Ontario startups awarded $6 million from accelerator fund
by Canadian Manufacturing Daily Staff
Eight firms receive funding to further innovation in manufacturing and other sectors
TORONTO—Eight Ontario companies have received more than $6 million in seed and later-stage financing from the Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF), a program investing in companies to develop technologies and bring products or services to market.
The IAF supports innovation for Ontario firms in the advanced materials and manufacturing, information technology, clean-tech and life sciences sectors.
The program is funded by the government of Ontario and delivered by Toronto-based innovation centre, MaRS.
These investments are usually in the form of a convertible debenture or an equity investment and help firms develop products or services and attract additional investment.
The IAF is investing $500,000 each in the following companies:
- Temporal Power develops and manufactures electrical energy storage systems using a flywheel technology that helps electrical utilities modernize power grids by integrating wind, solar and water to generate clean energy.
- GridCentric develops cloud computing and a technology that cuts the number of servers needed in client and server IT setups.
- Karos Health is creating an exchange network to improve electronic ordering and results distribution of diagnostic imaging tests between client hospitals, imaging centers and radiology reading services.
- Locationary commercializes cloud-based, local data management systems that help mobile and web publishers improve quality and reduce the costs of managing local business data.
Four other life sciences firms will receive $1 million in funding from the IAF.