New data from the fintech innovation arm of Canada’s biggest bank suggests that the nation’s startup ecosystem may be facing rising pressure as venture capital resources run scarce.
The findings from RBCx are revealed in the firm’s 42-page “Capital Under Pressure” report, which shows that significantly fewer early-stage founders raised capital in early versus early 2025.
RBCx tracked fundraising activity of 700 pre-seed and seed-stage companies in Canada for two years, and the data is a trajectory of “sustained decline in the number of companies raising capital.”
And a majority of VC funds are raising “dramatically less than they have in previous years.”
From 2015-2022, Canada’s “dry powder” steadily increased, a healthy sign for a growing ecosystem. But, since 2022, capital directed toward early stage innovation dropped from over 80% to barely 40%, as firms pivoted to reinvesting in portfolio companies.
This could become a problem because “venture capital plays an important role in the early stage,” says head of banking Tony Barkett.
RBC, which is Canada’s largest company by market capitalization, boasts one of the nation’s biggest brand valuations and is also among the country’s top workplaces for career advancement.
The company, which employs more than 100,000 people, has been actively operating at the intersection of traditional finance and modern technology by investing heavily in artificial intelligence.
RBC “has spent the past decade investing in AI, including proprietary data platforms, exceptional talent, and world-class security,” according to chief executive officer Dave McKay.
“With generative and agentic AI opening new frontiers for financial services, we are creating a dedicated team to leverage our core strength and data scale and partner across the business to turn potential into real value for our clients,” he said.
RBC has partnered with AI company Cohere to co-develop North for Banking, an enterprise generative AI solution optimized for financial services, and joined MIT’s FinTechAI@CSAIL initiative to access early-stage AI research.
RBC was also the only Canadian bank in the top ten of the 2025 Evident AI Index, ranking third globally for AI maturity in financial services , driven by launches such as ATOM, RBC’s proprietary Asynchronous Temporal Model.
The bank has filed more than 1,200 patents since 2019, with over half of these being related to artificial intelligence technologies.
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