Waterloo Tech Highlights for February 2026
Our goal is to provide you with a monthly primer on significant news events from private Waterloo-based technology companies in 5 minutes or less.
Kuzu was acquired by Apple. The deal closed in October 2025 but got disclosed this month. The startup built fast, flexible graph databases and was led by an associate professor of Computer Science at UW.
Upside Robotics raised US$7.5M of funding in a round led by Plural that included Garage Capital, Entrepreneurs First and the founders of Clearpath Robotics.
Vena Medical announced their first US FDA Clearance for their camera along with $1.5M of funding from the Province of Ontario towards building a manufacturing center in Kitchener.
Intellijoint closed their latest Fiscal year over 40 on the Rule of 40 scale. They also received a $450k grant from the Province of Ontario.
CoeusAI landed a contract with the Netherlands North Sea Energy Project. They set up a Dutch office as well.
Voltera received $1.7M from FedDev (unclear if loan or grant) to help them expand local manufacturing capabilities.
DigitalEd has been acquired by Valsoft.
Chris’ Thoughts
The beautiful town of Revelstoke BC has a population of about 8,000 people. If you’re a skier or have driven the TransCanada, hopefully you’ve enjoyed a stay there. As a self-proclaimed lover of sourdough bread, it amazes me that there’s at least four sources of sourdough bread in Revelstoke that are all amazing. So amazing that they’re all superior to anything available in Waterloo Region despite a population 100x bigger – a larger market to sell into and a larger population base to find somebody who makes great bread. Similarly, there’s probably more people in the Parma region of Italy who understand how to make amazing cheese and cured ham than in all North America.
Maybe Revelstoke has a centuries-old history of making excellent baked goods. Maybe the water and elevation and temperature and winds and trade routes account for some or all this concentration of excellence as they do in Parma, Italy. But even if all these were true the differences end here.
The cheese and cured ham people in Italy have been scheming how to use their local excellence to expand the pie and build a moat with incredible success for almost 100 years, using their proximity as a strength and think beyond their borders. They’ve set up systems of protection and government decrees, later building IP around the name of the region getting it all ratified and enforced by the European Union.
Today Parmigiano Reggiano accounts for over 20% of the $16B global “parmesan” cheese market. The Prosciutto di Parma guys have done even better, with 32% of the $5B market. They sell less than 5% of their product locally, and most of that to tourists. They have managed to 100x the size of their market through collective branding and standardization, building a moat that could last for generations.
While it seems natural to do this kind of thing, it never starts that way. A hundred years ago a few rural cheesemakers who each thought they were better than the other and fought for the affections of a local marketplace. Now imagine them getting together to decide to put a significant amount of theirmarketing budget into a common pool to create a brand and standard. It’s not natural or conventional.
Imagine the local bakeries in Revelstoke getting together and building a “Revel-dough” bread and finding a way to turn that into an export market that gives them a 20x lift in revenues. Seems silly? Probably less silly than the dreams that some Italian Pig farmers had 100 years ago. If you can’t visit but want something better on offer, try an order of sourdough bread (or pizza dough) from Atome. They’re in Vancouver and it’s frozen, but it’s still better than anything locally available.
It makes me wonder where am I surrounded by examples of localized excellence that could capture a larger market by having players cooperate with their “enemies”? What opportunities exist to enlarge the pie and create an effective moat against others who will come along later?
P.S.
Field trip opportunity. You can watch the UWaterloo graduating engineers toy with their shiny new iron rings and showcase their Capstone projects to the public March 11-25. Information and schedules are here. Take your kids out of school for the day and expose them to the amazing ingenuity on display.
Waterloo Tech Highlights is a communication initiative run by a group of experienced investors and strategists who would like to receive and share real news about the vibrant Waterloo, Ontario tech community.
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Chris Wormald @cwormald