As African Heritage Month draws to a close, we’re highlighting a quartet of companies led by Black entrepreneurs from the Atlantic Canadian startup community.

People of African descent are under-represented in the Atlantic Canadian startup group.

The Dartmouth-based Clean Foundation has opened Internship applications for its annual Clean Leadership Summer Internship Program, which offers Nova Scotia youth aged 15 to 30 paid summer work in the clean sector.

In a statement, organizers said

TrojAI, the Saint John maker of cybersecurity software for artificial intelligence systems, is the latest in a small-but-growing list of Atlantic companies to join the Canadian iteration of Google for Startups, the tech giant’s accelerator.

This

The federal government announced Friday it will spend $27 million on upskilling programs for workers in the province, to be administered by industry group TechNL.

In a statement, TechNL said it will work with the feds and educational institutions,

Halifax-based Tribe Network, a group that offers support and training to Black-owned companies, is inviting Black entrepreneurs to join workshops that aim to improve both sides of the mentorship experience and boost diversity in mentorship.

Tribe

Female-focused venture capital  fund Sandpiper Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in Halifax-based QuickFacts, a customizable software platform for insurance brokers that promises to be more user-friendly than competing software.

The

Kraken Robotics, the St. John’s maker of underwater drones, was the top performing technology sector company on the TSX Venture in 2022, according to the exchange’s yearly Venture 50 rankings, which consider movements in businesses’ share prices,

Halifax-based Scient is soft launching its technology for analyzing mining core samples by setting up its equipment for a limited time at a facility in the town of Stellarton, NS.

The Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources Core Library stores

Almost two-thirds of the entrepreneurs supported by Fredericton entrepreneurship hub Planet Hatch last year were new immigrants, a little under 40 percent were female and just over 10 percent were Indigenous, according to the organization’s annual

Atlantic Canadian startups raised $230 million in venture capital in 2022, showing greater resilience than other parts of Canada amid the global slowdown, according to data from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association.

In

Fredericton-based Kognitiv Spark has launched a sweeping revision of its main product offering that it says includes more robust spatial computing abilities, referring to the process of visualizing a digitally rendered object in a real-world

Jennifer Wager, formerly the president of Dartmouth cleantech star CarbonCure Technologies, has a new role as a fellow at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a VC firm led by such business titans as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg.

Wagner,