The federal government this month announced financial support for two companies based in British Columbia.
A total of $4.7 million in interest-free capital from the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada is going to two firms out of Richmond.
Ideon Technologies is slated to receive $2.7 million in funding to commercialize their subsurface intelligence system, announced minister Harjit Sajjan, which allows mining exploration companies to identify, map, characterize, and monitor geological features beneath the Earth’s surface with high accuracy.
Ideon’s technology aims to minimize environmental impact by reducing the amount of drilling and invasive activity usually required to understand mineral deposits, voids, and other geological features deep underground.
The company previously raised a $21 million Series A round led by Playground Global in 2022, which built on a $1.3M seed round from 2020.
Lucid Vision Labs, meanwhile, is set to receive $2M to increase sales and manufacturing capacity for their machine vision cameras, which play a crucial role by providing real-time feedback to automated systems.
These high-tech cameras have numerous applications, such as manufacturing where they can automate forklifts and improve sorting, as well as in the field of medicine, where they are used for cell imaging to detect cell types and identify biomarkers, according to Sajjan.
It’s not the first time Lucid Vision has garnered capital from the government, having received $500K through PacifiCan last year.
The funding hails from PacifiCan’s Business Scale-up and Productivity program, which supports businesses that are scaling up and producing innovative goods or services.
The public investments are forecasted to “create quality jobs,” according to a statement from the government, though a specific figure was not mentioned.
Lucid was founded in 2017 by Rod Barman. Ideon was established in 2013 as a spinoff of TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator laboratory.
