June 8, 2026
Scispot lands an 8M USD Series A, a new Accelerator Centre cohort, two Canadian funds, and the week's events.
Welcome to the first edition of the KWBuilds Weekly newsletter! I'm gonna be covering the happenings in Waterloo region when it comes to tech, startups, scaleups, funding, and cool local events. If that's your jam then stick around!
Last week was pretty quiet, with a single headline doing most of the lifting. Scispot pulled in $8M USD in a Series A funding round. Besides that, a new Accelerator Centre cohort and a genuinely cool airport pilot, two Canadian funds closing, and a calendar that's busier looking ahead than behind. Short issue, but a good one.
The week's real story. Scispot, a Kitchener company, raised $8M USD (about $11.1M CAD) in a Series A led by Avenue Growth Partners with Breakwater Ventures also in. That brings them to roughly $10M USD raised to date. They make lab software for life sciences teams, the planning, documentation, sample tracking, and inventory side of lab work, with an AI assistant on top. The founders are the Singh brothers, Guru (CEO, a molecular biologist) and Satya (CTO), and they say more than 125 labs run with their platform.
What I'd watch: Guru told BetaKit most of the round goes to hiring "forward-deployed" AI engineers and scientists onto a team of 30, what he calls a "Palantir-like" model. Real bet, and an expensive way to grow. We'll see whether "self-driving labs" becomes a category or stays a 2026 pitch.
Sources: BetaKit and Velocity. Kitchener base confirmed on scispot.com.
Two Canadian VC items this week, neither naming a KW company (ðŸ˜), but both are firms KW founders pitch to often.
Version One closed two new funds, Fund V at $78M USD and Opportunities Fund III at $30M USD. They back pre seed and seed startups in AI, robotics, deep tech, and biology, globally. No KW or Canadian portfolio company is named, so read it as fresh capital in the pipeline more than local news.
Inovia promoted Mia Morisset to partner. Inovia backs Canadian and KW startups (Vidyard), congrats on the promotion Mia!
Two things this week.
Deaf AI, founded by Mehdi Masoumi, is running a pilot at the Region of Waterloo International Airport (YKF) that turns spoken boarding announcements into sign language video. It went live in May through AC's six month Aerospace Accelerator Program. The wrinkle Masoumi points to: there isn't one sign language to translate into. Canada has more than one official version (ASL and LSQ), and signs shift region to region even within ASL, so solving this problem is gonna be a handful (>ᴗ•)
AC also opened its third AC:RevLab cohort on June 2, 34 companies in a six month revenue accelerator run with Communitech and funded by FedDev Ontario. 34 is a lot for a revenue accelerator, and the list runs Ontario wide. AC doesn't break out which are in Waterloo Region, but you can probably find the local ones on the kwbuilds.ca directory (shameless 🔌).
Sources: Accelerator Centre, Deaf AI and AC:RevLab.
Quiet on the calendar last week. The one KW item in our data was Kwartzlab Makerspace's open house on June 6 in Kitchener (145 Bedford Rd), the usual drop in to tour the space and meet members.
A few worth showing up for:
AI Power Hour: turn customer feedback into a decision. Communitech, June 8, in person at 151 Charles St W, Kitchener.
GTM Tuesday (June 9) and Technical Wednesday (June 10), both in person in Kitchener via the Waterloo Luma calendar.
WatSPEED, "The Fog of War: Geopolitics, AI, and Global Power", online June 10, with UW's Bessma Momani and two other researchers.
Communitech's NATO DIANA 2027 info session, June 8 (online), for founders eyeing dual use and defence funding.
Short week, but a solid one. See you next week or at one of the events! (If you see me come say hi 👋)
Torrin