Tech Roundup
June 30, 2026

Headlines

• Aeternum founder Aaron Tong celebrated being selected for the Backing Canadian Small Businesses cohort from DMZ and American Express Canada. He said the $10,000 non-dilutive grant and 12 weeks of mentorship will help the company accelerate Project Aegis, its UI/UX research initiative dedicated to making digital legacy preservation accessible to older people.
• Al Vigier, CEO of Vancouver-based Caseway, argued in an op-ed that Canada's AI industry should learn from Edmonton's experience. When Google's DeepMind closed its Edmonton lab, the city did not fold: "Former DeepMind researchers started their own companies, Amii and the university hired and expanded, and Edmonton's AI ecosystem came back arguably stronger and, crucially, more its own," he wrote, referring to the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. "When the foreign lab left, the value did not have to leave with it, because the foundation had been built here."
• Most pharmaceutical AI initiatives will fail without high-quality, structured biomedical data, DrugBank CEO Lisa Downey said on the AI For Pharma Growth podcast. DrugBank's two decades of data-building work now underpins the AI tools pharma companies are racing to deploy, she said.
• Every organization buying AI tools should know where the data goes and whether it trains the vendor's model, said Ross Mitchell, who leads AI adoption at Alberta Health Services. His team built Jenkins, an AI scribe running inside AHS's secure infrastructure; he outlined the lessons of Jenkins in a session at Upper Bound that Digital Journal wrote up.
• The Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute will offer its AI literacy programs through the African Canadian Civic Engagement Council's ANZA 2.0 Entrepreneurship Ecosystem program. "Contributing to the growth of Black-owned businesses means equipping leaders with the knowledge to confidently navigate this technological shift, transforming AI from a complex concept into an accessible tool for sustainable growth," Amii's Mitchell McCaig said in a release.
• The federal government has invested $3 million in the University of Alberta's Canadian AI Compute Vault, a secure, Canadian-law-governed AI development hub for small and medium-sized businesses. The facility offers computing power at up to 70% less than commercial cloud providers, helping startups build AI models without routing sensitive data through U.S.-based servers.
• Teledyne MEMS has expanded its Edmonton manufacturing operations with support from a $620,000 provincial grant, reinforcing Alberta's growing role in the global semiconductor supply chain. The expansion adds wafer processing, inspection, and automation equipment to the company's production facility for micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors and microfabricated semiconductor devices. The expansion is "a powerful vote of confidence in our region's talent, infrastructure, and innovation ecosystem," Edmonton Global posted in response to the announcement.
• Gummy Nutrition Lab has grown from a Launch Party 15 startup concept to a company with its own manufacturing facility, Walmart Canada shelf placement, and a 2026 ScaleUP Awards finalist nod, as highlighted in Edmonton Unlimited's Launch Party alumni series.
• Representatives from the Edmonton region visited Eurosatory 2026, one of the world's largest defence and security exhibitions, which took place in Paris earlier this month. Participants from the University of Alberta, the City of Leduc, Sarcomere Dynamics, and RUNWITHIT Synthetics showcased the Edmonton region's advanced manufacturing and defence ecosystem.
• Alberta's early-stage entrepreneurial activity and angel investment are above national averages, while business scaling, exits, and product innovation trail the national average, says the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Alberta Report. "What we can take away from this report is that Alberta remains an incredible place to start a business, fueled by ambitious founders, diverse communities, and a supportive financial framework," wrote ATB's Carol Kamel. "But starting a fire isn't the same as keeping it burning."
• The Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute announced five new curriculum resource packages for post-secondary instructors, marking one year of its AI Workforce Readiness program supported by Google. The domain-specific toolkits cover AI in accounting, academic research, journalism, logistics, and cybersecurity, designed to integrate AI competencies into existing courses.
• Calgary's PlasCred Circular Innovations is moving closer to commercializing its advanced plastic recycling technology through a new supply partnership with Edmonton-based Circular Materials, which will provide material for a new facility. Alberta Innovates supported the advancement of the facility as part of broader efforts to accelerate cleantech commercialization in the province.
• Alberta Innovates has welcomed Erin Pisko as its vice-president of intellectual property, effective Aug. 4. Pisko brings more than 20 years of experience in IP, commercialization, and innovation strategy to the newly created role, which will lead development of Alberta's new IP office.

Jobs and opportunities

• The deadline to apply for Melamoon Edmonton, a pitch competition for Black founders, has been extended to June 30 at 7pm.
• The Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute is hiring a machine learning scientist.
• Fleetworthy is hiring a software engineer.
• The provincial government is hiring a delivery manager in the Ministry of Technology and Innovation.

Happenings

Here are some events coming up over the next seven days:

• June 30: Licensing, selling & leveraging your IP starting at 11am online
• June 30: Loan Orientation with Alberta Women Entrepreneurs starting at 12:30pm online
• July 1: Edmonton Tech Wednesdays: Canada Day with hi finance starting at 5:30pm at GRETA Bar YEG
• July 2: Set Up Your Business in Alberta starting at 12pm online
• July 7: Speed Networking starting at 5pm at P.F. Chang's
• July 8: Community Coffee starting at 9am at Edmonton Unlimited

And here are some upcoming events to keep in mind:

• July 17: Edmonton AI Tech & Finance Networking Event at The Bell in Scona
• July 20: ERIN Member Monday online
• July 21-23: Innovation Zone at Edmonton EXPO Centre

Visit the Taproot Edmonton Calendar for many more events in the Edmonton region.