Canadian New VC Fund Launched

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Sun Life Financial among others have backed a new fund, Luge Capital, with $75 million dollars (with the possibility of topping it to $100m in the coming months) that aims to provide funding to fintech as well as artificial intelligence.

The main goal of the fund would be to finance seed and Series A funding between $250k and $1m.

David Nault, who has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and investing experience, will lead the Montreal office and Karim Gillani, who has extensive experience in FinTech, will run the Toronto office.

Montreal Office’s David Nault , Co-Founder and General Partner said

“We have partnered with world-renowned institutions that bring considerable industry knowledge and resources to enable us to help entrepreneurs build their businesses. In addition, our AI and data-driven companies will have the opportunity to partner with our investors to access key insights in order to build best-of-breed solutions.”

Toronto Office’s Karim Gillani, Co-Founder and General Partner said

“We are looking for young mission-driven companies that challenge how the world interacts with financial services. We invest in bold teams that demonstrate passion, manage risk and optimize for performance.”

Luge Capital, interesting named for truly Canadian extreme sport, involving competitors lying on their backs on a tiny sled with their feet stretched out in front of them, and racing down an icy track at speeds in the range of 140 km/h, without brakes, joins 20 or so other VC firms funded by the Caisse, backing companies like Lightspeed and Hopper.

The good thing about Luge Capital it is not limited by geographic limits and can back companies across Canada as well as the US. When asked why local Quebec VC would go chasing companies outside of the province, Caisse executive VP and chief operations and IT officer Pierre Miron said: