading for 94 cents on the TSX Venture Exchange and valued at one dollar in the deal.

As of 2018, Affinio had raised

CoLab Software, the St. John’s-based maker of collaboration software for 3D modelling, has raised a US$17 million (C$21 million) Series A funding round on the back of a fiscal year in which its revenue grew 609 percent.

The round was led by New York’s Insight Partners, with alumni from manufacturing giants Tesla and Bosch also joining as angel investors.

CoLab builds software that lets

We’d like to draw your attention to two pieces of content that will be of interest to people who follow the Atlantic Canadian startup community.

Vanessa Balintec of CBC New Brunswick on Monday reported on the under-representation of female and minority founders in the community. The article arose from our presentation earlier this month on New Brunswick startup in collaboration with Planet Hatch

Jason Trask, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship, has landed a spot for his new rodent deterrent company in the federal government’s CTA AgTech Accelerator.

A serial entrepreneur, Trask has run companies ranging from sales AI specialist Zambara to Globalstudent.com -- an online book exchange for university students. He co-founded his latest venture,

Moncton-based startup hub Venn Innovation will lead an Atlantic Canadian delegation to the world’s largest fintech conference -- Money20/20 in Las Vegas.

The delegation is being backed by the governments of the four Atlantic Provinces and will include eight local fintech startups. Venn said in a press release that the purpose of the trip, which follows up on a 2019 mission also organized by the

As it develops its portfolio, female-focused venture capital firm Sandpiper Ventures has invested in Pasadena, NL-based Swiftsure Innovations, which is developing a device for cleaning the mouths of people on ventilators to help prevent them from developing pneumonia.

A spokesperson for the seed-stage fund declined to comment on the size of the Swiftsure investment. The Atltantic Canadian-based

As consumers recognize the link between consumption of animal products and carbon emissions, Hannah Chisholm, Halifax creator of egg-alternative Eggcitables, has received non-dilutive funding from Vancouver’s Earth’s Own group which fights climate change by encouraging plant-focused eating.

Chisholm’s egg alternative is a chickpea-based dry product, able to mimic eggs in almost all applications.