Tech is present in every corner — from the energy sector to local philanthropy.
Tech is no longer just a sector; it is immersed in almost every industry in Calgary. Today, 64,600 Calgarians work in tech across industries, many of which wouldn’t have been considered “tech” a decade ago. As Heather Domzal from SAIT put it, you can no longer separate tech from the rest of industry. Every company is a tech company now.
This shift is visible across the ecosystem. Startups are creating technologies for energy companies and advancing healthcare solutions. The City of Calgary, the city’s largest single employer, is actively scaling technology internally.
In Calgary, potential startup customers, partners, and collaborators are already thinking about how tech intersects with their work, whether that’s agriculture, finance, energy, or something else entirely.
Calgary’s agri-business sector is investing $246 million in technology, demonstrating how technology slots into the city’s historic industries. And Calgary’s developing financial tech sector is opening a new area of economic growth for the city, with 150 fin-tech startups already calling the city home.
The majority of startups Platform serves arise out of existing industry, not academia, and its programming spans every background, age, and experience level to match.
Tech has the potential to further boost Calgary’s diverse economy, showing up across the city.
“We know that we have a strong agricultural sector — ag-tech — how can we include technology and how does it support the agricultural sector? In Calgary, we have a fin-tech sector, as well, that we're really trying to grow.”
– Shane Jaffer, Invest Alberta
"It spills out into all different things in our ecosystem — our new arena, our sports teams. We want to show that tech can get involved in the arts and sports and entertainment and all different things that make a city exciting."
– Miranda Russell, Helcim
“We're doing a project with the distress center to help 211, which is a phone service for people in distress, whether it's mental health, domestic abuse, homelessness, whatever the case may be. So we are involved with those organizations and we help them build technologies to support their social causes.”
– Jay Gohill, Arcurve