New Investments
2021/22

Social media giant, Twitter, announced that it would be bulking up on Canadian talent this year with a hiring spree meant to add dozens of engineers in the country to its staff and the formation of its firstCanadian engineering hub. Twitter’s increased interest in the market comes as global competition for tech talent is intensifying. Encouraged by the COVID-19pandemic’s work-from-home measures, companies have begun hiring beyond their current borders, allowing them to source talent in new or unexpected places.

Stoopid Buddy Stoodios specializes in stop-motion, CG and 2D-animated content for TV, film and digital. Robot Chicken, a stop-motion variety show with action figures, may be what audiences associate with the studio, but the company has been quietly expanding its efforts. Toronto Global worked with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios to establish its second office in Toronto, to take advantage of the incredible talent pool, particularly emerging from Sheridan College’s world renowned and award-winning Animation Program.

LotusFlare’s mission is to design, build and advance a digital commerce and monetization platform that simplifies technology and customer experience to deliver valuable business outcomes to enterprises. Headquartered in California, Lotusflare designs and builds software products that simplify and deliver the best customer experiences to communication service providers all over the world. Lotusflare worked with Toronto Global to open an office in Toronto and tap into the Toronto Region’s top tech talent, particularly alumni from schools like the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo.

Jade Global is a strategic IT services partner, creating value through its vast portfolio of IT services delivered by highly skilled and experienced consultants. Its services include business application implementations, integrations, software product engineering, Cloud services, technology advisory, testing, and managed services. Jade Global established its Toronto office as the company’s first hub in Canada and was drawn to the region as Canada’s business capital. Jade Global’s international footprint and diverse employee base was a strong fit within the Toronto Region business community.

Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, announced that it will establish a new Digital Development Centre at its largest Canadian office in Mississauga. This will lead to 500 high quality jobs in the Toronto Region over the next three years. Spanning nearly 50,000 square feet and bringing significant investment from Infosys to the country, the Digital Development Centre will train, upskill, and reskill employees in the technologies needed to help Canadian businesses accelerate their digital transformation. In response to surging demand for training, re-skilling, and learning by employers, Infosys previously committed to double its Canadian workforce to 4,000 employees by 2023. The Digital Development Centre will play a key role in this expansion and lead the building of digital capabilities and training for the next generation of IT talent to support Canadian businesses.

Technisys is an Argentina-based fintech company and one of the leading global providers of next-generation digital banking platforms. With several operations globally, Technisys helps traditional banks transform to digital. The company was interested in expanding its research and development work into Canada and worked with Toronto Global to expand to the Toronto Region. Technisys’ Toronto office allows for easy access to U.S. markets and customers, a strategic location in Canada’s financial capital and strong fintech ecosystem, proximity to existing and prospective customers, and steady pipeline of software engineering talent.

Social media company, Pinterest expanded its Toronto presence with 50 hires and an engineering hub in the city. The engineering location will be Pinterest’s first such international hub as the company looks to implement new tech into its core platform. The 50 new hires will span engineering, sales, insights, and marketing roles. The company is looking for front-end, full-stack, and machine learning engineers to build Pinterest’s global products and shopping experience. Pinterest said its decision to open the hub in Toronto was based on the city’s strong pool of engineering talent, particularly from local institutions such as the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto.

DoorDash, a leading last-mile logistics platform, announced the launch of a new engineering site in Toronto with plans to hire at least 50 engineers across backend, front-end and mobile roles.  Engineers in Toronto will work on critical business projects with a focus on expanding DoorDash’s reach and breadth of services throughout Canada. The work of the team will also serve as the foundation for growing future, global engineering site expansions. The company plans to continue hiring for roles across all sides of the business and increase the company’s total Canadian corporate headcount to 200.

Tonal, the world’s most advanced strength and personal training platform that combines proprietary digital weight, artificial intelligence, and expert-led coaching has established itself as one of the clear leaders in connected strength training. Tonal raised significant capital to expand to new markets, accelerate marketing initiatives and scale its supply chain and logistics to meet its unprecedented demand, while also rolling out new software-driven product innovations and a wider breadth of content. Tonal’s expansion to Toronto was facilitated by Toronto Global, and the company has built its engineering team in the region to take advantage of top-tier tech talent emerging from Toronto Region’s postsecondary institutions.

Reddit, the popular social news aggregator, established a Canadian presence to tap online advertising dollars in one of its most popular user bases. The company announced that it would open an office in downtown Toronto, calling the new space a “long-term investment” it plans to make in Canada. Canada is home to Reddit’s third largest user base, following the U.S. and U.K., and the company said the Toronto team will work with Canadian brands and marketers, establishing programs for community engagement.

Through its subsidiaries, Athene is a leading retirement services company that issues, reinsures and acquires retirement savings products. Established in 2009, Athene acquired Aviva USA in 2013, began trading on the NYSE in 2016, and was the third largest IPO of that year. It has since grown to over 1,200 people across offices in Iowa, Los Angeles, New York, and Bermuda. Athene’s Toronto office is its first in Canada, addressing an important growth market and expanding the company’s international footprint. The company plans to scale its Toronto team to 15-20 people, with nine new staff hired as of 2021. The sales and back-office operations will be staffed by employees with finance, actuarial, and IT backgrounds.

Sonder is an apartment-hotel company that manages short-term rentals in 35 cities around the world. The company works with world-class architects and designers to create truly remarkable spaces—ones that transcend hospitality and enrich lives. And the company is employing technology to keep those spaces affordable to bring Sonder to more cities around the world. Sonder has opened 122 rental units across five properties in downtown Toronto. Sonder hotels are remotely managed, and the company now has a solid workforce in Toronto. Sonder has also opened units in Montreal and Vancouver and has a plan to double its number of units in Canada in the next few years.

Billennium, a Polish company that delivers IT services and solutions for businesses, opened its first delivery centre and HQ office in Mississauga. After Germany, India and Malaysia, this is the company’s fourth international expansion, and the company is seeking to hire 150-200 specialists to scale its Toronto Region operations. With the goal of strengthening business relationships and developing stronger support for the company’s current customer base, Billennium’s Canadian presence provides the framework for its IT specialists to respond to their customers’ needs quickly and efficiently.

Stedi is a developer-focused platform for building automated EDI solutions that integrate with any business system. The company provides a structured messaging platform designed to facilitate communication for business-to-business trade. Toronto Global worked with Stedi to help build the company’s engineering office in the Toronto Region, primarily due to access to talent and favourable immigration policies.

Founded in San Francisco, Sentry’s platform helps developers all around the world save time and energy by better diagnosing, fixing, and optimizing the performance of their code. Toronto Global worked with the leadership of Sentry through every step of the process of understanding the process of expansion to and hiring in the Toronto Region. Tapping into Canada’s largest tech hub, Sentry is building an engineering Centre of Excellence in Toronto.

Rallyware is among the top global eLearning and business engagement platforms, recognized for effective training and talent development, and helping to empower distributed workforces in companies. The company has developed a performance enablement platform designed to provide data-driven personalized activities to every member of the workforce. The decision to establish operations in the Toronto Region was to strategically base the company’s data analytics, product support and development team in Toronto. Rallyware was drawn to the region for its ready supply of talent, in addition to friendly immigration policies that allow for the company to scale with greater speed and ease.

Zifo RnD Solutions, a global provider of informatics solutions for research-based organizations, has launched its first Canadian office and operational headquarters in Mississauga, with the goal of catering to the rising demand for dedicated local support. Zifo’s Canadian operational headquarters was strategically placed, with the organization carefully selecting Mississauga to be the location for this expansion. For Zifo, the choice was clear: Mississauga, with its mature life sciences, pharmaceutical, and biotech ecosystem, and an established talent pipeline, is the ideal location for the expansion of its operations.

MDLand is a leading digital health technology company with the mission of bringing improved and advanced technologies with solutions to today and tomorrow’s healthcare problems. Since its inception, MDLand has worked exclusively with its physician customers to digitize and modernize practices with the focus of increasing productivity, improving quality, ensuring compliance, enhancing revenue and engaging patients to improve patient care and outcomes. Despite COVID, Toronto Global worked with MDLand to establish a satellite team in Toronto and scale its team, as the region provides the company with access to a strong local and international talent pool, and proximity to key markets.

Cubigo is a European healthcare platform which connects community staff, residents and family members to digitize the common functions within senior living communities, including dining, maintenance, transportation, communication and activities. The company seeks to improve workflows, digitize processes and lower operating costs. Toronto Global has worked with Cubigo since 2017 to help the company establish operations in the Toronto Region. Cubigo’s recent contracts with Canadian senior living providers demanded the company’s permanent presence in Canada, coupled with promising trends in technology use among older adults in Canada (in 2019, 58 per cent of Canadians aged 65+ owned smartphones) and Canadians’ positive attitude towards technology. Cubigo’s Toronto location provides an opportunity for the company to interact with its clients more frequently and follow the entire implementation process side-by-side.

Groq products are built to revolutionize workloads in artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), addressing the evolving industry's demands while accelerating developer velocity all together. Groq sought to take advantage of Toronto’s status as a hotbed for innovation in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The Toronto Region is also home to some of the world’s most renowned AI researchers, with a wealth of progressive thinkers coming out of university. Groq identified the thriving AI scene as a contributor to its success in recruiting talent and commitment to substantially grow its presence in Toronto.

Replicant is a developer of conversational technology intended to solve customer problems over the phone. The company's technology offers high-touch customer service without hiring, offshoring, or adding complex technical infrastructure to call centers, enabling businesses to provide customers with a rewarding, real answer in a pleasant voice. Toronto Global worked with the leadership team at Replicant, familiarizing the company with the regional talent pool, and assisting with the establishment of a subsidiary in Toronto to continue to scale its team in the region.

USEReady is a data and analytics firm that provides the strategies, tools, capability and capacity that businesses need to turn their data into a competitive advantage. Headquartered in New York City, the company has 450 employees across offices in the U.S., Canada and India and specializes in financial services. USEReady’s Toronto office was established to service the company’s high tech and Fortune 500 clients.

Boxhub makes it simple, efficient and transparent to buy and sell shipping containers, with an online platform providing an easy overview of available containers, upfront pricing, automated checkouts, great customer service, and a smooth delivery straight to your door. Introduced to Toronto Global by the Trade Commissioner Service in Munich, Boxhub identified the Toronto Region as the location for its latest expansion from Germany. With a global shortage of shipping containers, Boxhub’s services are in high demand. Toronto Global also identified synergies between the company’s mission and the SCORE program.

Mentimeter is a Swedish company based in Stockholm that develops and maintains an eponymous app used to create presentations with real-time feedback. The company's platform is used to create add polls, word clouds, Q&As, slides and more, enabling user to create an interactive experience for the audience. Mentimeter committed to establishing its Canadian office in the Toronto Region, specifically downtown Toronto, bringing staff from its headquarters in Sweden, and hiring locally. Mentimeter sought to service the North American market from its Toronto office, leveraging the relatively low costs of business and high calibre of talent in the region, as well as the intra-company transfer program.

Attached Language is a translation services company, offering all the benefits of language intelligence. The company’s translation and content creation services caters to a wide variety of clients with specialized translation needs (marketing, legal, technical, financial, HR, IT) and has a strong international reputation in the fields of e-commerce, education, travel and leisure, and customer loyalty programs. Opening its second global office in Toronto, Attached Language was drawn to the region for its cultural affinity with the Netherlands, and the diversity of the population.

Oxbotica is fuelling Universal Autonomy: the ability of any vehicle, of any size, in any place to operate autonomously, safely and sustainably, including goods delivery, urban passenger transportation and industries like mining and energy. Toronto Global worked with Oxbotica in its expansion to the Toronto Region, as the company sought to build a software development team around one of their core engineers – a graduate from the University of Toronto. Oxbotica would like to capitalize on these relationships to the university and access the large pool of technology talent in Canada for highly specialized roles, including machine learning.

Global digital transformation leader, Adaptavist, delivers enterprise software, expert solutions, and quality services across the world's most trusted technology ecosystems. The company identified the city’s potential early on, expanding to Toronto in 2014. The rapidly growing team doubled in size during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Adaptavist’s current goal is to grow even further to support local clients, including the City of Toronto. Toronto Global worked with Adaptavist to expand its product development office in Toronto, seeking to capitalize on the technology talent pool in the Toronto Region.

With operations across the global, moneycorp is a leading provider of global payments and currency risk management, delivering high touch service and customized products that put its customers’ business first. moneycorp’s North American operations has served clients in the U.S. for over two decades, focused on private clients’ money transfers, corporate risk management and global payments solutions. The company’s recent expansion to Toronto marks a major step in moneycorp’s global expansion plans to provide a comprehensive and unique offering to the market. The decision was strengthened by the high calibre of experienced talent in the industry, located right here in the Toronto Region.

Wayfair, one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home, opened a new engineering site in Toronto. The company’s expansion of the engineering organization to Toronto is intended to provide more opportunities for talented technologists in these markets to join Wayfair’s growing team. Wayfair serves millions of Canadians, and acts as the home for Canada-based suppliers to reach global markets, with products flowing through its state-of-the-art Mississauga warehouse. Wayfair is expanding its engineering footprint to locations outside of its technology hubs in Boston and Berlin for the first time to further advance its innovative technologies.

Outcast Foods, a Canadian food technology company that rescues cast-off produce which is upcycled into supplements and nutritional ingredients, launched its new 45,000 square foot state-of-the-art upcycling facility in Burlington. The plant will help Outcast divert more than 1 million pounds of food per month from going to waste and meet the need for increased production, fulfillment and product development. The Toronto Region is home to one of North America’s largest food and beverage clusters, processing 2 billion pounds of produce and generating $41 billion annually. This facility means new opportunities in the cluster with Outcast Foods leading the way in the upcycling nutrition category. The new location is strategically positioned in the heart of the Southern Ontario farm belt with ease of access to local food processors, retailers and farmers.

Three years after launching a digital platform in the U.K. that has enabled thousands of small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) to acquire millions of pounds of financing, Swoop Finance expanded into North America. As its point of entry to the market, the company selected Toronto, the second-largest financial centre in North America, and Ontario, the second largest tech cluster in North America. Working directly with SMEs, in partnership with banks, non-bank lenders, advisors, chambers of commerce and other participants in the financial sector, Swoop provides a digital platform where customers can compare thousands of financial products and services, from loans, cash advances and credit facilities to equity, mortgages, grants and tax credits.

Sendinblue, a digital marketing startup headquartered in Paris, announced its expansion to the Toronto Region to enhance its presence in North America and assist local businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sendinblue is the only all-in-one digital marketing platform that empowers businesses to build customer relationships through end-to-end digital marketing campaigns, transactional messaging, and marketing automation. With 100 percent year-over-year growth in the North American market, the Toronto office investment will allow the company to accelerate product innovation, recruit additional talent and successfully thrive in North America. Toronto Global worked with Sendinblue to pitch Toronto over a number of U.S. cities for its marketing and sales office, due to the region’s growth rate and the opportunity to leverage its presence here to build its North American market and become an industry leader.

As the first & largest AWS Premier Consulting Partner in Korea, Megazone Cloud is leading the Korean cloud market with enterprise hosting and ITSM system experience. The company operates an integrated cloud consulting and implementation platform intended to help companies in the cloud transition process. Megazone Cloud worked with Toronto Global to expand to the Toronto Region, taking advantage of the tech ecosystem and potential client base; rich talent pool; and Korean-Canadian tech community that could communicate directly with headquarters in Korea.

Astera Labs develops purpose-built connectivity solutions that remove performance bottlenecks in compute-intensive workloads, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company also embarked on its expansion plans with the opening of its office in the Toronto Region to accelerate product development and grow the company’s existing pool of engineering talent. The new office in York Region will serve as an end-to-end design center with a fully functional lab for technology and product development. The company continues to actively recruit engineering talent for its regional design centre.

Syntronic is a engineering design house specializing in the design and development of electronics, electro-mechanics, embedded and IT software. Toronto Global worked with York Region to assist Syntronic in its expansion to a 10,000 square foot office in Markham. The company’s strategic plan is to attract highly skilled and competent tech professionals who will cater to the needs of Syntronic’s increasingly large pool of North American customers.

Excelencia Consulting is a pioneering IT solutions company offering innovative solutions from its well-established development centers and through onsite work environments. Excelencia monitors and assures the quality of project activities at all development phases and guarantees defect prevention, project risk mitigation and high-quality results. Excelencia selected the 1855 Accelerator in Durham Region as the location for its new Canadian office. As its first Canadian location, the company’s new operations in Whitby will help to further service its growing North American client base. Headquartered in India, Excelencia Consulting worked with Toronto Global and Invest Durham, in collaboration with 1855 Accelerator, to bring its investment to Durham Region.

Agilisium’s Analytics Services enables clients to uncover ‘digital’ opportunities, to create better products and services for customers. With the bulk of its clients located in the U.S., Agilisium expanded operations to Toronto for its strategic location and proximity to the U.S. market, in addition to the longer-term goal of building its client base in Canada. The company worked with Toronto Global to establish its Toronto office and take advantage of our robust economy, business-friendly environment, and superior quality of life for employees.

LiveLike, an audience engagement platform that incorporates community, interactivity, and gamification to the online user experience, has announced the opening of an office in Toronto. The new occupancy in Canada strategically grows LiveLike’s presence in the country as it expands its relationship with media and other businesses in the region. LiveLike has turned its attention to organizations in Canada, including those in sports and media, as well as in fintech, edtech, and publishing, or any platform looking to directly engage with their audiences and retain them as fans.

India-based, Scribble Data has developed an engineering platform designed to provide customizable machine learning services. The company’s platform creates a bridge between data science and data engineering, so it’s no wonder that Scribble Data landed in the Toronto Region – North America’s hotbed of machine learning engineering talent. Toronto, Scribble Data’s North America headquarters, is considered one of the world’s biggest technology hubs. The company chose this city for its close proximity to its customers, as well as the founders’ own history with it.