Job Creation Data in the Atlantic Canadian Tech Ecosystem for 2021

Atlantic Canada’s tech ecosystem had a huge year.  From my tally, companies in the region raised over $350m in venture capital financing and hired a net new 2,483 employees in 2021.

Last quarter was a slow one for job growth, seeing only 255 net new jobs.  However, this shouldn’t be viewed as an indication of a slowdown, because this same group of companies were injected with $116.1m in capital in Q4 2021.

Of the companies that I’m tracking 22% hired employees, 57% had no change and 21% had less staff last quarter.  Throughout 2021, 33% hired employees, 28% were stagnant, and 28% had less staff than the year before.  

Those companies hiring in 2021 made lots of new hires.  The top 15 companies (see below) hired a total of 668 new individuals, representing 27% of the total net new job creation in 2021.

There was some big news out of the region in Q4 2021:

• Funding (Total = $116.1m)
  • Sonrai raises $50m
  • Colab raises $21m
  • Mysa raises $20m
  • xOcean raises $11.7m
  • Swarmio goes public, raises $6.3m
  • Goodleaf lands $2.7m
  • Sentry raises $1.9m from SDTC
  • Milk Moovement raises $1.5m from SDTC
  • SwiftSure raises $1m
  • Announcing our Trophi.ai Investment
  • VentureGrade invests into 3D Planeta & KorrAI
• Acquisitions
  • Leadsift acquired by IDG
  • Alongside acquires Career Beacon
  • Trip Ninja was acquired by Webjet
  • Affinio acquired by NowVertical

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Top Tech Atlantic Canadian Employers in 2021

Sorted by net new jobs created

• Verafin, Newfoundland
• CarbonCure Technologies, Nova Scotia
• Dash Hudson, Nova Scotia
• Mysa, Newfoundland
• Biovectra, PEI
• Protocase, Nova Scotia
• Novonix, Nova Scotia
• Colab, Newfoundland
• Sonrai, New Brunswick
• Mariner Partners, New Brunswick
• Vid Cruiter, New Brunswick
• Meta, Nova Scotia
• Milk Moovement, Nova Scotia / Newfoundland
• Swarmio, Nova Scotia
• Liferaft, Nova Scotia