The National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) unveiled its largest cohort of “Moonshot Ventures” in NACO’s history, with 27 innovative companies representing eight provinces and territories.

The 2026 NACO Moonshot cohort is NACO’s premier, annual platform to identify and showcase high-potential, “investment-ready” seed-stage and Series A startups. The platform was launched in 2023.

"Canada's most ambitious founders are no longer waiting for markets to come to them, they are building toward AI and defence sovereignty, energy security and the country's quantum industry,” Claudio Rojas (phot at right), CEO of NACO, said in an email to Research Money.

Twenty-five of the 27 Moonshots ventures are actively raising capital, he said. “NACO's role is to make sure that capital, and the strategic networks that fuel our founders, finds these companies before they are forced to look elsewhere."

The Moonshot cohort represents 10 sectors across the 27 companies, which collectively have raised more than $140 million to date. Approximately 41 percent of the cohort is women-led.

“This is truly a national cohort,” said Calvin Henderson (photo at right), vice-president, industrial relations, at NACO. “The fact that high-growth ventures are emerging across the entirety of the country is a strong signal of the innovative potential of Canada.”

The 27 startups were selected from nearly 100 nominations, in a process that engaged NACO's national member network, angel groups, incubators, accelerators and early-stage funds operating in their local communities.

Ontario has 14 ventures in the Moonshot cohort, followed by Quebec (three), Alberta (three), British Columbia (two), Nova Scotia (two), and one each Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and Yukon. P.E.I. and Yukon are in the Moonshot cohort for the first time, 

Henderson said the 2026 cohort arrives as four national priorities for Canada have converged.

First is the federal government's first-ever defense industrial strategy, which has placed domestic deep tech capability at the center of national priorities.

Second is the $900-million National Quantum Strategy, aimed at actively building Canada's sovereign quantum ecosystem.

Third is the $750-million committed to venture capital support in Budget 2025 that addresses early growth stage funding gaps identified across the ecosystem.

The fourth national priority is the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade environment, which has sharpened focus on domestic commercialization and cross-border capital flows. 

What stands out about the 2026 Moonshot cohort is the diversity of high-growth companies across a wide range of sectors, Henderson noted.

The health tech and biotech sectors lead with seven ventures; clean tech has five; artificial intelligence with four; and advanced robotics, and Internet of Things and hardware with four more. Defence and dual-use technology leads has two ventures. And for the first time in the Moonshot cohort program’s history, there is a quantum venture.

Rounding out the cohort, there is one venture each in sport tech; consumer packaged goods and retail; fintech; and automotive and transportation.

“Broadly, the cohort aligns with national priorities on health, climate, sovereign AI, defence and dual-use technologies, quantum, and industrial commercialization,” Henderson said.
“When we talk about Canadian innovation meeting the moment, this is what that looks like in practice,” he added.

Moonshot startups are encountering similar challenges and opportunities

Despite the Moonshot cohort’s diversity, the company’s founders and CEOs, in responding to Research Money’s questions during a NACO webinar, shared a lot in common when it comes to opportunities and challenges encountered by Canadian startups.

The opportunities include the federal government’s new focus on building out defence supply chains, support from federal innovation programs, federal policy on electrification, and support from Canada’s network of accelerators.

The challenges include raising early-stage funding and venture capital at the commercialization stage, lack of procurement – especially by government as the “first customer,” – adoption of their innovation technologies within Canada, and finding international customers.

Canada has done a good job at providing early-stage funding, but it’s difficult to find sufficient venture capital once a company starts going into a commercial launch, said Dr. Abubaker Khalifa (photo at right), co-founder and chief operating officer of Ontario-based Moonrise Medical, which has developed ultra-miniaturized endoscopic imaging for use inside blood vessels and other neuroanatomy. 

Having an investment vehicle that can lead add-on investment “is really critical” at that stage, he said. “It’s taking sometimes a lot longer to raise that money because you're trying to find the lead investor.”

So having investment vehicles, whether it's via partnerships with some of the Canadian VCs, or directly via an investment vehicle by the Canadian government, will help accelerate the process, Khalifa said.

Also, for innovative medical technologies developed in Canada, it takes a long time for something new to be used by Canadian patients, because of the procurement process by hospitals and health care systems across the country, he said.  

Moonrise Medical ended up licensing the original IP from the U.S. to Canada, and building on further IP in Canada.

Khalifa, who’s an ICU doctor, said “it’s always a little bit saddening to me to see a lot of the Canadian technologies are not here in Canada. They actually first go to the U.S. and then come back to us later on.”

Khalifa said he hopes to see the BDC’s recently launched life sciences fund and other funds “really recognize the importance of supporting med-tech companies pre-FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) that are pre-revenue by nature to help excel and move forward in that direction.”

More government and hospital support for procuring innovative medical devices would help early-stage startups to pilot their technologies in Canadian hospital, and secure contracts within the Canadian ecosystem, he said.

An amputation happens every 30 seconds globally and 40 percent of the people having amputations don’t know they have a disease that can be treated, Khalifa noted.

The real gap in funding for startups getting from the pilot technology to commercial deployment, said Heather Ward (photo at right), president and co-founder of Ontario-based Hyperion Global Energy. The company offers carbon recycling technology that captures waste industrial emissions and transforms them into high-value mineral commodities.

American investors see a lot of Canadian companies going to the U.S. to access the private capital available south of the border, she said.

“We have a great support system with accelerators across Canada,” she added.

“But I think cash is really king when you're scaling a company. So getting more cash in hands of founders is very needed, especially in our stages of growth,” Ward said.

All of Hyperion’s investors are Canadian and the company has raised just over $4 million to date. The company had support from NACO and from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Program.

Hyperion has built its system in Canada, along with its domestic supply chains and infrastructure. “We’ve been able to really leverage some of the assets that we have here in Canada,” Ward said.

Sabina Bruehlmann (photo at right), co-founder and CEO of Alberta-based Nimble Science, agreed, saying: “What we need to do is make sure that the financial win stays in Canada, which means that we need the investors to be Canadian investors, particularly at the early stages where you can get large pieces of the company.”

Nimble Science offers a precision medicine platform combining a novel home kit for endoscopy-quality intestinal sampling with multi-omic analysis, transforming gastrointestinal tract care from plate to bedside

Startups are supported really well by the Canadian government, including through the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit program that helps attract foreign investors, Bruehlmann said.

Also, “we're able to easily bring in top tier data scientists from around the world and immigrate them easily into Canada, which is amazing. That fortifies us in the view of international investors.”

Nimble Science's cap table is full of funds from Japan, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Europe., she said.

However, “We have a really hard time getting any Canadian investors to understand the opportunity and to take the risk,” she noted. “So I think the government needs to focus on incentives and education and programs to help those early-stage investments.”

Canadian companies often find initial success in other countries

Lark Meadow (photo at right), co-founder and CEO of Nova Scotia-based Aeon Blue, said his company was invited by the Canadian government to move here from the U.S.

“So instead of going to the United States, we actually left, which was probably one of the best decisions we ever could have made for our company is coming to Canada,” she said.

Aeon Blue makes jet fuel from seawater that can be a drop-in replacement for fossil fuel in any airplane.

The company spent about a year before coming to Canada creating relationships with all the non-dilutive funding support programs available in the country, Meadow said.

Canada needs to create a single-point organization with team that can shepherd a startup through that funding support ecosystem, which would save founders a lot of time finding the maze of different programs and establishing the relationships, she said.

It is difficult, especially for hard tech and deep tech, to access VC funding, which prefers to come in at the post-pilot stage, Meadow said.

“So being able to have an organization, the government, that could really assist with bringing a company through that process, and helping with all of those non-dilutive opportunities would definitely help,” she said.

She pointed to Emissions Reduction Alberta, through its Future Fuels Challenge, as one of the only organizations Aeon Blue has found that will provide significant capital for a clean fuels project at the commercialization stage.

Shirook Ali, founder and CEO of Ontario-based Ecosystems Informatics, said the company has faster traction globally, including in the U.S. and the Middle East, than from the public sector in Canada.

Ecosystems Informatics offers AI-powered environmental intelligence helping industry and cities detect emissions, reduce losses, ensure compliance and improve operational performance at scale.

There is a big gap in Canada in moving from ideation and minimum viable product to commercialization, she said.

The private sector and the public sector are used to doing things in a certain ways, “so they don’t really buy from companies like us that are small and have yet to become bigger companies.

So for a climate tech company, earning revenue even in the few hundreds thousands of dollar is crucial as they’re maturing, Ali said.

But Canadian investors are conservative, especially in investing in hardware components, she added. “For that piece, we need more government support. And that support needs to come over time. It needs to be consistent.”

“They can't support us for the first two years and then say, ‘Where's the revenue after that?’ So that's where we find the gap that suddenly we are left alone.”

Kevin Stadnyk (photo at right), is co-founder and CEO of Ontario-based Obruta Space Solutions, a defense and dual-use venture offering turnkey autonomous last-mile spacecraft navigation and self-driving for spacecraft.

Stadnyk said he has seen governments in other countries act as the first customer for many startups in aerospace and defense.

That's only something that we're now seeing [as] Canada transition towards and move down that direction,” with procurement being modernized and domestic technologies being prioritized within Canada, he said.

Major changes need to be made nationwide to help unlock later stage capital and keep companies in Canada, Stadnyk said. “I think a push for Canadian government backing at the earlier stages as a customer, and then supporting the capital markets to keep companies here and help them grow and thrive, will be extremely important in the coming years.”

Dan Lafferty (photo at right), is founder and CEO of Variablegrid, which offers adaptive power controllers for home electrification Rafferty said the federal government’s $5,000 rebate for consumers purchasing electrical vehicles, along with the government’s policy to green Canada’s electricity grid, “has been a huge bonus for us to stay in Canada.”

“There has been a lot of pressure from our investors to move over to the US, but we are actively staying in Canada, especially [with] the headwinds of electrification in the U.S.,” he said.

“Having that strong policy on EV, electrification and carbon credits and encouragement to continue to do the compliance carbon credits, which the federal government is doing, has been huge for Variable Grid in keeping us in Canada,” he added.

NACO’s 2026 Moon Shot Ventures

Health and biotech group:

• Moonrise Medical from Ontario, co-founded by chief operating officer Abubaker Khalifa, an AI-capable vascular ultrasound platform that automates imaging and decision support, enabling point of care diagnosis to prevent avoidable amputations. Moonrise Medical is planning to make its submission for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval this year. An amputation happens every 30 seconds globally and 40 percent of the people having amputations don’t know they have a disease that can be treated, Khalifa noted. “These are massive numbers that we are hoping to help alleviate in Canada and beyond globally as well with a lot of the evidence and the research that we were able to put together around our work.”
• Vena Medical from Ontario, co-founded by CEO Michael Phillips, which offers ultra-miniaturized endoscopic imaging for use inside blood vessels and other neuroanatomy. Their Health Canada-approved micro-angioscope is the first device worldwide to deliver full-color, real-time imaging inside neurovascular, coronary, and peripheral vessels.
• Pharma in silica from Quebec, founded by president François Arcand, offering precision chemotherapy that selectively poisons tumours while sparing patients the maiming side effects of conventional chemotherapy.
• Kare Chemical Technologies from Ontario, cofounded by chief operating officer Kareem Abdul-Rashid, a catalytic platform for synthesizing cannabinoids, supporting scalable production of drugs and the development of new treatments for epilepsy, pain, anxiety, and depression.
• HTuO Biosciences from British Columbia, founded by CEO Anthony Fejes, a bioscience company operating at the intersection of physics, chemistry and computer science to develop advanced computational methods for drug discovery.
• Nimble Science from Alberta, co-founded by CEO Sabina Bruehlmann, a precision medicine platform combining a novel home kit for endoscopy-quality intestinal sampling with multi-omic analysis, transforming gastrointestinal care from plate to bedside. Nimble Science has been selling the platform to large multinationals and is doing clinical trial work in Canada and finding patients for those companies. The company is now using that data to develop clinical tools in Canada.
• Fibra from Ontario, founded by CEO Parnian Majid, offering patented smart underwear using textile sensors and AI for women's reproductive health monitoring.

Cleantech group:

• Opalia from Quebec, co-founded by CEO Jennifer Côté, developing cell-based dairy products designed to deliver quality consumers expect while accelerating the transition to a more sustainable food system.
• Aurea Technologies from Nova Scotia, founded by CEO Cat Adelay, offering portable personal-scale wind turbines built to power camping, emergency response, and frontline operations off-grid.
• Hyperion Global Energy from Ontario, co-founded by president Heather Ward, offering patented tandem carbon recycling technology that captures waste industrial emissions and transforms them into high-value mineral commodities for a $300 billion global market. Hyperion is piloting its technology globally with Lafarge AMRI at is plant near Kingston, Ont. to make lower-carbon concrete to build Canadian infrastructure.
• Aeon Blue from Nova Scotia, co-founded by CEO Lark Meadow, a process for turning seawater into jet fuel at fossil parity with co-products every synthetic fuel producer needs to scale into 13 million tons of mandated demand globally. Aeon Blue is building its pilot plant in Nova Scotia through a joint venture with Eskasoni Mi'kmaq First Nation, and plans to have its first fuel ready by the fourth quarter of this year. “Politically, what's happening with the jet fuel raising in price and flights being cancelled across the world, really, there are a lot of companies coming to us saying, ‘When can you build? Because we want to buy,’” Meadow said.
• LITE-1 from British Columbia, co-founded by CEO Roya Aghigi, replacing petrochemical dyes with high-performance colors grown from microorganisms, redefining one of the world's most polluting industries. The colours used in many products are toxic and a lot of U.S. states are now banning a lot of synthetic colours across the supply chain, Aghigi said. “Over the past year, we have a lot of very major customers across the world from Asia, Europe and the United states coming to us and actually asking us to help them to develop [our technology] for their very specific needs,” she said. LITE-1 has over 15 letters-of-interest and 10 pilots currently running, to deploy its technology in products from textiles to food to cosmetics.

AI group:

• Fireweed from Yukon, co-founded by CEO Cole Robulack, sovereign AI infrastructure for First Nations and public institutions, enabling secure, governed and culturally aligned use of data, language and knowledge systems.
• Tractile from Prince Edward Island, co-founded by CEO Jordan Rose, an AI operating system for food and beverage manufacturers, giving them full operational visibility and enabling growth without scaling administrative overhead.
• Ultimari from Alberta, founded by Josh Malate, an AI-powered platform that streamlines regulatory and permitting processes to accelerate major infrastructure projects across power production, mining, utilities, and oil and gas.
• Masterpiece X from Ontario, co-founded by CEO Jonathan Gagné, with WorldEngen, the first 3D AI that automates 3D scene production for gaming and interactive media, cutting scene creation time from 148 hours to three hours, with quality doubling every 60 days

Advanced robotics, Internet of Things, and hardware group:

• Acrylic Robotics from Quebec, founded by CEO Chloë Ryan, translating human imagination into painted artwork at scale, combining AI, robotics and culture.
• ForceN from Ontario, founded by CEO Robert Brooks offering, force and torque sensing and intelligence for physical AI, enabling next-generation robotics across surgical, industrial, nuclear and unstructured environments.
• TAVE from Manitoba, founded by CEO Noah Polanksi, an AI-driven entertainment platform for businesses that detects commercials in real time and replaces them with in-house promotions, licensed content, or higher-value advertising.
• Variablegrid from Ontario, co-founded by CEO Dan Lafferty, offering adaptive power controllers for home electrification that lowers home charging barriers and accelerates electric vehicle adoption. Variablegrid’s biggest customer currently is Kia, to help charge EVs at home. With the EV rebate being reinstated in Canada and increasing gasoline costs, “we’re seeing a huge uptick in the need for our product and we’re looking at additional original equipment manufacturers now,” Lafferty said.

Other ventures spanning six sectors:

• Marlow from Ontario, a consumer-packaged goods and retail venture co-founded by CEO Nadia Ladak, a modern period care brand built on 100-percent organic, toxin-free products, best known for creating the first tampon lubricant. Marlow started selling online, business-to-business, and also through Amazon, and is on track to do close to $5 million in revenue this year, Ladak said. The company did a pilot with Shoppers Drug Mart, was a partner at the Juno Music Awards, and is starting to expand into the retail side, including in the U.S.
• Startup Fuel from Ontario, a FinTech venture founded by CEO Ashley Martis, an AI-powered due diligence, ratings, and valuation platform that helps investors assess startups faster, reduce bias, and make sharper venture decisions.
• X-Atoms from Ontario, a quantum venture founded by CEO Diana Virgovicova, a deep-tech company using AI and quantum chemistry to discover new light-activated materials for solving some of the world's toughest environmental and industrial challenges. 
• Ecosystem Informatics from Ontario, a defense and dual-use venture founded by CEO Shirook Ali, AI-powered environmental intelligence helping industry and cities detect emissions, reduce losses, ensure compliance, and improve operational performance at scale. Ecosystem Informatics has done projects with the cities of Baltimore, Los Angeles and Chattanooga, as well as pilots in the Middle East.
• Scorched Ice from Alberta, a sport tech, AI, and Internet of Things venture founded by CEO John Lowe, the world's first skating intelligence platform, turning every pair of skates into a source of ground-truth performance data for athletes and teams. Scorched Ice’s technology is on about 1,000 hockey players across North America, and the company has signed its first NHL team its first NCAA team, and is in the process of signing 50 team dals in Canada.
• Obruta Space Solutions from Ontario, a defense and dual-use venture founded by Kevin Stadnyk, offering turnkey autonomous last-mile spacecraft navigation, self-driving for spacecraft, and delivering space sustainability at one tenth the cost of legacy systems.
• Mesomat from Ontario, an automotive and transportation venture co-founded by CEO Paul Fowler, an AI-powered tire intelligence platform that helps vehicle fleets automate operations and cover two largest costs, fuel and tires.

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