Alberta’s tech and innovation industry is gaining momentum

Already 2022 is shaping up to be a landmark year for Alberta’s technology sector, as entrepreneurs and government embrace the chance to diversify the provincial economy.

At a press conference in April to announce the government’s Alberta Technology and Innovation Strategy, Minister of Jobs, Economy and Innovation Doug Schweitzer said: “Alberta is here to be a player in the tech and innovation space.

“Over the last two years the momentum, the growth, the opportunities and the jobs that are being created in the tech and innovation space in Alberta has blown many of us away,” he said.

According to Schweitzer, record growth in the sector is creating jobs, attracting venture capital and sparking a new kind of entrepreneurial spirit in the province. “People before used to start an oilfield service company,” he said. “Now in Alberta so many of them are starting up a technology company.”

He said the government’s goal is to have Alberta become internationally recognized as a hub for technology and innovation by the year 2030, while creating 20,000 new jobs and an additional $5 billion in revenue for the province’s technology companies.

The tech sector in the Edmonton region is booming, says Chris McLeod, vice president of marketing & communications with Edmonton Global, an economic development corporation that promotes Edmonton and area as an ideal place for Canadian and global investment.

“In 2021, CBRE ranked the Edmonton region as the fastest growing tech market in North America,” says McLeod. “Numbers are just coming in now on this past year and it’s very strong again.”

He says statistics indicate more than 34,000 people in the region work in tech, roughly 5.7 per cent of total employment, and it’s growing.

“Tech is definitely becoming a bigger part of our economy, and it’s being incorporated into more traditional industries like agriculture, energy, global logistics and manufacturing. Tech isn’t just tech, it can fuel every part of our economy.”

McLeod says the growth is largely about realizing several decades of outstanding work by post-secondary institutions, particularly the University of Alberta. “We’ve got incredible talent here and it’s attracting the attention of the world’s biggest tech companies who have made recent investments and keep growing their teams here.”

Examples include DeepMind, Google Brain, Microsoft, Apple and local companies like Jobber, AltaML, BioWare and Granify.

“We’re [also] seeing huge tech advances in pharmaceuticals and life sciences, construction, education, logistics, manufacturing, video games — you name it.”

This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division.