It was one of the most brutal times for fundraising since the dot-com bust, but you wouldn’t have known it at ZayZoon Inc. In late 2023, the Calgary company, whose online platform is used by employees to access cash between paydays from payroll providers, raised US$34.5-million in equity and debt. Six months later, an Israeli venture capital firm and Intuit Ventures led another $20-million round – at a 45-per-cent premium.
How did ZayZoon do it? Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 program, which tracks Canada’s fastest-growing tech companies, offers a clue: ZayZoon made the 2023 list after growing revenue by 1,006 per cent over the prior three calendar years. Now it’s made the grade for a third time, posting three-year growth of 1,487 per cent – and that enviable boost only puts it at No. 22.
The companies in Deloitte’s 2025 Technology Fast 50 program – which must have gone from at least $50,000 in revenue in 2021 to $5-million in 2024 to qualify – are a sturdy bunch. Just think what they’ve been through: the bust-boom-bust whipsaw of the pandemic, high inflation, soaring interest rates and economic uncertainty that made it tough for all but the strongest companies to raise money on decent terms. Plus the arrival of generative AI, one of the most disruptive technologies in years.
Despite (or maybe because of) that, this year’s crop of winners is the strongest in a generation. All but one delivered three-year growth of more than 500 per cent (No. 50, Owl.co, was at 499 per cent), and 30 grew by more than 1,000 per cent. Deloitte hasn’t seen such strong results since 2003. “What we’re seeing is a very resilient cohort of Fast 50 companies, demonstrating an ability to grow despite some of these external pressures,” says Deloitte partner Brendan Cooper, the program’s co-leader.
Not surprisingly, many are leaning heavily into AI: more than 90 per cent of Fast 50 applicants that plan to spend on IT are investing in AI, and 42 per cent are already deploying AI agents. “This cohort is very impacted by AI,” says Fast 50 co-lead Amanda Perran, Deloitte’s Canada tech sector lead. “They are certainly great adapters of it and will probably lead the charge on effective use of AI.”
There are several bank challengers on the list, including Float (No. 9) and Relay (No. 12), fintechs that have scaled to the tens of millions in revenues offering digital cash-management products to small businesses. “This tells me that Canadian businesses and Canadians in general are drawn to digitally native experiences that eliminate friction from their financial lives,” says Float’s CEO, Robbie Khazzam. “People are trying to run their businesses, pay bills, navigate tariffs and invest in new products – not wait in lines.”
The list is diverse by geography and sector. It includes companies tapping into megatrends but also drawing on their own ingenuity to create markets. It features, among others, health sciences companies (including top-ranked Red Rock Regeneration), EV battery and laser makers, water-treatment tech and smart-robot creators, online delivery companies, cybersecurity and e-commerce purveyors, enterprise software makers, and companies whose tech helps miners mine more effectively. Vancouver’s veritree (No. 7) helps companies that pay to plant trees track whether those saplings get planted. Taiv Inc. of Winnipeg (No. 4) enables bar and restaurant owners to manage and monetize the ads that appear on their TVs. The list, says Perran, “strengthens the case that there’s a great Canadian tech sector building across a number of industries.”
Calgary’s Neo Financial is a perfect example of a company that’s graduated from up-and-comer to major player. The fintech – which offers no-fee bank accounts, credit cards, investing tools and more – ranked No. 1 in the program’s Companies-to-Watch category in 2023, then No. 1 on the Technology Fast 50 in 2024. This year, it’s No. 1 in the Enterprise–Industry Leaders category, which includes companies that have scaled from $10 million in revenue to $50 million or more.
Deloitte introduced the Enterprise category in 2019. “We didn’t necessarily feel there was a need for it before then,” says Cooper. But Canada’s tech sector has matured; a Globe and Mail report last year found 71 private tech companies here that had surpassed US$100-million in revenue (more have since joined). A dozen of those made Deloitte’s 17-company Enterprise–Industry Leaders list, plus publicly traded Lightspeed (No. 6) and Propel Holdings (No. 10).
Many Enterprise listers are household names, including Neo, fintech KOHO (No. 2), travel booking app Hopper (No. 9) and Clutch, a platform for buying and selling used cars (No. 12). Others do most of their business in the U.S., including Ottawa-based Fullscript (No. 14) – one of the few Canadian private tech companies to surpass US$1-billion in revenue. Its platform is used by 100,000 doctors and 10 million patients stateside to prescribe, manage and order non-pharmaceutical treatments such as supplements.
Jane App (No. 15), a Vancouver-area company whose platform is used by health practitioners across North America, first landed on the Companies-to-Watch list in 2019, spent four years on the Technology Fast 50 and is now an Enterprise–Industry Leader for the second time. For Jane’s quietly determined co-founder and co-CEO Alison Taylor, fast growth is one thing “But sustainably staying on these lists – that’s a whole different accomplishment.” The 14-year-old company has certainly shown that by being profitable since its early days. “We want sustainable, long-term success, which means we have to provide an awesome product and be sustainable as a team, financially and in every way possible,” Taylor says. “I think there’s something Canadian about that.” – S.S.
We present profiles of a pair of Technology Fast 50 companies, plus find a list of all the winners here.
No. 26
Vetster
Three-year growth rate: 1175%
As it was for humans, virtual medicine for pets was born the same way Hemingway described going broke: gradually, and then all at once. “We were building up and getting ready when the pandemic hit,” says Vetster’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Bordo. “Suddenly, vet clinics closed, and we couldn’t go live fast enough.”
Like so many others, the US$120-billion-plus veterinary industry needed to modernize but was slow to adapt. “For decades, it’s been brick-and-mortar offices, call the front desk, come sit in the waiting room,” says Bordo, who, for the record, loves and still sees his traditional vets – who love him, too (or at least they love his two-year-old mini bernedoodle, Bailey). Because despite veterinarian being one of those childhood dream jobs, they’re stretched thin and stressed out. Canada’s doctor shortage includes vets, whose animal patients face long wait times and ongoing accessibility issues. No vet wants you taking up an in-demand appointment slot every time your cat barfs, but at the same time, pet parents (Vetster’s much-preferred term for its clients) want and expect top-notch health care for doted-upon animals they consider family members.
Bordo’s mobile app, Vetster, solves all these problems at once: For $120 a year, it provides four virtual appointments with a veterinarian proper, plus unlimited 24-7 live instant chats with a registered veterinary technician (RVT). “Talk to them about diet, a tick, if your dog threw up, if he gave you a dirty look – anything,” says Bordo. “If necessary, they’ll escalate you to a vet for a video consult.” Medicine can be prescribed and delivered right to your door, and after each appointment, a full medical report will be added to an ongoing file. If and when a pet legitimately needs to be seen in person, they’ll connect you with a local specialist – dog or cat, of course, but also guinea pig or bearded dragon or horse or almost anything else – for an in-person appointment. “This isn’t just an app on your phone,” says Bordo. “It’s a full medical platform.”
Anyone reluctant to embrace tele-health was out of luck when the pandemic hit in 2020, and pet owners were no exception. Within six months of Vetster’s launch that fall, 5,000 pet parents had subscribed to access advice from 3,000 vets – a ratio that left users raving. In April 2022, Vetster raised $30-million in funding, and by December 2023, it had banked nearly $7-million in revenue for its Toronto-based team. As of today, a lean squad of 65 manages thousands of RVTs and veterinarians in every state and province, offering round-the-clock pet care to well over a million pet parents.
While Vetster’s impressive exponential growth is no doubt very welcome, Bordo and co-founder Regan Johnson are, of course, really in it for the pets. “I like to think we’re changing passive, once-a-year pet health care into active and ongoing care just by making it affordable, accessible and efficient,” says Bordo. A lifetime dog lover, he’s even including himself in there. “Before, when something seemed wrong with my dog, I’d wait to see if it resolved and hope it went away. Now, if something’s wrong with her tonight at 7 o’clock, I can ask a question or upload a video, and have answers by 7:30.” Clearly, Bailey the bernedoodle is a very lucky girl. – R.C.
No. 48
MineSense Technologies
Three-year growth rate: 527%
As the world continues to embrace carbon-friendly clean-energy alternatives like solar panels, EVs and wind turbines, manufacturers require more and more raw metal materials – namely copper, but also nickel, zinc and iron ore – to make it happen. But more demand means more mining, which means more habitat destruction and environmental pollution, which of course is contrary to the original cause. For too long, it was a catch-22 that seemed entirely unavoidable.
Anne Bulik is the first to acknowledge her industry has a not-so-stellar environmental reputation. But as president and COO of MineSense, she has a plan to dig not more but smarter. Currently, and in the simplest of terms, mines use machines and explosives to extract ore from the ground, haul piles of mystery dirt back to factories for analysis, separate and collect the desired materials from the remaining waste material (called “overburden”), then transport it all back to the mine and dump it in the hole.
MineSense began its mission to “maximize global metals, minimize global impact” back in 2008 – a lifetime ago as far as environmental awareness and climate change go. Theirs was not an overnight success story. “It definitely took some time to move from concept to product – as it should,” says Bulik, a mechanical engineer whose work bridges capital equipment with software services. The company’s first model severely underestimated the effects of force and vibration on the hardware, which in turn lasted just a few minutes.
Nearly two decades later, MineSense has refined and fine-tuned its Shovel-Sense system – a two-by-two-by-half-a-foot sensor that attaches to the shovel that digs in an open-pit mine. “As the material is being dug,” Bulik explains, “the sensor X-rays the content of the shovel and analyzes it in real time.” On the spot, miners can use this smart shovel to decide whether the ore contains sufficient amounts of whatever particular material they’re looking for, boosting recoverable materials by 8 per cent to 12 per cent, using less electricity and less water to do it, and all while using existing infrastructure. Recently departed CEO Jeff More estimates MineSense’s ever-improving technology will produce two million tonnes of additional copper by 2030 – or about half of the current supply shortage.
Though 150 employees are headquartered in Vancouver, MineSense’s customers are largely based in South America, and the company has 100 employees at an office in Santiago, Chile. Meanwhile, MineSense’s Shovel-Sense tech is hard at work in 25 mining operations in Chile, Peru, Brazil, America and Canada. Its most recent installation is in the world’s latest mining mecca, Australia. – R.C.
A previous version of this article stated that Jeff More was MineSense’s CEO; he recently stepped down.