Hi everyone,
Some weeks in B.C. tech feel scattered—this one clicked together. The through-line: momentum.
A Vancouver founder is trying to reinvent how we discover restaurants. At the same time, B.C. is pushing deeper into frontier sectors like AI, quantum, clean tech, and biotech—areas where the province suddenly looks more like a contender than an underdog.
That shows up across the news: a major media acquisition, new provincial funding to help companies prove out their tech, one clean-tech founder’s remarkable growth story, a call to keep pushing on CleanBC, animators gaining clearer guardrails around AI, and a look at how a small UBC research team became a global biotech company.
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From The Journal
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Funding, Deals, and More
Blue Ant Media to acquire Thunderbird Entertainment for $89M: Toronto-based Blue Ant Media Group has signed a stock-and-cash deal worth $89 million to acquire Vancouver’s Thunderbird Entertainment, bringing the local producer of series like Kim’s Convenience and Highway Thru Hell into a larger global content group.
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Helping B.C. businesses showcase tech potential: The Province has opened applications for a $2.5-million program to help early-stage B.C. companies pilot supply-chain innovations, offering up to $500,000 per project to demonstrate technologies in real-world settings.
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In Other News
James Dean and Oxygen8’s clean-tech growth story: BCBusiness profiled Oxygen8 founder James Dean, whose Vancouver-based ventilation company has grown to 230 employees and three B.C. manufacturing sites after being recognized by Deloitte as Canada’s fastest-growing clean-tech firm with 6,610% three-year revenue growth.
CleanBC review stresses need for continued innovation: Techcouver breaks down the independent review of CleanBC, which concludes B.C.’s climate plan is broadly on track but warns that continued investment and innovation are needed as BC Hydro forecasts a 15% rise in electricity demand by 2030 versus 2021.
Why B.C. animators are breathing easier about AI: A new piece digs into how recent collective agreements and industry safeguards are giving B.C. animators more confidence that AI tools won’t simply replace them, including protections around AI-fuelled plagiarism and requirements for employers to consult unions before adopting AI.
How AbCellera grew from a UBC lab to a global biotech company: UBC profiles AbCellera’s journey from a six-person research team on campus in 2012 to a global biotech employing hundreds and raising more than $900 million, highlighting how the spin-off has helped anchor B.C.’s life sciences cluster and talent pipeline.
Read more →
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