What are some cool or underrated tech companies based in Canada?

Plotly

https://plotly.com/about-us/

https://plotly.com/about-us/

Plotly

CentML was pretty interesting but just got bought by nvidia.

Tailscale regularly pops up.

sourcebot https://www.sourcebot.dev/

Tigera - K8 security - Vancouver

Heres a few:

https://layerzero.network/

https://1password.com/

https://www.wealthsimple.com/

https://floatcard.com

https://www.postgrid.com

https://www.dapperlabs.com

https://www.wattpad.com

https://gusto.com

https://cohere.com

https://clear.co/ https://www.clio.com/

One of the coolest ones in my opinion is Xiphos Systems. Lots of cool space hardware!

https://xiphos.com/

My Twiddler comes from Winnipeg -- https://www.mytwiddler.com/

I think we’re pretty cool! https://www.trykeep.com

Opentext

Here are some worthy ones I know of in Vancouver:

AbCellera (biotech)

General Fusion (fusion energy)

Rapidia (metal 3D printing)

Human in Motion Robotics (exoskeletons)

Grin Technologies (ebike components)

Arca climate technologies (atmospheric CO2 removal via mine tailings)

https://vention.io :

1. Design some machinery online with their 3d modeling tool

2. Order the parts

3. Assemble your machine and deploy it

SideFX, makers of VFX software Houdini https://www.sidefx.com/

And Derivative, makers of video & interactive software Touch Designer https://derivative.ca/

(Both packages have a shared origin I believe)

https://flare.io is a cybersecurity platform based in Montréal.

Safety (previously PyUp) - https://getsafety.com - software supply chain security. Offices in Vancouver but team is all over Canada. Raised a large seed round from First Round and others.

Sparx - they make a great high tech home skate sharpener. Me and just about every serious player I know own one:

https://sparxhockey.com/

One to stay away from is Mattermost

https://aloe.inc Check out Aloe - the founding team left the Bay Area to found the company in Vancouver to have better access to top international talent. Here's a peek at what we're building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6M5wSv6pyU

Urbanlogiq: https://urbanlogiq.com/

Saw their big announcement at Web Summit which stood out: https://urbanlogiq.com/global-foundation-model/

D-wave also had a presence at Web Summit and also seem to be doing well: https://www.dwavequantum.com/

Plugging ourselves, Lumen5 based out of Vancouver. I was one of the first hires found trough the HN hiring thread many moons ago. https://lumen5.com/

Jobber ( https://www.getjobber.com )

I work at https://spare.com/

We make tools for transit agencies to manage paratransit and microtransit services, mainly for people with disabilities but also for campuses and low-density areas. Managing these types of services is a real, hard problem with billions spent every year.

Our customers include Winnipeg, Oakville, St John, Saskatoon, and Powell River (also Dallas, LA, Austin, more in Japan and Europe), with more coming soon - including driverless vehicles with routing and scheduling powered by us.

We're Vancouver-based, and we're hiring :)

I make https://voicecast.app/ and I’m based in Toronto :P

I also work at https://www.getjobber.com/ which is based in Edmonton.

check out Lunch Money: https://lunchmoney.app/ - they've grown from a solopreneur story to now a small team

HTTPS://transit.app is amazing for public transport routing. Gives you a lot more information than the stock mapping apps. Some of the things they do are pure black magic.

https://sabotagestudio.com/ near Quebec City, they made the amazing 2D JRPG Sea of Stars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Stars

Very excellent takeoff of Chrono Trigger or Lufia 2 type SNES games. Truly exceptional.

[delayed]

We are building some exciting cloud deployment tools at https://defang.io.

We are making it super easy to manage your deployments through the compose.yaml file you probably already have. The idea is to have a single definition of your application, that you can use locally, and project it into any cloud.

We're a small team based in Vancouver. If you're in town, reach out and come visit: jordan.stephens@defang.io

Ruchi (Sr Dir of Eng at Dropbox) and Ashwin (Employee #1 at Rippling) at https://maplebilling.com/ are top notch!

Aylo, based in Montreal, operate some of the most popular social media and online video sharing platforms. It also own many renowned movie studios. Probably among the top five users of internet bandwidth in the world

https://www.magicboard.ai -

We are building MagicBoard which is a smart board that helps kids learn and develop structure in a way that’s interactive, age appropriate and fosters independence.

It comes to life through a dedicated device for kids with no passive content and a parent app that has an AI based assistant for the parent.

https://getmysa.com/ - their bread and butter are line voltage “smart” thermostats.

I have a few in my home, they say they’re based in St. John’s.

Im building https://cardog.app out of Toronto

Trying to make car research, buying and ownership easy

https://www.helcim.com/ and https://www.koho.ca/ come to mind as ell but didn’t see anyone mention them.

https://shakepay.com/ - Nice easy to use crypto Fintech

Taiv is a Ycombinator backed company hailing from Winnipeg

SideFX

I did come to enjoy Arctic Wolf's approach to Cybersecurity training.

I interviewed at Wrapbook a few years ago and really liked them. They're worth a look! Based out of Toronto, IIRC.

https://www.landr.com/ has been around for a while with its automated audio mastering service and it's now a one-stop-shop for everything related to music production. There's also really cool stuff coming up in a few months:)

So many great companies, thanks for starting this & people for sharing

SanctuaryAI https://www.sanctuary.ai/

Making humanoid robots for a while

https:\\soti.net

Enterprise Mobile Management

Self-serving mention of https://sphyrnasecurity.com/ - we're a bootstrapped cybersecurity company with two main product lines: cross-domain hardware and GRC/IRM software.