
For Eliot Pence, founder and CEO of Dominion Dynamics, this year’s changing geopolitical circumstances and a flood of federal defence money aligned perfectly with his plans to found Canada’s “defence neoprime”—an explicitly Canadian competitor to big-name defence contractors like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon.
“Political access, funding, and management of ecosystems win.”
Eliot PencePence’s Ottawa-based company has secured $21 million CAD in seed funding, led by Canadian firm Georgian Partners, with participation from the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and San Francisco-based Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in June, the startup has already raised a total of $26 million; Pence did not share its valuation.
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The sizable early-stage deal, which Pence claimed was massively oversubscribed, comes amid a chilly fundraising environment for young tech startups in Canada. For Georgian, which has traditionally focused on growth-stage investments across software sectors, it’s an opportunity to get in on the burgeoning defence tech industry.
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Lead investor Margaret Wu told BetaKit in an interview that the firm considers it a “pathfinder deal,” writing an early-stage cheque into emerging sectors. Past examples include Toronto’s Xanadu, which builds quantum tech, and Canadian-founded Tenstorrent, which makes AI chips.
“We want a courtside seat to learn more and assist,” Wu said.
Pence formerly led the international go-to-market strategy at one of the world’s hottest and most controversial startups: California-based Anduril Industries, which contracts with the US military and develops autonomous weapons and surveillance software.
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