The AI Revolution in Venture Capital
mardi 26 mai · 17:00 – 20:30
BDC - Business Development Bank of Canada · Toronto, Ontario
The Venture Capital & Founder Playbook for the AI Era
presents:
VC-BootCamp Toronto Edition
Silicon Valley VC-BootCamp Toronto Edition — In Partnership with BDC - Business Development Bank of Canada
Why AI? Why Now?
- INNOVATION CYCLES ARE TOO FAST: A startup can go from idea to $100M valuation in 18 months. Traditional quarterly review cycles miss opportunities.
- MARKETS ARE TOO COMPLEX: 50,000+ startups raising capital globally each year across hundreds of emerging sectors. No human team can track them all.
- DATA IS TOO VAST: Patents, publications, GitHub repositories, talent movements, social signals—millions of data points daily that reveal opportunity. Without AI, you’re flying blind.
- TORONTO IS READY: Canada’s innovation ecosystem, anchored by BDC and world-class institutions, positions Toronto as a key hub for the next wave of AI-driven venture capital.
Main Partners:
✦ Toronto Edition
What is VC-BootCamp?
VC-BootCamp is not a conference. It is a working laboratory for investors and founders operating at the frontier of AI, capital, and scale — now in Toronto during Toronto Tech Week.
Following the success of the Silicon Valley VC-BootCamp held at Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley in March, a Toronto edition is presented during Toronto Tech Week in partnership with Business Development Bank of Canada, hosted at BDC's Toronto facilities.
• AI in investment practices and due diligence • Company assessment and portfolio development • Cross-border investment strategies • The evolving role of AI in VC decision-making This is where the theory ends and practice begins.
keynote speakers
who have addressed the opportunities emerging from building bridges between global innovation ecosystems — Toronto, Silicon Valley, and beyond
RECEPTIONS
where corporate executives, leaders, and investors can exchange on strategy, investments and talent attraction
1-on-1 meetings with executive founders
for Start-Ups and Scale-Ups
VISITS
To BDC's Toronto Facilities and Interactions with the Canadian Innovation Ecosystem
Build Global VC Connections
Build connections with venture capital firms across Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. The Toronto Edition fosters meaningful cross-border partnerships within a curated network of VCs, operators, and ecosystem stakeholders.
Access Exclusive Dealflow
Through partnerships with BDC – Business Development Bank of Canada and the Canadian innovation ecosystem, gain access to curated startups developing scalable, AI-driven solutions. Strengthen Canada’s position as an active participant in the evolving future of venture capital.
Connect with LPs
Engage with institutional investors, family offices, and ecosystem stakeholders from Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East exploring next-generation venture models and AI-native investment strategies in the Toronto market.
✦ VC-Bootcamp 2026
Two Audiences. Two Critical Questions. One Event.
VC-BootCamp Toronto is intentionally designed around two complementary audiences — each facing a different but related challenge brought by the AI era.
For Venture Capital Firms (Canada, USA, Europe, Middle East)
Evolving an Existing VC Firm into an AI-Native Organization
This edition extends the strategic conversations initiated in Silicon Valley around a central theme: the growing role of artificial intelligence in venture capital and its implications for investment practices, company assessment, due diligence, and portfolio development.
This track is for existing VC firms asking hard questions:
- How should AI be embedded into deal sourcing, diligence, and portfolio support—without breaking the firm?
- What new roles, skills, and governance structures are actually required?
- Where do AI-driven investment strategies fail in practice?
- How do LP expectations change in an AI-accelerated world?
This is not about tools alone.
It is about operating models, culture, decision rights, and systemic failure modes.
For Founders & Scale-Up Startups
The New VC Playbook: What Investors Actually Look for in AI Founders
Bringing together venture capital leaders, founders, and ecosystem stakeholders from Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, this event offers a high-level forum to examine how AI is influencing investment decisions and how firms are adapting their internal capabilities.
A significant component of the Toronto program focuses on sharing key observations and lessons emerging from the Stanford and Berkeley sessions, providing participants with direct exposure to current practices and evolving perspectives from leading international venture ecosystems.
What VCs really assess in AI teams, data strategies, and defensibility:
- Why many “great demos” fail investment committees
- How AI changes expectations around speed, scale, and unit economics
- What differentiates fundable AI founders from unfundable ones
What You Will Experience
At the Toronto Edition, participants engage in:
Minority-Led Startups in the AI Era
Why talent is evenly distributed—and capital is not
In the age of AI, venture capital faces a paradox: access to intelligence is expanding, yet access to capital remains highly concentrated. The Toronto Edition addresses this challenge within the Canadian innovation ecosystem.
Minority-led—especially Black-led—startups continue to be structurally underfunded. Historical data, network effects, and pattern-matching embedded in AI-driven investment processes tend to reinforce existing biases. Toronto, as one of the most diverse cities in the world, offers a unique perspective on this challenge.
This track examines how AI can unintentionally amplify these blind spots, why this represents a missed opportunity for investors, and what both investors and founders must do differently to change outcomes.
This is not about lowering standards. It is about seeing signals that are currently overlooked.
✦ Why VC-BootCamp Matters Now
AI is not another sector. It is a general-purpose force that reshapes how capital allocates, how companies scale, and how advantage compounds. By hosting this initiative in Toronto, the objective is to strengthen dialogue between innovation ecosystems, foster meaningful cross-border connections, and contribute to positioning Canada as an active participant in the evolving future of venture capital in the AI era. Some VC firms will adapt—and outperform. Others will look sophisticated and underperform quietly. Some founders will understand what investors are really optimizing for. Others will keep pitching the wrong story to the wrong signals. VC-BootCamp exists for those who refuse to operate blind.
👤 Who Should Attend
Venture Capital & LPs from Canada, USA, Middle East and Europe
- General Partners, Principals, Operating Partner
- AI-focused and generalist funds navigating AI disruption
- LPs seeking insight into how funds are adapting in practice
Founders & Scale-Up Startups in the AI Era
- AI and AI-enabled startup founders
- Operators preparing for fundraising or scale
- Founders seeking direct access to real VC decision logic
Main Partners:
Inscription
Validation requise
Registrations are non-refundable.