For Eliot Pence, founder and CEO of Dominion Dynamics, this year’s changing geopolitical circumstances and a flood of federal defence money aligned perfectly with his plans to found Canada’s “defence neoprime”—an explicitly Canadian competitor to big-name defence contractors like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon.
“Political access, funding, and management of ecosystems win.”
Eliot PencePence’s Ottawa-based company has secured $21 million CAD in seed funding, led by Canadian firm Georgian Partners, with participation from the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and San Francisco-based Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in June, the startup has already raised a total of $26 million; Pence did not share its valuation.
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The sizable early-stage deal, which Pence claimed was massively oversubscribed, comes amid a chilly fundraising environment for young tech startups in Canada. For Georgian, which has traditionally focused on growth-stage investments across software sectors, it’s an opportunity to get in on the burgeoning defence tech industry.
Lead investor Margaret Wu told BetaKit in an interview that the firm considers it a “pathfinder deal,” writing an early-stage cheque into emerging sectors. Past examples include Toronto’s Xanadu, which builds quantum tech, and Canadian-founded Tenstorrent, which makes AI chips.
“We want a courtside seat to learn more and assist,” Wu said.
Pence formerly led the international go-to-market strategy at one of the world’s hottest and most controversial startups: California-based Anduril Industries, which contracts with the US military and develops autonomous weapons and surveillance software.
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