The Canadian and US funding landscape has layers most founders never access. We know every program, every eligibility window, and how they interact with each other.
🚨 Urgent — Canada
SCIP — Strategic AI Compute & Innovation
$890M pool
AI compute infrastructure · Non-repayable
Canada's largest AI-specific funding pool. Targets companies investing in AI compute infrastructure — training, inference, and AI platform development. Most eligible founders don't know it exists. The application process requires 2–3 weeks minimum.
AI / MLCompute infrastructureTraining + inference
⏰ Application deadline: June 1, 2026 — start your assessment now
🍁 Canada — NRC
NRC IRAP
Avg $500K · Up to $10M
Non-repayable grant · Rolling intake
The flagship Canadian R&D grant program. Your engineers' salaries count as eligible costs. The key is the ITA (Industrial Technology Advisor) relationship — you need one assigned to your file. We handle that process. Available to any Canadian tech company with qualified R&D work.
Engineering salaries eligibleRolling intakeNon-repayable
🍁 Canada — CRA
SR&ED Tax Credit
Up to $2.1M/year
Refundable tax credit · Annual filing
Scientific Research and Experimental Development. If your team is building something technically uncertain — algorithm development, software architecture, AI model training — you likely qualify. The refundable credit means you receive cash even with no tax owing. Filed annually through CRA.
RefundableR&D work eligibleAnnual filing
🇺🇸 USA — NSF
NSF SBIR / STTR
Up to US$305K
Non-dilutive grant · Accessible to Canadians
The US Small Business Innovation Research program is accessible to Canadian companies with US operations or willing to establish a US entity. Phase I is up to $275K. Phase II up to $1.9M. Deep tech and AI companies with a US market angle are well-positioned. We navigate the cross-border application.
Deep techUS market angleCross-border