Scaling Canadian Global Champions

In September 2025, the federal government convened an AI Strategy Task Force for a 30-day sprint to shape Canada's AI approach. Several members of the Build Canada network served on the task force and submitted memos addressing themes central to Build Canada: reducing friction for entrepreneurs, reforming government incentives, building the conditions for Canadian companies to compete globally, and creating moonshots that would transform the economy. Following submissions, the government requested a 30-day hold on publication, which has now passed. For the taskforce Mike submitted three memos on Scaling Champions, Commercialization and Research & Talent. Below Mike is sharing his memo on scaling champions to contribute to the public conversation on how Canada can lead in AI.

Summary

Canada produces world-class research but struggles to turn it into world-class companies. Canadian startups do well in their early stages. But they hit a wall when they try to grow past $100 million in revenue. At that point, the system abandons them.

This "scaling gap." comes from five problems: a lack of late-stage investment capital, a small market for government and corporate customers willing to buy Canadian, low supply of experienced senior leaders, high friction access to cutting-edge research, and limited computing power for building AI systems.

The solution is a national mission — "10^x." Canada should aim to create 1 centacorn (a company worth $100 billion or more), 10 decacorns (worth $10 billion+), and 100 unicorns (worth $1 billion+) within 10 years. If successful, this could add $45–70 billion to Canada's annual GDP and create over 200,000 high-skilled jobs.

To get there will require major changes. First, create a Canadian Prosperity Fund—a government-backed investment fund that can write $50–500 million checks into promising Canadian companies. Second, make the federal government a "first customer" by directing departments to buy Canadian technology. Third, fast-track immigration and offer financial incentives to attract experienced leaders from abroad. Fourth, build "AI Factories"—data centers with thousands of specialized computer chips—and give Canadian companies priority access. Fifth, reform the tax system to match American incentives for investors and founders.

The AI era represents the biggest technological shift since the printing press. Canada helped pioneer the research behind it. Now comes the harder part: turning that research into companies that can compete and win on the global stage.

10ˣ: Scaling Canadian Global Champions

1. Background

As a Canadian, I am honoured to have been selected in the AI taskforce. I am a serial entrepreneur born and educated in Canada and I have co-founded / built 5 companies in different industries over nearly 3 decades. My day job is a tech company founder & CEO (League.com). My professional interests are almost exclusively in the Canadian academic, innovation and technology ecosystems.

I have made dozens of direct & indirect investments in private technology companies, including Canadian champions like Ada (Series A), Xanadu (Seed), Cohere (Seed). I sit on the boards of Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), Vector Institute, Purpose Financial, and I am the Chair of the Board of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. My primary interest here is to share recommendations from my experience, and the input of ~30 leaders / institutions. It is by no means complete (Go Jays!) or sufficiently detailed but hopefully can be used effectively.

2. The Problem

Historically, Canada is excellent at research and scientific discovery. However, we under index in the commercialization of our research. In the last 15 years in particular, I have seen Canada make significant strides in solving for early stage company formation and funding. CDL's stats on company formation and value creation are representative of the success we are seeing. CDL has been a critical catalyst in closing the early-stage judgment gap, which has helped unlock early-stage funding. It remains a work in progress, and that will not be the focus of this memo.

We need more Global Champions.

Investing in and scaling global tech and AI champions isn't just about creating big companies—it's about securing Canada's long-term economic sovereignty, competitiveness, and prosperity. Countries that produce their own decacorns and centacorns retain high-value IP, talent, data advantages, and wealth that would otherwise flow to foreign platforms. They anchor entire innovation ecosystems that drive productivity across all sectors.

To solve this problem, we need companies from Series A to scale up, that continue to grow past 100 million in revenues, towards $1B+, and extend beyond Canada to the US and global markets.

The most critical failure of our ecosystem is its inability to support companies as they scale. As one stakeholder noted, "once Canadian companies get to a certain stage, we abandon them." This failure is concentrated in the "B, C, D+" rounds of funding. Canada performs well at the seed stage but faces a significant drop off at every stage beyond that. As an entrepreneur, I have personally felt and lived this problem for at least 2 decades.

Today we are in the greatest technological transition since Gutenberg. We are in a global race and it is more important than ever that we solve this scaling problem. We must create Canadian based Global Champions in the AI era.

3. Objectives: Achieving 10^X

Achieving 10^x: Canada should launch a National "1 - 10 - 100" Strategy to Scale Champions.

I recommend we set national targets to create 1 'AI' centacorn, 10 'AI' decacorns (EV > $10B), and another 100 'AI' unicorns (EV>$1B) within the next 10 years.

If Canada produced 1 centacorn, 10 decacorns, and 100 unicorns, the long-run effect would likely add $45B–$70B in annual GDP, create ~225k–330k direct high-skilled jobs, and generate $3–$5B per year in corporate tax revenue once mature. This would shift Canada's tech sector from "mid-tier global player" to a top-5 innovation economy in the world. The positive downstream impacts, including prosperity multiplier effects would be felt in the Canadian economy for the next generation at least.

If Canada not only creates a centacorn + decacorns + unicorns, but those companies' AI products are widely adopted across Canadian industries, the economic impact extends far beyond tech. It becomes a national productivity story—the kind that can shift long-term GDP trajectory, competitiveness, wages, and even population retention. This is the kind of shift I've dreamed we could make in the tech sector, and it is possible.

We must capitalize on the world changing research and discovery that Canada has developed over the last 2 decades.

This is our opportunity as much as anyone else's.

This is about a sustainable national growth strategy, not a tech strategy. This goes beyond becoming a top-5 innovation economy in the world. If Canadian companies have domestic access to world-leading AI innovation—not just as users, but as co-developers and early adopters—the impact is economy-wide and transformative, e.g Tech-sector-only impact: +~$50B to GDP; Economy-wide productivity impact is much bigger: +10–20% GDP lift over a decade

4. Recommendations

We are aiming to build Canadian Global Champions, with >$100B, >$10B and >$1B in enterprise value. In my experience, scaling requires the flow of 3 critical ingredients: Capital, Customers and Talent. In creating AI Champions, I am going to add 2 other critical ingredients: Infrastructure and Research. I present my recommendations in the form of answers to the Task Force's questions:

Question 1: How does Canada get to more and stronger AI industrial champions? What supports would make our champions own the podium?

The primary barriers to scaling are a critical lack of:

1. Late-Stage Domestic Capital. Today we do not have sufficient capital formation to support our scale-ups. There are few Canadian growth equity funds. Most growth rounds are supported by foreign investors. Many scale-ups are starved for capital, and if they do fundraise, they raise less cash at lower valuations than their US counterparts. They are left with less opportunity to take less risk and less opportunity to pursue ambitious plans. Meanwhile, we have some of the largest capital pools in our Maple 8 pension funds. For example, CPPIB, one of the largest and most sophisticated funds in the world, does not invest directly in Canadian scale-ups. They require mainly a US investor (GP) to lead before they can participate. Imagine that! Our future depends on a US investor telling our largest Canadian fund that it should / should not invest in one of our own. That is an externality that we must address.

2. Anchor Contracts. Today, both our government and our private sector companies are less likely to buy emerging technology from a Canadian scaleup. We must fix this in the AI Era. Most Canadian founders report winning their first enterprise contracts in the US before any Canadian enterprise will buy. The same is true in the public sector, although few Canadian scaleups ever succeed to win Canadian government contracts. Meanwhile, our Canadian government is seen among the least efficient in the world.

3. Experienced Talent. While there is often an abundance of general purpose junior talent, there is often insufficient specialized talent, especially in the category of Senior VP+ "leadership" talent that have experience scaling.

Barriers that are somewhat unique to AI, include the steady flow and availability of world class research, and infrastructure.

1. Research. In my role at the Vector Institute, I see the state of the art evolving at much faster rates than in other sectors. We need to ensure that Canadian companies have access to a pipeline of this research.

2. Infrastructure. To create leading AI companies, you need data and compute. Data is often 'locked' by the private sector or government. To create substantive models, you need available GPUs; or AI Factories with the available compute to enable our companies.

To build champions, we must address these challenges. Instead of funding a plethora of programs for struggling businesses, we must "concentrate resources on our winners". Here is a list of recommendations.

Recommendation: Define a National Priority to "Build Champions". The government must make it a national priority to "build Canadian Global Champions (CGCs). This includes a clear definition for CGCs and candidate CGCs established by the 10^X Council. This requires a concerted effort to provide these select companies with "capital, customer contracts (including government), and R&D reimbursements.

Recommendation: Establish clear national targets, and performance indicators. We must set public targets to achieve 10^X including annual targets, leading and lagging indicators. Track and publish data on CGCs and prospective CGCs.

Recommendation: Governance. We must appoint a leader to form a Canadian 10^x Council. A national, industry-led governance board with private-sector participation, mandated to accelerate responsible AI strategy, and the achievement of our 10 year targets.

Recommendation: Launch The Canadian Prosperity Fund (CPF), a sovereign wealth fund that is supported by the public sector, but led by Canadians in the private sector. We can adopt a "Tibi Initiative" model from France. The French government acted as a "facilitator" to marshal commitments from its institutional investors (banks, insurers, pension funds) to create a multi-billion euro fund specifically for late-stage domestic tech. We must do the same with our "Maple 8" pension funds to create one or more domestic, billion-dollar-plus growth funds capable of leading scale-up rounds. The fund should have: A mandate to invest in only named CGCs; Ability to write $50-$500M cheques, and follow-on; At least $5B in size, refreshed every 2-4 years; Led by a leader with private sector experience leading similar funds like QIF (Qatar), PIF (Saudi) - note there are Canadians leading these funds worldwide; LPs include the federal government, our largest pensions and banks, including government support / guarantee to encourage funds to participate, including government tax credit to encourage corporates to participate. While many have suggested legislation to require that the Maple 8 participate, I hope that is not required. I do believe they must be active participants. At a minimum, I would like to see public disclosure and performance indicators available online.

Recommendation: Launch the Canadian Federal Digital Transformation Program (CFDTP). The Federal Government should identify and create a live registry of transformation projects in every government department, in order to modernize and drive government efficiency, prioritizing buying from CGC companies. This could extend to provinces also. This should include: A Buy Canadian First mandate, with exceptions and overall target of >33% of eligible funds going to CGCs; A standardized program definition, registration & prequalification process; A standardized contract, and fast track (30 day) contracting process; An initial contract for every CGC that matches one or more projects; Transparent publishing of contracts / implementations / performance / results; Follow-on contracts based on performance.

Recommendation: Canadian Fastrack Leadership Talent Program. We don't have enough experienced leaders to support our CGCs, but we know that there are many in the US, including Canadians in the US and globally that fit the bill. Support CGCs to hire senior leadership talent with: a) fast track 30 day immigration if necessary, and b) repatriation cost supplement up to $50K/leader, and c) annual salary top-up to provide attractive offers to win expert leadership talent.

Recommendation: Canadian AI Factory Program. a) Fasttrack the building of AI Factories beginning in 2026, (in public-private partnership) each with a minimum of 10,000 GPUs, and make them available to CGCs. While these can be used by anchor public and private sector tenants, CGCs should be prioritized. b) Leverage Canadian National AI Institutes to create anonymized public data pools in critical industries (healthcare, financial services, energy…) mimicking Vector's GEMINI program (healthcare, Ontario) or the UK's biobank.

Recommendation: Canadian AI Research → CGC Pipeline. Ensure 10 year funding for National AI Institutes (Vector, MILA, Amii) at least $15M/year each to ensure all Canadian companies, including CGCs have a research pipeline available to them.

Recommendation: Fund a Creative Destruction Lab-run SCALE Program. a) To track all prospective CGCs and CGCs; a national database to support policy decisions. b) To support acceleration from Series A/B → B/C/D/E.

Question 2: What changes to Canada's landscape of business incentives would accelerate sustainable scaling of AI ventures?

To solve the capital and contract gap, we must realign our business incentives.

a. Procurement: Create the Domestic "First Customer"

Canada is "almost at the bottom of the OECD for buying from our own companies". In 2022, Canada's business R&D spending was 0.9% of GDP versus an OECD average near 2% and top performers like Korea and Israel much higher. Canada sits in the bottom third among OECD economies. When looking at GERD (total R&D across business, government and higher ed) it confirms that the private sector gap dominates the shortfall.

Recommendation: Set National Procurement Targets for buying from Canadian technology companies as a % of revenue and % of spend. Track and report.

Recommendation: Establish A Buy Canadian First Policy for Government, that can be emulated by the private sector. We need a "robust 'Buy Canadian First' AI procurement policy" that prioritizes Canadian-owned and operated companies for government contracts. Experiment with programs that can test / scale.

Recommendation: Canada First Customer Program. We want all Canadian AI companies to win their first contract with a Canadian corporation or government entity. Create a national registry of AI projects to accelerate discovery and matching. Tax Incentives for Canadian Corporates: Provide a tax credit of 10% for every dollar spent through the CFCP.

b. Programmatic Improvements

Modernize SR&ED. The SR&ED program is important but is misaligned to this agenda.

Recommendation: Tie SR&ED to Domestic Spend. A "revamp of SR&ED" must include stipulations that the dollars are "spent here" in Canada, on local talent and infrastructure.

Recommendation: Increase SR&ED Reimbursement rates by 10pts.

Recommendation: Decouple SR&ED from Control. Allow companies to retain access to enhanced SR&ED credits based on "mind and management" and R&D presence in Canada, not just shareholder nationality.

Recommendation: SR&ED for CGCs. We recommend creating "Sizeable R&D grants" for CGC companies to "re-platform" and adopt an AI-first strategy, e.g. "$25M over 5 years".

Upgrade Scale AI. The Scale AI program is a nice start but needs an upgrade. Recommended policy upgrades: Grow by $1B per year to $5B in 5 years to accelerate AI innovation; Increase reimbursement to up to 66% of eligible program costs; Restrict to Canadian controlled Private Corporations building IP in Canada; Maintain a co-invest model overall, but allow for exceptions in novel areas.

c. Tax Incentives

We must "incentivize venture investing in CGCs or prospective CGCs". One of the most significant barriers is our uncompetitive capital gains tax environment.

Recommendation: Harmonize Capital Gains Tax rates with the US. Full stop.

Recommendation: Adopt a QSBS-Equivalent. The US Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) program offers investors a 100% capital gains exclusion up to "$10 million or 10 times the initial investment". Canada's equivalent (LCGE/QSBC) is only around "$1.25 million". We must "Match LCGE to QSBS" to encourage we get a flywheel effect from our CGCs.

Question 3: How can we best support AI companies to remain rooted in Canada while growing strength in global markets?

The goal is not to build a protected domestic market. "For Canadian AI companies to succeed they must compete and win globally". The challenge is ensuring they can do so from a Canadian headquarters. The government should be aligned to this objective.

a. Strategies for Global Scaling

Recommendation: Mandate EDC to Create Global Customers. i) Mandate Export Development Canada (EDC) to "set ambitious measurable targets for Canadian EXPORT GROWTH of AI companies". ii) Align trade commissioner program to achieve these targets, and manage performance accordingly iii) Increase funding to categories beyond travel, marketing etc.

Recommendation: Create a Dedicated "AI Export Acceleration Unit". This unit within EDC would be tasked to "proactively 'walk' Canadian AI firms into global markets and secure significant international deals.

b. Strategies for Long-Term Retention

The availability or lack of capital, talent and customers can be drivers for Founders to move their companies to the US or other jurisdictions. Assuming we are going to address this with many of the above recommendations, I have these additional recommendations.

Recommendation: CGC Founder Tax Exemption. Reward our CGC Champion Founders. Eliminate capital gains tax for founders selling common stock after a minimum 10 year hold period, as long as they remain a resident of Canada for at least another 5 years.

Recommendation: Champion Founders like "Team Canada". The government must play a role in elevating the status of entrepreneurship. Introduce an equivalent of the Kennedy Center Honours - the highest award for the performing arts in the US - for Founders in Canada. These would be annual awards recognizing significant or lifetime achievement.

Recommendation: Provide High-Level Access. The government must signal its commitment. Top CGC "Founders should have access to the PMO and key cabinet leaders like the Minister of AI & Digital Innovations's phone number. Cabinet should convene CGC founders at least quarterly.

Question 4: What lessons can we learn from countries that are successful at investment attraction in AI and tech?

Our "structural reliance on non-domestic capital" is a core vulnerability. We must adopt proven, best-in-class models from allied nations.

Lesson 1: USA (Procurement as Seed Capital).

‍Model: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR). The US government acts as the "MAJOR purchasers of early stage innovation".

Action: "Create a Canadian equivalent to the U.S. SBIR... programs". This would establish a fund to provide "non-dilutive funding and guaranteed early contracts", creating crucial market validation.

Lesson 2: USA (Tax Incentives for Venture).

‍Model: Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS).

Action: As stated above we must adopt a 100% capital gains exclusion to be competitive.

Lesson 3: Singapore (Sovereign, Patient Capital).

‍Model: Singapore's "third sovereign fund".

Action: We must address the "BCD round" gap. This requires creating a Canadian Prosperity Fund (sovereign wealth fund) as discussed above. This fund would pour money into our CGC winners. Like Singapore, this fund must have a "Strategic Technology" window with a "higher risk tolerance" for deep-tech AI and could be backstopped by the government.

Lesson 4: USA (Independent Policy Convenor).

‍Model: The Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) in the US.

Action: Create a Canadian version of SCSP—a "privately funded, non-partisan... thinktank and convening mechanism". This independent body would connect industry and policy "to work through political cycles" and strengthen long-term competitiveness.

5. Conclusion: A National Mission for Enduring Prosperity

Canada's paradox is clear: we are a global heavyweight in research and scientific discovery but a lightweight in commercialization. While our early-stage startup ecosystem is vibrant, we face a critical scaling gap, consistently failing to grow companies beyond the $100M revenue stage.

This failure is not accidental. It is the direct result of five clear barriers: a crippling deficit of late-stage domestic capital, a lack of government and corporate anchor contracts, a shortage of experienced senior talent, and, specific to AI, insufficient access to research pipelines and GPU infrastructure.

To bridge this chasm, Canada must pivot from passive support to an active, focused national mission to drive to 10^X. This strategy will concentrate our national will on creating one $100B+ centacorn, ten $10B+ decacorns, and one hundred $1B+ unicorn champions.

Achieving this requires going on the offensive: launching a sovereign wealth fund to deploy growth capital; transforming federal digital infrastructure to act as a committed first customer; creating an environment that attracts world-class senior leaders; investing decisively in sovereign GPU infrastructure; and modernizing our SR&ED and tax incentives to reward scaling. This is the blueprint for finally converting our nation's intellectual capital into enduring economic prosperity.

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