Newly hatched defence-technology startup Dominion Dynamics has landed millions of dollars in funding from domestic investors and has attracted big-name advisers such as former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole to help it build out its cutting-edge system of sensors aimed at defending the Canadian Arctic. The Ottawa-based firm, which closed a $4-million pre-seed funding round […]
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Newly hatched defence-technology startup Dominion Dynamics has landed millions of dollars in funding from domestic investors and has attracted big-name advisers such as former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole to help it build out its cutting-edge system of sensors aimed at defending the Canadian Arctic.
The Ottawa-based firm, which closed a $4-million pre-seed funding round in August, is testing its hardware and software with the Canadian Rangers, members of the armed forces reserves who patrol remote areas across Canada and are known as the “eyes and ears” of the North.
Dominion Dynamics was founded by Eliot Pence, a general partner at Washington, D.C.-based Tofino Capital who previously spearheaded U.S. defence firm Anduril Industries’ international expansion from 2018 to 2022.
Founded in 2017, Anduril has quickly become a leader of a new wave of “neoprime” defence firms known for rapidly developing and implementing a range of technologies. Pence, a native of Victoria, B.C., is now hoping to duplicate Anduril’s success in his home country with Dominion.
“It kind of became clear to me the gap in the Canadian market was an ambitious, aggressive integrator of Canadian technologies,” Pence says. “That’s really the gap that we’re filling here.”
Since it launched on June 6 – a date chosen because it coincided with the anniversary of D-Day – Dominion has produced a network of sensors that allow Canadian Rangers to transit data from regions that lack communications infrastructure such as cellphone towers.
The firm specializes in small devices similar to Apple AirTags that can be attached to cellphones and cameras. The sensors capture data such as videos and voice notes and send it to armed forces members at nearby bases, where software can then create a 3D map of rangers’ movements in real time.
“Nothing like that exists anywhere in the world,” says Pence. “It’s especially relevant for Canada.”
Dominion trialled the system with Canadian Rangers in Northern Ontario in late September and early October. The firm, which has 10 full-time employees, is soon planning to deploy the technology at the Yukon-based Arctic Training Centre and other harsh northern environments in a bid to convince the Canadian government to purchase its products.
It’s a “different approach to the market,” Pence says, explaining that rather than waiting for the defence establishment to come to it with requests for proposals, Dominion is proactively identifying problems and solving them in the hope that customers will buy in.
“It doesn’t get us involved in long, bureaucratic processes and requirements writing,” Pence explains. “We just want to show things and have the government say, ‘Yeah, we like this or we don’t like this.’ And we’re willing to take that risk. If we wait for an RFP, we’ll die. We’re venture-backed. We have to land and expand rapidly.”
