Federal dollars land in B.C. life sciences

Good morning,

This week on VTJ, we covered a nearly $100 million federal commitment to B.C.'s life sciences sector, with Burnaby's Kardium and Evonik Canada both receiving Strategic Response Fund contributions to expand manufacturing capacity. We also dug into B.C.'s foodtech funding picture — the province led Canada in the first half of 2026, but 71% of the $22.5 million raised came from a single round.

Elsewhere, Vancouver climbed to ninth in North America for tech talent according to CBRE's latest report, and InBC published a useful roundup of provincial and federal resources for B.C. businesses navigating U.S. tariffs.

The rest of the week's news is below.

—Emily

Events

#VTJTalks: Is it a Problem or a Puzzle? Building Technology the Food Industry Actually Needs

For tech builders and investors, the opportunity is enormous. But there's an important distinction to understand: are we solving real industry problems, or simply working on entertaining puzzles?

Teaching Machines to See: From Rules to Vision-Language Models

Working with the same image classification task throughout the session, you'll experience three generations of AI: traditional rule-based computer vision, pretrained neural networks, and today's vision-language models.

Tech Days Vol. 2

Vancouver Tech Days is back for round two. Vol. 1 sold out in five days and went over capacity — proof that this city's builders want more than another networking mixer.

SPONSORED BY PHS COMMUNITY SERVICES SOCIETY

Over $10K raised to date. Run, donate or support the PHS Run Team

The PHS Run Team has raised over $10,000, but there's still a long way to go to reach the funds needed to expand PHS's food program.

Every day, PHS provides more than 3,900 meals, including over 2,000 hot meals, to people living in extreme poverty.

Get involved today!

From The Journal

Federal government commits nearly $100 million to B.C. life sciences sector

Burnaby's Kardium and Evonik Canada are both receiving Strategic Response Fund contributions to expand manufacturing capacity.

B.C. led Canada in foodtech funding in H1 2026 — but most came from one U.S.-led round

A new CFIN report shows the province raised $22.5 million across seven deals, with 71% coming from a single investment.

A.I. is transforming the communications industry, but BC companies must invest in their employees

A.I. use is going to continue transforming the communications profession in good ways and bad.

Vancouver Tech Journal • Kylie McMullan

The 2026 New Ventures BC Competition has its Top 10 finalists

Six of the ten are Vancouver-based, with the rest coming from Squamish, Victoria, and Richmond

FloatVR is built on a science almost nobody knows exists

The BrainSwitch Labs founder on the overlooked science of mental restoration.

Funding, Deals, and More

AbCellera's shares jumped 35% after its treatment for menopausal hot flashes showed an 83% reduction in symptom frequency after a single dose, compared to 33% in the placebo group. Read more →
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In Other News

InBC has published a roundup of provincial and federal resources to help B.C. businesses navigate U.S. tariffs, covering funding programs, trade tools and export support. Read more →
Vancouver ranked ninth in North America and second in Canada for tech talent, according to CBRE's 2026 Scoring Tech Talent report, with roughly 127,700 tech workers making up nearly 9% of the city's total employment. Read more →
BCBusiness has released its 2026 Top 100 list of B.C.'s top-earning science and technology companies, with Stemcell Technologies and Clio topping the rankings and AbCellera posting the biggest revenue jump in the top 10. Read more →
Caseway CEO Al Vigier argues in a BetaKit op-ed that data sovereignty has become a genuine product differentiator for Canadian software companies, as procurement teams increasingly ask about jurisdiction and data residency before anything else. Read more →
Unblocked co-founder Brandon Waselnuk has published a post on how the Vancouver developer tools company built an AI agent that reduces risk scores on pull requests and feeds what it learns back into improving a repo's risk policies. Read more →
Vancouver startup Little Scout has launched a platform connecting parents with licensed daycare vacancies across Metro Vancouver, founded by Blume co-founder Ella Dalling after she ran into the same childcare search problem as thousands of other local parents. Read more →
Integrated Quantum Technologies has appointed former HSBC Global Engineering Head Husam Fezzani as CEO as the Vancouver company advances commercialization of its enterprise AI infrastructure technologies. Read more →

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