Alberta Tech Has Taken Off Recently, Report Finds — And is Still Positioned for Growth

Over the summer, we reported on the province of Alberta surpassing B.C. for the first time in terms of investment dollars attracted, drawing a total of $383 million across 41 deals through the first half of 2024.

Alberta’s podium placement may be temporary, given the circumstances: Energy technology company ClearSky Global provided a major boost to the province’s numbers thanks to a raise of more than $200M in June from an undisclosed group of investors.

That kind of capital raise doesn’t happen every quarter. Still, it’s an achievement worth celebrating, and reinforces other signs that Calgary’s startup and innovation ecosystem is expanding at a rate ahead of much of the rest of Canada.

The most recent reinforcement of this idea hails from ATB Financial. An economic outlook released this month by the Crown corporation confirms that, from 2019 to 2023, tech companies in Alberta raised more than $2.7 billion in venture capital funding.

Why are investors lured to Alberta? ATB’s report cites a few factors, including “the relative affordability of housing in Alberta, ample low-cost office space, and quality post-secondary research institutions,” as well as organizations such as the Machine Intelligence Institute advancing world-class technologies.

And as investment outpaces the national average, so does the growth of Alberta’s tech workforce.

The economic outlook visualized CBRE’s data from last month to show how Calgary, among large tech talent markets, was the fastest-growing region from 2018-2023. Calgary’s tech talent market expanded by nearly 80% during that time period, well ahead of Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and even San Francisco.

Edmonton, categorized among small tech talent markets with regional workforces fewer than 50,000 strong, ranked fourth in North America over the same window of time. From 2018 through 2023, Edmonton’s tech talent market grew by over 20%, behind Waterloo in Canada and Nashville in the U.S.

“Alberta’s tech sector has taken off in recent years and is positioned for further growth,” the report reads.