Toronto’s tech growth bolstered by universities, immigration: Netherlands’ Het Financieele Dagblad

Toronto has established itself as one of many world’s premier tech hubs, with the College of Toronto making key contributions to an innovation ecosystem that’s flush with expertise and welcoming to startups and tech giants alike, according to a leading Dutch monetary newspaper.

The feature article in Het Financieele Dagblad, or FD, explores the strengths of Toronto’s tech scene and echoes observations made earlier this year by the New York Times. “Many individuals who’ve lived in Toronto for years really feel a confidence within the metropolis that wasn’t there 5 or 6 years in the past,” Jon French, director of U of T Entrepreneurship, tells the paper (in keeping with a translation).

That rising confidence, FD experiences, is exemplified by tech entrepreneurs more and more selecting to remain in Toronto – attracted by the town’s livability, variety and expertise pool – quite than transfer to Silicon Valley. “Once I studied in Toronto, about 10 years in the past, there was a notion that you simply needed to go to California or New York to make a profession,” Nick Frosst, co-founder of AI language processing startup Cohere, informed FD. “I hardly hear that delusion anymore. Fellow college students who’ve stayed in Canada have constructed simply pretty much as good careers as those that left for the U.S.”

FD highlights the seminal contributions of University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton in serving to construct Toronto’s standing as a tech hub, via each his pioneering deep studying analysis and co-founding of the Vector Institute for Synthetic Intelligence. It additionally cites the upcoming Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus for example of how establishments like U of T are fueling Toronto’s tech growth.

The newspaper additionally notes how the inflow of tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta to Toronto is resulting in a “mind acquire” as international tech expertise pours into the area, aided by Canada’s liberal immigration insurance policies. 

Read the feature in FD (registration required, in Dutch)