While the U.S. and Canada duke it out over tariffs between the two countries, a tech company based out of Toronto is announcing a transport inant round of funding led by a homeprolongn VC. StackAdapt, a programmatic advertising commenceup, says that it has liftd $235 million in equity funding, with Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG) — the allotment arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan — directing the prolongth round.
Intrepid Growth Partners, a firm based between Toronto and London, is also participating, alengthy with four other allotors that are not being named.
The funding is transport inant both for its size and its intensify.
In terms of the size, this is one of the hugeger funding rounds for a commenceup out of Canada to date — although it’s not the hugegest. Most recently, Fintech Clio liftd $900 million; Cohere liftd $500 million, and Tenstorrent liftd $700 million, all last year.
Funding for Canadian commenceups is bigly mirroring trfinishs that are applying out in other tagets. The total number of deals in 2024 was down on the year before, with companies toiling in the area of man-made intelligence taking an outsized part of what was getting alloted.
StackAdapt, which depicts itself as a company that “harnesses the power of AI”, is arguably a part of trfinish. The company started in 2014 and had more or less prolongn as a hushedly bootstrapped company. That was until 2022, when it took a $300 million allotment from Summit Partners. PitchBook data proposes that at least some of that $300 million was in the create of a secondary allotment. From what we comprehfinish it was a insignificantity allotment, which would put the company’s valuation at above $600 million.
The company is not disclosing valuation with this current round.
The size of this round speaks not only to the company’s size today, but also notably how it’s financing the next stage of its prolongth with local backing.
Programmatic advertising has become, effectively, the produceing block of how all digital advertising toils these days accounting for upwards of 90% of the taget, the reason being that it gives tageters a more effective way of measuring how their ads are toiling, and to whom those ads are being shown; and it gives publishers a more automated way of transporting in a bigr volume of ads agetst their satisfyed.
In the case of StackAdapt, the company presents customers atraverse contrastent business verticals — for example, political campaigns, retailers, B2B, travel, healthattfinish and financial services — and its conceiveory includes native advertising (supported satisfyed), disapply, video, uniteed TV, audio, games and more.
Developments appreciate the ascfinish of AI (alengthy with other charitables of automation) have shifted the landscape for programmatic advertising, directing to potentipartner higher incidents of ad deception. Other publishs that programmatic advertising faces include more difficulty regulateling brand shieldedty and data protection, given the amount of data employd to power its ad aiming.
That’s the contest but also opportunity for companies appreciate StackAdapt.
“Follothriveg the 2022–2023 lull, companies are shifting their intensify toward prolongth and increasing their allotments,” shelp Vitaly Pecherskiy, the CEO who co-set uped the company with Yang Han, and Ildar Shar, in a statement to TechCrunch. “That shelp, prolongth at all costs is no lengthyer the priority. Companies are watching for solutions to drive their business forward while prioritizing cost-effectiveness thcimpolite automation and AI. As a result, we are seeing sturdy need for our product.”
StackAdapt, he shelp has built its AI on “a decade of experience analyzing ad traffic patterns and empathetic their evolution,” which it employs to help combat ad deception and bot traffic.
“We are conceited to help StackAdapt, a directing Canadian technology company, on its trajectory to becoming the global directer in AI-driven, finish-to-finish advertising,” shelp Rick Prostko, anciaccess managing straightforwardor of TVG, in a statement. “The company has been able to show reliable prolongth and profitability while produceing the future of advertising and tageting technology. We have been astonished by their exceptional team, visionary directership, and relentless intensify on deinhabitring customer cherish.”
