SAAS NORTH AI, Dominion Dynamics Launch Defence Summit DEPLOY

“Canada’s defence build-out is real, and a lot of our best founders are quietly asking whether they belong in it,” said David Tyldesley, the co-founder of SAAS NORTH AI. “They haven’t had a straight answer.”

SAAS NORTH AI is Canada’s largest in-person software-as-a-service conference, drawing founders and investors since its founding in 2016. With DEPLOY, organizers want to push defence and dual-use tech as viable paths for software startups. Eliot Pence, the founder of Dominion Dynamics, said the next generation of Canadian defence tech will be built by entrepreneurs, and DEPLOY will help those companies understand national defence requirements.

Canada is in the middle of its largest defence-tech spending boom since the Second World War. Under the federal Defence Industrial Strategy, Ottawa has committed more than $6 billion over five years to building defensive capabilities. A BDC survey of more than 600 small- and medium-sized businesses found nearly 400 actively looking to enter the defence sector, with many stuck in early-stage exploration.