I sat down with Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, at the CVCA’s Canadian Global Growth Forum this week — and walked away more convinced than ever that Canada’s moment is now.
The numbers set the stage. Canadian growth equity has gone from $711 million in 2013 to $5.2 billion in 2025, an 18% CAGR that’s outpacing the broader VC market. Growth equity’s share of total VC dollars has hit a record 62%. And foreign investors are paying attention: 56% of later-stage rounds now involve international capital, up from 30% just a year ago. Fewer deals, bigger checks, more mature companies — that’s a market maturing in real time.
Cohere is the clearest proof point. Aidan built one of the world’s frontier AI labs from Toronto, and our conversation ranged from the sovereignty mission at Cohere’s core, to the calculated bet on Aleph Alpha and Germany, to what it actually takes to build a global category leader without leaving home.
The point that stuck with me most, though, wasn’t about infrastructure or markets — it was about who gets to hold the reins on this technology. Aidan was blunt: we need to fight like hell to make sure AI is built and controlled by firms accountable to democratic institutions. Not by whoever moves fastest, not by whoever raises the most capital — by companies that answer to the rule of law and to the public. That’s the real stake behind the sovereignty conversation, and it’s a big part of why Cohere exists in the first place.
He backed that up with a concrete case for Canada’s role in the infrastructure underneath it all. We’re sitting on a genuinely rare hand: a cold climate, the second-largest landmass on earth, clean energy, and space. “We’re very well positioned to become a superpower in data centres,” he said. “We can do that if we choose to.” If we get the water, energy, and emissions questions right.
That same ambition ran through the entire forum. Wealthsimple’s Michael Katchen talked about a Canada that’s never been more ambitious about the companies, industries, and global partnerships it wants to build. Waabi’s Raquel Urtasun made the point plainly: you can build a global leader from here — you don’t need to go to the U.S. And Brookfield’s Cyrus Madon called the current trade pressure “the greatest gift” Canada could have received, because it’s forcing a focus on what actually moves GDP.
But ambition isn’t enough on its own, and several voices in the room were direct about what’s still in the way: interprovincial trade barriers, procurement processes that slow down selling to government, and a lack of one clear front door for foreign capital trying to navigate our federal, provincial, and regulatory maze. Global investors have the appetite for Canada. What they don’t have yet is an easy path in.
That’s the opportunity in front of us. Cohere is what happens when Canadian capital, talent, and conviction meet the right international partners at the right moment — and when the technology stays accountable to the people it’s meant to serve. The fastest way to find Canada’s next Cohere, Photonic or Wealthsimple is to get close to the GPs already building inside this ecosystem, and to keep clearing the runway so global capital can land here at scale.
Canada has the ingredients. Now it’s about the follow-through.