There’s no shortage of demand for innovative solutions. The impacts of the climate crisis continue to increase in both frequency and severity. The ongoing trade turmoil has revealed the urgent need to shore up Canada’s supply chain of goods. And as power-hungry data centres proliferate, we need to find new reliable sources of energy.
There’s also no shortage of challenges in bringing tangible solutions to market. But despite the rocky economy and shifting geopolitical landscape, these startup leaders have managed to land big founding rounds, line up promising pilot projects and break into new regions.
Here are just a few of the innovators who are primed for major gains in 2026.
Ahmad Ghahreman gives critical minerals a second life
In 2025, Cyclic Materials became the first Canadian company to make MIT Technology Review’s Climate Tech Companies to Watch, an annual list of the most promising climate technology firms on the planet. The Toronto startup has developed a sustainable approach to rare earth mining: it recovers and recycles rare earth elements and critical minerals from magnets in wind turbines, electric-vehicles and electronics at the end of their life cycle. The market for critical minerals is projected to skyrocket to $586 billion (U.S.) by 2032 as demand for batteries and renewable energy infrastructure continues to rise. And not only does Cyclic Materials’s method of “urban mining” drastically lower carbon emissions and reduce water use, it also builds a sustainable supply chain. (China currently processes more than 95 per cent of the world’s rare earth elements).
Year in review: In 2025, Cyclic Materials announced plans to build a $25-million (U.S.) research and development facility in Kingston, Ont., and committed more than $20 million (U.S.) to its first American commercial facility in Mesa, Ariz. “There’s a real shift happening,” says co-founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman. “Companies are no longer asking if they need recycled rare earths — they’re asking how quickly they can get them.”
What’s next: Operations at the Kingston R&D centre and the Mesa facility will begin in 2026. Ghahreman estimates the Mesa plant will be able to process 25,000 tonnes of end-of-life materials each year.
Wendy Naimark sets her sights on better eye care
One in seven Canadians live with vision-threatening eye conditions. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe vision loss in people over 60, and while treatable with regular injections, only 54 per cent of patients adhere to their treatment schedule. Wendy Naimark and the team at Ripple Therapeutics are working on a better way to deliver this care. The clinical-stage biotech company is developing therapeutics that can be made into tiny biodegradable implants, which undergo “a slow, sustained release, sort of like a bar of soap dissolving over time,” says Naimark. Trials show the Ripple implant reduces a patient’s treatment burden by 81 per cent, extending the time between injections from every four to six weeks to eight months between treatments.
Highlights: In November, Ripple announced a collaboration with Bausch + Lomb to continue developing its implants.
What’s next: Enabling preclinical study and development of its AMD programs. “It’s exciting to think about the potential to improve patient outcomes and reduce treatment burden,” says Naimark.
Andrew Murray is powering up communities
During the pandemic, Andrew Murray would go for long walks with his father in different parts of Prince Edward Island. On their rambles, they kept noticing abandoned water mills. And that gave the entrepreneur an idea — what if those mills could provide renewable energy for those communities again, 21st-century style? He founded Aslan Renewables and devised AI-powered autonomous turbine systems that can be installed at former dam sites. As governments look to decarbonize the electricity grid, these small-scale hydro projects allow communities to harness river and tidal energy and repurpose existing infrastructure into sources of clean power.
Milestones: “Despite being a tough year for ventures, Aslan had a breakout season in 2025,” says Murray. The company won the Climate Impact Innovations Challenge in Jakarta, landed $1.25 million in pre-seed funding and finished the fabrication of its first commercial power plant.
What’s next: “Canada urgently needs new sources of clean baseload power,” says Murray. “And Aslan power plants will be ready to deliver at scale.” In 2026, the startup plans to increase manufacturing capacity in Ontario, roll out turbines across the country and launch a multi-village pilot project in Indonesia.
Jenny Lemieux helps trim a fruit farmer’s workload
Fruit farming is very different from growing crops such as wheat or corn, explains Jenny Lemieux, co-founder and CEO of Vivid Machines: “Every tree or vine is unique in how vigorous it is, how much fruit it can hold, how much energy it can devote to making large fruit. Those differences add up to significant per-plant variability in yield and quality.” Fruit growers also face acute labour shortages, tighter regulations and extreme weather events that make operations even more unpredictable. Lemieux and her team have developed an AI tool to remove some of the guesswork. Its device can be mounted on existing farm equipment and scan the thousands — even millions — of plants and make recommendations in real-time. “That precision helps growers determine the right place and time to take actions like pruning, irrigation and fertilizer,” she says. A recent independent study by Pennsylvania State University found that the tool can cut chemical use by around 40 per cent.
Key stats: The company is now analyzing more than 100,000 plants every day across four continents — North and South America, Europe and Australia.
What’s next: The company is eyeing vineyards in Europe as its next market.
Sam Mugel is shrinking AI’s environmental impact
AI tools like ChatGPT and Sora require shocking amounts of energy to run. Last year, data centres used 1.5 per cent of the world’s energy consumption, and that amount is projected to double by 2030. Multiverse Computing, a Spanish and Canadian company with offices in Toronto, is helping machine learning do more with less. Using quantum-inspired AI-model compression, its latest product, CompactifAI, can reduce the size of large language models by up to 95 per cent. The result is AI models that perform as well as the original with half the energy, says Sam Mugel, the company’s chief technology officer. Multiverse’s platform hosts such models as Meta’s Llama4, OpenAI’s GPT-OSS20B and DeepSeek R1.
Big wins in 2025: Last year, Multiverse secured $215 million (U.S.) in funding, and grew its team to 290 from 150 employees.
What’s next: A number of the new initiatives the company is lining up are centred around edge computing, which enables data to be processed closer to where it’s being generated and “opens doors to new capabilities and applications,” says Mugel.
Youssef Helwa prevents post-surgery complications
Youssef Helwa’s mother was a surgeon, and he grew up hearing stories about her sometimes harrowing work. Globally, an estimated 4.2 million people die within 30 days of surgery, and while the rate of post-operative deaths in Canada is relatively low (1.6 per cent), post-surgical leaks happen in about 20 per cent of pancreatic resection surgeries, and five per cent of those patients will die. Those stories sparked a desire to find a solution that could improve those odds. Helwa founded FluidAI in 2014, and developed advanced monitoring technology and AI tools that provide insights into patients’ recovery by analyzing vital signs, fluids and other electronic health records. “Everything we build is about creating meaningful impact for patients and the clinicians who care for them,” says Helwa.
Accelerated growth: The Kitchener-Waterloo startup is working with more than 35 medical centres, including Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic and Toronto’s University Health Network. In September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of FluidAI’s Origin, an AI-powered device that proactively flags post-surgical leaks.
What’s next: The company is preparing to enter the U.S. market and expand its portfolio of products.
Darcy Tuer helps people access their hard-earned cash
After years of focusing on the U.S. market, Calgary-based fintech company ZayZoon has found new success here at home with its service that provides an alternative to payday loans. Through ZayZoon’s Earned Wage Access (EWA) program, companies can offer workers the ability to access a portion of their earned wages before their regular payday. “ZayZoon is having fantastic traction in Canada,” says CEO and co-founder Darcy Tuer, noting partnerships with Scotiabank and Interac; the company has also integrated with payroll companies ADP, Payworks and Workday. “Our growth reflects a broader shift,” says Tuer. “Employers are recognizing that financial flexibility is no longer a perk; it’s a core part of supporting today’s workforce.”
Milestones: ZayZoon was named the 66th fastest-growing company in North America on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list this year — since 2022, the business has grown a whopping 1,487 per cent.
What’s next: Expanding its platform beyond EWA and creating a financial operating system for deskless and frontline workers. “We’re building products that help people not only bridge short-term cash flow gaps, but also improve access to other financial products and improve long-term financial health,” says Tuer.
Amanda Hall lessens the impact of lithium extraction
With a market approaching $8 billion (U.S.), lithium has become a vital component in electrical vehicles and long-term energy storage solutions. Traditional methods used to extract lithium, however, exact a heavy toll on the environment, including water shortages, soil degradation and close to 1.3 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually. Amanda Hall, founder of the Calgary startup Summit Nanotech, has developed a better, faster and lighter way of extracting lithium. By using absorption, ion exchange and solvent extraction, the company can capture lithium ions at higher concentrations while also reducing freshwater use by 30 per cent.
2025 milestones: In March, Summit secured $36.5 million in funding, which also opened partnerships with investors in Japan and Korea. CEO and founder, Amanda Hall, says the money accelerated the construction of its demonstration plant in Santiago, Chile, and enabled the company to develop its engineering program.
What’s next: “What excites us most is being on the verge of deploying a commercial-scale direct lithium extraction system and proving to the market that it can be done reliably and cost-efficiently,” says Hall.
Michael Peirone improves accessibility across the globe
Michael Peirone and his team at Victoria Hand Project (VHP) are working to improve access to prosthetics arms. The Victoria, B.C.-based charity has developed a method of 3D-printing prosthetics, which as Peirone explains, makes “them more accessible in communities that don’t have the resources to purchase or make traditional prosthetics.” VHP teams up with health clinics around the world, providing them with the technology (printers, 3D scanners, tools and supplies) and the training so that they can print and fit prosthetics at a much lower price. (While a traditional prosthetics can cost several thousand dollars, a VHP device can be made for around $200.)
Global reach: So far, VHP has worked in 11 countries, including Nepal, Guatemala and Haiti, outfitting more than 450 people. Its largest project has been in Ukraine, where 150 people injured in the war have received prosthetic arms. In November, the organization started a project in Egypt to help Palestinians receive prosthetic care, with support from Canadian charity Life for Relief.
What’s next: Expanding projects in Kenya, Nepal and other areas with low resources, says Peirone. “There is such a large need for prosthetic care in Gaza, and we hope to help them when it is safe to do so.”
Bethany Ladd is turning carbon dioxide into rock
“Most of the Earth’s carbon is stored in rock,” explains Bethany Ladd, who is the co-founder and head of operations at Arca Climate Technologies. “Harnessing that natural process can remove enough atmospheric carbon dioxide to stabilize the climate. But it happens too slowly to be meaningful without some help.” The B.C.-based startup speeds up that process by breaking down mine waste to expose minerals like magnesium or calcium, which absorb the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and capture it permanently. In 2023, the company began working at BHP’s Mt Keith Nickel West Mine in Australia, using a $1.25-million grant from the B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy to test its air-to-rock carbon mineralization process.
Carbon credits captured: In October, Microsoft agreed to purchase nearly 300,000 tonnes of carbon removals from Arca over the next 10 years.
What’s next: The company is exploring project opportunities at mines in Western Australia.
Daniel Reale-Chin writes about technology for MaRS. Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star, has partnered with MaRS to highlight innovation in Canadian companies.
