Introduction

So Maria, why don't you talk first about yourself. I know I introduced all of you, but I also want to first have you introduce yourself.

Maria comes from, you know, building again an ecosystem towards the trade side of business. And she's helping I think how many 70, you know, companies use AI better. And all these companies have to do something to do with trade. So that's what Maria brings in.

Jennifer of course you know she's also building something which I am very close to you know we both are helping startups tell their stories better to to the VCs and I run an agency called Ronis Create Jennifer runs Leopard AI she's productizing the whole thing would love to you know talk to her about more about that so any founders who are fundraising

praising Jennifer as a person, but I would also have both of you introduce yourself first, and I think everybody knows Omaima by now, and then we can take the first question.

Meet the Panel

Thank you very much, Chidan. A pleasure to be here.

Maria: Building an AI adoption ecosystem for SMBs

As Chidan says, I work at the Toronto Board of Trade. I'm a senior program manager, and I'm working in a new initiative. It's an AI initiative. The name is AI Business Catalyst Program.

And we are supporting small and medium -sized companies to adopt and implement AI. So we are building the whole infrastructure. So more small and medium -sized companies have all the resources to build AI business cases and have the chance to actually implement it.

So actually part of our main goal, and that's why they hired me, is to build a whole AI ecosystem. system.

So I'm looking for mentors in AI, experts. I'm also looking for technology providers or technology companies that build AI technologies.

So my goal is to match small and medium -sized companies with these technology providers that actually can sell their technologies to small, medium -sized companies. So they actually will implement and redesign their whole models. others. So that's more or less what I do. I'm very excited to be here.

Awesome. Round of applause for Maria.

Maria, good you mentioned you're looking for mentors. You already have one, two, three, you know, to be part of your program. So do talk to them and maybe more in the room that I don't know, but probably more over pizza.

Jennifer, why don't you talk about yourself also for a bit, what you are building with Leopard AI and about the ecosystem in general that you are building.

Jennifer: Leopard AI and responsible fundraising intelligence

Sure. Thanks for having me. Thanks for contacting me this morning. So if I come unprepared, just forgive me.

I want to introduce my name first. He didn't mention my last name. My last name is AI. The real one, real legal last name. And people call me Gen AI, which is brilliant.

And a little bit about my background. I'm a data scientist I've been working you know the banks and in the industry for over 10 years and and I'm also an entrepreneur have been built I have been building a couple of startups and now I'm working on my third one called

leopard AI so I'm the founder and CEO of leopard AI leopard AI is an impact driven responsible AI native solution served as an trust safety and an intelligence layer for capital allocation and fundraising for global startups, and

we're backed by NVIDIA Inception, Google for Startups, BDC, Futurepreneur, a lot of ecosystem players in Canada,

and we work closely with investors, including VC, private equity, and family offices, as well as entrepreneurs, and yeah, so

we are making funding more accessible, inclusive, equitable and responsible. I'm happy to chat more.

Awesome, thank you. Thank you. Thank you Jennifer.

I'll also have Mayama just speak a bit about AI Collective since the theme is today building the AI ecosystem. Maybe they don't know about your role at AI Collective.

If you want to just briefly talk about that as well and then we take the first question which you can answer start the conversation by first introducing you and your role at AI

first which is what does AI ecosystem mean for you you know because it has a different interpretation by all different people and everybody's trying to tackle it in different ways but maybe you can take that as a question and

Omaima: AI Collective and global community building

collective that's good that's actually a perfect question for the context of the AI collective so a side of my work as a the founder of human X tech where I do the advisory on the coaching work i'm also the regional director for the ai collective for the mena region and french -speaking countries um french -speaking regions as well including quebec

montreal etc and what we do is that we expand ai ecosystems across the world we have over 200 000 members and over 160 chapters by now.

The formats of the chapters vary from one to the other, from region to the other. A lot of meetups, community building, workshops, hackathons.

It takes all different formats that you can think about in building a technological ecosystem.

And the reason why I care about this is not necessarily just the technology as I said earlier is really the education the awareness and the activation a lot of regions are more consumers than builders not everyone is doing what Silicon Valley is doing with

you know being in a community where you know where things are going technologically when you have access to capital communities builders VCS and all that it really conditions how you go by adopting a technology and so that's my

goal with the AI collective in the regions that I care about I grew up there I my life has been around different continents so I understand the the adoption struggles and the awareness that people get and to answer your question which was why AI ecosystems matter what does that mean for you yeah

What “AI Ecosystem” Means in Practice

for me is equal opportunities around the world for people to make the choices of adopting a technology and how they how it impacts their life and their work the human side of it of course right you want to tackle that more right the human and the technological side because it goes to the root

of diversity you can't solve what you don't see and understand so as an engineer that's one of of the things i was one woman one the one woman in multiple male teams um the one moroccan in multiple teams and i used to say that at microsoft is if you don't if you want to from a business perspective you want to do so well in a region you need to understand the cultural context you

need to understand the consumer context you need to understand how people adopt technology technology, the application, how trades are being done, how business is being done. And that comes with the whole ecosystem.

And so the human side of it, but also the technology side of it, because once people understand the technology, they adopt it, they're educating themselves, et cetera, then they can develop technologies for their communities, to impact their communities and not be dependent on some other region in the world

who has absolutely no context of what's going on and what problem needs to be solved.

And Canada is a perfect country, right, with a lot of diversity, even in this panel here, right? So it's great to have you here, and I understand that you're tackling the human side

of technology in the AI ecosystem. I mean, it's safe to say that you want to... Because it's a big ecosystem, right? You need to pick your battles, right?

You can't be trying to solve for everything. and that is more close to your heart and your mission the intersection of both the intersection yeah of course intersection of both maria what about you what what does that mean for you the

Maria’s view: education, mentors, and implementation

ai ecosystem so i since i work with small and medium -sized companies my goal to build this ai community is that they as you say like learn more about ai i mean they need to some people are very agnostic they don't know anything about the eyes so we cover a lot about the fundamentals fundamentals and the basics about AI and then like once they understand the basics we take

into the other level that is actually to implement AI and implement business cases so my whole goal with the building this AI community is to bring people that could work together especially mentors that could share their expertise also technologies providers that could help them to build to help of those small, medium -sized companies

build those technologies that they need. It's kind of how all these people work together to actually implement AI.

And there are so many benefits about AI that could be more efficient in their work, be more productive. We can have better outcomes.

The small, medium -sized companies could have more revenue. So I think building this AI ecosystem system will have impact like overall all the players.

That's amazing. I mean, tackling the SMB side of it, also they need AI too. And Jennifer, while you and me are in the startup side, it's interesting that how all three of you

are completing the puzzle, right? And maybe you want to talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, it's definitely a very big, broad topic.

Jennifer’s view: the village behind entrepreneurial success

And I think the way I conceptualize your question is the ecosystem to us, to the problem we are solving is that

what it takes to make business successful. We are trying to

get our Canadian business funded to help them scale their business and achieve success.

So to us, we should think about who we should involve, what are their roles and responsibilities,

responsibilities and what kind of innovation they should bring in to change the flaws in the system and collectively to make our Canadian entrepreneurial ecosystem stronger and better.

A couple of statistics I can share with the audience is that I read something that currently Currently in Canada, we have 100 ,000 fewer businesses in 2022 versus 10 years ago. Why that is happening?

And in Canada, our venture capital ecosystem is shrinking. And throughout the whole year of 2025, the whole entire early stage Canadian VCs raised a little bit just over two billion dollars of them all together which is very concerning because we need the VC to fund us to grow our business but they

can raise money themselves then that's a huge challenge it's a systematic challenge and compared with American VCS one single company can raise like a 16 they just raised $15 billion.

Billions, yeah. Yeah, one company. And a couple of more VC, they raised $1 .5 billion from Next Capital from New York City

and Single Fire from California. They all raised over $1 billion per company. But we have a bigger problem here.

So we are seeing the rising momentum from our entrepreneurs, But we have some big challenges to solve. So back to your question, what AI ecosystem means for us is that who we should involve. I think it takes a whole village, the whole country to solve this very hard problem.

In the industry I'm working in, like, we need to engage from top down and bottom up. We need to engage with governments, public sectors, municipalities, provinces, and private sectors, including VC, NGO investors, funders, and then also engage with the communities and universities, academia. So it takes a whole village to make it happen.

Yeah, and that takes me to the next question as well, right? Right.

Like a lot of times, you know, founders who build here, they end up going to even U .S. to raise further money. Right. And you can't blame them. So it's kind of like you're losing good talent as well. So it needs to be done sooner than later. Right.

Keeping Founders Building in Canada

And, you know, what do you what in view your view it takes? You know, it needs to change for maybe founders to not leave Canada. Let's talk about more Canada as well, like, you know, what kind of ecosystem maybe you want to build, and, Umayama, you can take that because you work with different chapters and then we can come to both of them. What will it take for founders to keep building here? Of course, apart from capital, the VCs have to invest, but in general as well, you know, I think there's something that needs to change, right?

Ambition, environment, and founder migration

um without expanding on that i think of like one analogy um a lot of us are could be immigrants why do we leave a country there is a level of ambition there are things that we look for and we look for the environment that's going to match that and so you can't expect a level of ambition if you're fighting against a wall without necessarily, and you know that you can have, you can make bigger impact if you are in a different environment. So it's like a natural progression of like movements and migration of what you're looking for. It goes from someone's education path, someone's professional path, and someone's company business building path.

so it's I'll keep it there I'm happy for someone are you you have any thoughts on that have you I know you're outside the ecosystem but do you see people you know not very like you know I'm saying they have to move to us for more reasons should should Canada be more self -reliant now going forward yes in

Buying Canadian: trust, adoption, and closing the corporate-startup gap

terms of technology and AI I think here in Canada there are a lot of talent and and we usually build a lot of amazing deep technology products.

Usually I have seen, I have been working in innovation for four years, I have seen a lot of startups that need to go to the US to sell their technologies there, because usually the corporations or medium -sized companies,

they don't buy their technologies. They usually tell them, look, go to the US, try your technology there, and come back when you have traction.

so they need to trust like our talents and our founders so I think something that you you ask that needs to change is that usually Canadian corporations and Canadian people needs to prioritize to buy Canadian technology and now we're talking about AI technology so I think that needs to change and another

thing that needs to change is like a huge gap within corporations and like startups that are selling those technologies so we need to like that's why we do innovation programs and communities so we can bridge the gap and so they can talk together and there is more

like a connection within the supply and the demand side that's a great thought i mean everybody we have seen that uh buy local in in outside stores right like support canadian small businesses but but why not support Canadian AI tech companies, right? Rather than buying the same from outs.

It may not be the perfect product, but if it still does the job and you can be proud that it's built in Canada, why not support them, right?

Like, that's a great thought for, you know, all of you to take. Jennifer, what are your thoughts?

I know you are in that ecosystem where you see a lot of founders debating to raise money from Canada versus US, you know. So what do you think will take it to change that?

Beyond capital: market size, taxes, talent, and Canada’s stability advantage

Yeah, I'm glad you asked this question. You are not the first person who are thinking about it. I really appreciate it.

I think a couple of weeks ago, I was at City of Toronto ecosystem breakfast. I think that even the City of Toronto team are brainstorming with Vector Institute, one of the top three AI institutes, and a lot of ecosystem players years about how we can keep our competitiveness in Canada,

I think there are so many factors, right? And if I look at the entrepreneurial success perspective, from the capital's perspective, US has the bigger and the deeper pockets, for sure.

and from markets perspective US is 10 times of the market of Canada in terms of business growth and in terms

of talents US definitely have bigger better not necessarily better but bigger pool of talents and someone even told me it's easier to fire people over there

so and also from tax perspective it's a cheaper tax and you can get more profit and continue to reinvest into a business so there are so many factors and even including housing price and the weather right it's very personal we can't force it I think what we can do is

to keep doing what we are doing keep being the best of ourselves because it's like when you are playing ping -pong sometimes it's not about how you can do do better is well they are making mistakes right I think we're saying to now like with ice in us right like uh with the war in the conflicts from middle east I think Canada we have such a good edge in like stability and and in politics and geopolitics we have so much um you know uniqueness

that we that are underrated I think over time people would you know try to look at what we're good at and then maybe we can win some great opportunities yeah it's a gradual process right and hope we get more founders funded here so they

stay here I also want to take questions from the audience but before taking it on the audience i also have brian here because he's also building and he's been thinking too you know maybe the thought would have crossed your mind to you know go to u .s race from u .s so maybe we can talk a little bit about what are the benefits of building here which you already

building here and if you do consider going to u .s what would be those reasons or maybe you never never have to, right? So I would, just putting you on a spot there, I know, but as a founder, they'll be great to have that perspective, and then we can take more questions.

A founder’s reality check: capital, customers, and a Canada–US split strategy

Yeah, thanks for the question. So yeah, I think every founder raising in Canada inevitably realizes the pool of capital here is tiny, and the market that is going to drive your business forward is in the U .S.

because that's where all the money is and I guess even just looking at the U .S. economy yes it's 10 times the size of the Canadian economy but they also have better access to the world economy so like it's not just the 10 times the size it's like maybe

like 30x or something like that they have all the trade relationships the military to make things go the way they want it to go so I mean these are just the realities like so as a founder who's raising um yes we're talking to canadian vcs uh we did go out to san francisco a lot of investors out there um and it's just endless there's a lot of vcs in the u .s and it's easier to get capital

from there but um yeah i think building in canada early stage it can be done the problem is the customers you you can get a lot of government grants and fundings here so like for example example, at the University of Toronto, because we have a professor on the co -founding team, we're able to use government grants to multiply money basically by leveraging these programs.

So for every dollar we put in, they put in two. So it gets you very far and you can build great stuff, but the customer base is very small here and fundamentally a business needs to sell things to customers.

So you can build a great company, but you cannot get it to market because the customers are not here and that is the biggest problem for a startup is finding like as a most enterprises are not early adopters and so you're just looking for a tiny sliver amount of people who will adopt your technology and if the pool of customers

is small your you know your numbers are not working for you like it's better to go to to, I guess, the US for maybe those early customers. So the way we're thinking about splitting our company is maybe we have the R &D teams here in Canada, and so the salaries are lower here, and you get to employ a lot of Canadians

for that work, and then you have maybe sales teams or operations in the US. So you can take advantage of the, I guess, structures of funding here, but then also the advantages of the US market. You cannot ignore the U .S.

market. It's just very hard to do, depending on what your business is. Ours, we have to go to the U .S. market.

If you're dealing with the biggest companies in the world and those happen to be Canadian, then yes, you could stay in Canada because your customers are here, but not often. I think most startups don't have that luxury.

Thank you so much, Brian. I think keep a mix, basically, what he says. And he's right, if the customers have to be in U .S., you'll probably have to go for U .S.

Retaining IP and outcomes: what Canada is trying to reverse

as well. Can I add something? That situation is exactly what our government wants to avoid. Because a lot of companies, especially AI in academia,

they're taking advantage of our R &D grants and they leave after they put off, right? So that's exactly our governments, our public and private sector are trying to reverse.

we want Canadian business to start here to do research here have IP here and succeed here and be global be global leaders get them more customers right more SMBs who can possibly be built and use AI which can make them at least customers of some ICPs there it's for a lot of startups even SMBs is a big ICP so I think in terms of customers I think it may be wise to go

and maybe explore Canada, but if you have to, you have to build a global company. But in terms of funding, you know that if maybe more VC funds come here and take bets, maybe they don't have to go. Maybe that's one thing we can say.

Any questions from the audience before we get to the pizza? Okay, great.

Audience Q&A: How Do We Keep the Ecosystem Balanced?

That gentleman there. Hi, thank you for sharing what the ecosystem is. It is an eye -opening discussion in here. here.

My question is, when you talk about an ecosystem, we always think about a healthy ecosystem. It's balanced. If it's not balanced, it's going to fall down, it's going to fall apart. So now, there must be something to keep the ecosystem balanced.

If I look down the road five years, the Canada ecosystem in here, what is the most important ingredient for us to actually invest into the ecosystem so that it will be balanced and it will work for us to invest.

For example, invest into the supply, more talent, or invest into the demand, which is more customary to use the AI system, or money can fix anything, and just find more money for us will fix the problem. Thank you.

I think you answered it yourself. Just get the more money, and it solves the problem. but but yeah I think the question is about balance right like I mean you how do we keep the balance anybody wants to take that question um yeah I think it's

Making “AI = Canada”: brand, competitive advantage, and stronger connections

about balance but also about competition competitive advantage a couple of years ago maybe from 2019 I was I heard a presentation from radical ventures the The founder of Radical Venture mentioned that we should build a brand in Canada, in technology.

Meaning that a lot of great nations, we know what they stand for. Like, for instance, Switzerland, you know, Swiss wash, right? And we can give a lot of examples, but when we talk about Canada, we don't know what we stand for. or what we stand for, and he brought up a great concept

that we should make AI as our competitive advantage, like our image. When people talk about AI, they know Canada is the best.

I think we can probably, it's hard to compete with the US and the rest of the world with the velocity of execution, but Canadians have been always very, very innovative at research at you know cutting -edge innovation so we should keep that and we should make AI as our core advantage and the image make it really loud

and I think to find balance we need more connections we need to connect the the demand and supply like size and I think the connections I feel like that builds trust within those parties and this is how we can kind of make like support those like companies that are selling their technologies so they they can like find more customers and get more sales I think like more connections like more trust within both those parties could

who could support that change and finance and that violence? I think a lot has been covered in terms of a healthy ecosystem.

Policy + innovation loop: industry adoption, risk-taking, and iteration

What I would add is we need also the balance between policy, the right policies at the government level, at the organization level, at the community level, and a little bit more of stepping outside the box and like a lot of it it's we can't just depend on other countries doing mistakes right so we have we need to have an ecosystem that feeds itself

it feeds itself from the governance side but it also feeds itself from the innovation side and the innovation yes like that's the uh the great thing about canada we hear a lot about the depth and foundation in AI research because we have one of the grandfathers of AI here Montreal and all that that's amazing but what about industry and if we think

about all the countries who are making who have that brand we automatically think about industry about application about very concrete impact and how it displays itself in every aspect of the society so how can we be a little bit

take risks get outside of the box complement it with all the governance security trust and all of that and keep feeding that loop in a way that going to be sustainable and like iterating like

we have to we have to be a little bit more adamant of like iterating we can make mistakes and iterate it's literally how a startup works if we haven't found that brand then let's iterate pivot until we find it but we need to do something about it rather than waiting for someone else to do some policy to then be like oh now we are local canada empowerment that might be too late

Audience Q&A: Which AI Verticals Are Attracting VC Attention?

hi uh thanks again for all the information just wondering with the venture capital and in canada maybe us are you seeing any verticals that are attracting the most attention in most demand for example like 2015 to 20 you saw financial technology real estate technology

those were these bubbles that were happening because it was industries that were late to adopt so are you seeing anything that is a particular solution or a particular industry or vertical that is most appealing in very quickly touch on that just from the past five six

From models to vertical AI: specialization wins

years to today one huge shift that we see in VC on the AI side is going from like funding for models is outdated already so people are not funding you know all the innovation on the model side but now it's like vertical AI like like super specialized AI, whether that be in healthcare, in law, in finance, etc.

So extremely deep specialization of AI, that's one shift that I see specifically in the AI space. Yeah, I think the biggest change is the venture capital dollars are highly concentrated in AI. Just what kind of AI, right?

VC cycles: infrastructure, applications, and the rise of physical AI

I think at the chat GPT moment, at the first couple of years, also, investors are investing in, you know, foundational models. And I think around 2024, people are starting to invest in, you know, infrastructure.

And then last year, investors are starting to invest in AI applications. And this year, it's the physical AI era. So a lot of investors globally are looking to invest in AI robotics, all types of physical AI infrastructure and applications.

And another big, you know, observation is that we have seen the venture capital dollars are concentrated to a few, you know, top leaders, like top players. More than 64 % of the AI investment dollars are concentrated to the top five companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and even, you know, the Mira Moretti and Iliad. All of those founders have raised a billion dollars pre -product, pre -revenue. That's unheard of.

And today, I just saw Yong Le Quynh, which is the chief AI scientist from MetaX from before, and he raised $1 .3 billion without anything. He was just talking about we're building world models. And I think it is exciting, but also concerning in some ways.

Funding expectations shift: from simple workflows to deeper tech

So we'll see how it plays out. So, I think just to also tell you my perspective on this is that in the last, even one year, this whole AI thing got shot up with VCs and it came down because a lot of them were building

simpler things in AI, like it's not that it's not fundable, but now they are seeing that the simple things which were built around content marketing simple workflows they don't get funding anymore you need to solve for more complex

workflows you know something like you know which is a lot more complicated to solve is getting a lot more attention deep tech is getting a lot more attention AI infra something that even Brian is building you know on that level

where all the other companies will be built on is something that is getting a lot more attention, is what I see, at least in Canadian ecosystem.

But let's see where we go. You know, nobody knows that's a thing.

Conclusion

But we all know one thing out of this discussion today is if it's AI, it's Canada, right? Yes? Okay, amazing.

So thank you so much.