Radical Ventures made a bet in 2017 that looked contrarian and now looks obvious: that artificial intelligence would be the most consequential technology in human history, and that a venture firm should do nothing else. The Toronto-based firm invests exclusively in AI — from day-zero incubations to growth and pre-IPO scaling — and it has become the gravitational centre of Canada's AI ecosystem.
In September 2026, Radical announced the first close of the Radical Breakouts Fund, a late-stage AI strategy with over US$1 billion in commitments — the largest venture capital fund in Canadian history. The anchor investors are a roll call of Canadian institutional might: PSP Investments, CPP Investments, HOOPP, TD Bank Group, BMO Financial Group, CI Global Asset Management and OPTrust, alongside other leading global investors. The fund is designed for a market where the most valuable companies stay private far longer — capturing value that, until now, has existed almost exclusively in the United States.
The portfolio reads like a map of the AI frontier. Radical incubated Cohere, Waabi and World Labs from day zero, and has led rounds in global AI companies including Discovery Loop, Etched and Crusoe. Other names include Xanadu (photonic quantum computing), Aspect Biosystems (3D bioprinting for therapeutics), Decart (real-time world models), Latent Labs (computational drug discovery, founded by a key architect of AlphaFold2), Muon Space, Prime Intellect, Generalist and Veeda. Canadian champions that once had to look abroad for late-stage capital now have a domestic source at scale — that is the Breakouts Fund's explicit mission.
The firm is led by Co-Founder and Managing Partner Jordan Jacobs, with offices in Toronto, San Francisco, London and New York — a footprint that matches its ambition to compete for the world's best AI founders, not just Canada's. Its stage range is unusually wide for a specialist: incubation and seed through growth and pre-IPO, letting it build ownership in companies from the first experiment to the last private round.
Who should pitch: Founders applying machine learning and deep technology to massive industries — enterprise AI, robotics, autonomous systems, AI infrastructure, biotech and materials discovery. Radical is AI-only, so a generalist SaaS pitch won't land; but if your company is an AI company at its core, anywhere in the world, this is one of the most founder-favoured specialist funds on the planet.
Why it matters for founders
Radical is the rare specialist that can take you from a day-zero idea to a pre-IPO cap table without changing firms. Its Cohere and Waabi incubations prove it gets in earliest, and the $1B+ Breakouts Fund proves it can stay for the biggest rounds. For AI founders — especially in Canada, but globally too — Radical combines genuine technical credibility with capital at every stage. If you're building with AI at the core, not as a feature, start the conversation at radical.vc.