Waterloo Tech Highlights for August 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.
Palitronica has announced an unsized Series A fundraise led by BDC, Three Kings Capital, Frostbite and Unpopular Ventures. Matthew Monteyne will become the company CEO. They also announced a deal with Bell Textron to provide technology for the MV-75 Aircraft.
Convictional is shutting down. After a failed pivot to become Slack for the AI era, they permanently shut the service down this week despite having several years of runway remaining. They will return their remaining cash – less than half of the US$49M that they raised.
Upside Robotics is targeting 40,000 km of autonomous driving this year and is operating across 3000 acres of corn in Ontario. Last year they drove 10,000 km.
Transformer Lab launched Primus, an autonomous research tool doing PhD level research. They’re funded by Ripple Ventures and Garage Capital.
SPUR Innovation is turning a Fergus, ON Manufacturing plant into a data center (and “ecological innovation campus” because that seems to be the natural thing to pair with an AI Data center these days).
Sidian got a nice introductory profile from Velocity that’s worth reading.
BinSentry filed a patent infringement claim against BarnTools in Iowa. They also hired Justin Wong to run Corporate Development.
Chris’ Thoughts - Katelyn's Guest Editorial
Use somebody else’s account and ask Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini what it thinks of your product relative to its competitors. If you haven’t done this recently, I bet you’ll be surprised at the answer.
Just as SEO grew into an $80B industry designed to shape what Google thinks of your brand and turned out a generation of marketers, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) represents the young challenger. While the AI engines get all the attention, marketing will witness the birth of a new $100B business over the next ten years designed to help shape what ChatGPT tells others about them.
If GEO (some say AEO) isn’t familiar, we have a quick primer:
1. Does good SEO make good GEO
The technical foundations of SEO like crawlability still matter. But ranking #1 on Google does not guarantee that ChatGPT will reference or recommend your product. SEO largely focuses on optimizing the pages you own; GEO involves the broader information ecosystem around your brand. AI answer engines draw from reviews, Reddit threads, media coverage, comparison sites and other third-party sources when constructing an answer.
2. If I haven’t started investing in GEO, am I too late?
No. Due to the newness of the industry, GEO results remain fluid. Absent a single ranking, different engines use different sources, and answers change from one prompt to the next. It’s possible for ChatGPT’s opinion of a specific brand go from 0 to 10 and back again in a few months. We saw a portfolio company go from “don’t buy Acme” to “you should buy Acme first and foremost” in the span of about four months with a focused GEO effort, suggesting a high leverage opportunity to invest in GEO today.
3. Will AI discovery become pay-to-play?
The AI bots have massive costs to cover so I can’t see them not turning over every rock to monetize once the gold rush ends.
Across companies we work with, <5% of their website traffic is currently attributable to AI engines. But referral traffic only measures whether someone clicked through to a website. It does not capture whether a company was mentioned or recommended in an AI response that influenced a decision without generating a click. We think the actual influence of AI is much higher, pointing out another problem to solve – attribution.
The emergence of a new $100B industry and the jobs it will create brings an interesting counterpunch to the endless “AI Will Steal Jobs” headline. GEO will result in hundreds of thousands of new jobs as companies continue to try and get noticed.
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