Putting paid to the notion of Atlantic Canada as a marginal player in the world of startups, Entrevestor Live on Wednesday showcased some of the region’s highest-flying young companies.

A multi-billion-dollar, sector-pioneering materials business headquartered in the region, a labour crunch giving rise to ballooning tech salaries and a surge in venture capital valuations that could leave the

Dartmouth-based carbon sequestration specialist Planetary Hydrogen has won as much as $200,000 from the Ocean Startup Challenge competition, along with 39 other bluetech companies that bagged a combined $1.4 million in smaller prizes.

The Ocean Startup Challenge is run by the Ocean Supercluster-backed Ocean Startup Project, helmed by lawyer and ocean technology specialist Donald Grant. This

Dartmouth-based advanced materials specialist META has closed a deal to buy British Columbia’s Nanotech Security Corp. for $90.8 million, as the maker of security holograms for bank notes and government ID cards announced it has inked a manufacturing deal worth up to $52.7 million over five years.

META announced it would buy Nanotech in August, two months after a reverse listing on the NASDAQ

Irish marine robotics company XOCEAN, which maintains a branch office in Dartmouth, has raised €8 million or C$11.7 million in a funding round that valued the startup at about €100 million or C$ 146.2 million.

Founded in 2017 and based in Louth, near the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, XOCEAN uses robots to gather operational data for offshore industrial projects,

Atlantic Canadian companies are among the 100 winners of the Blueprint: Backing BIPOC Businesses awards, run by the DMZ, an award-winning startup incubator at Toronto’s Ryerson University, and funded by American Express.

The 15-week program offers participants intensive mentorship and coaching and $10,000 in grant money.

Blueprint is a response to barriers faced by BIPOC business owners.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government will kick in $10 million to the first close of the Venture Newfoundland and Labrador II fund, adding on to a $6.3 million private sector funding raise.

Like the first Venture NL fund, Fund II will be managed by Pelorus Venture Capital and the partners say the fund will have enough capital to back pre-revenue companies in the province for a decade.

The

I’m going to say something you’d expect me to say: the content at Entrevestor Live will be outstanding.

Entrevestor Live is a virtual conference starting at 1 pm AST on Wednesday that will demonstrate how Atlantic Canadian startups have grown into global corporations. It will offer a concise program (about 190 minutes) and low price ($70+HST) so just about anyone in the startup community can

In our Jobs of the Week column today, we’re showcasing openings for a Head of Design, Venture Studio, at Highline Beta in Toronto and a Manager of Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster.

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is an Atlantic Canada-based organization with national scope that supports sustainable economic growth in Canada’s ocean-based industries while

Female-focused, seed-stage venture capital fund Sandpiper Ventures has closed the first $10 million of a planned $20 million funding round for its flagship SV Fund, with the backers including 30 women and Scotiabank’s Roynat Capital.

Founded last year, Sandpiper now boasts the largest number of individual investors of any Atlantic Canadian VC fund, the fund said in a press release -- a

An Antigonish company developing lobster bait that relies on sound instead of fish, circumventing bait shortages, is preparing to start testing its technology this fall.

Peter Nicholson is the majority owner of Acoustic Bait Technologies, which he founded with his business partner, Chet Chisholm, in summer, 2019. With the help of professors David Barclay at Dalhousie University and Russell Wyeth