Women are in charge

Heather Anne Ritchie, 35

Her backstory: Ritchie calls herself a “recovering publicist”—she spent eight years working as a communications consultant for tech start-ups. Her company: In 2015, she founded Repable, which monitors the public profiles of competitive online gamers. Fun fact: Her earliest introduction to tech was an online Star Wars role-playing game. She’s still friends with many of her teammates.

Huda Idrees, 26

Her backstory: Idrees is a coding wizard and the former chief product officer at Wealthsimple. Her company: Dot Health is a platform that does what the Ontario government couldn’t: it teams up with hospitals to provide digital health records to clients. Fun fact: She’s a former child prodigy who started her own web consulting firm when she was just 12 years old.

Janice Diner, 55

Her backstory: She was the first Canadian creative director to work with a little-known start-up called Facebook, creating brand partnerships with the social network from 2005 to 2009. Her company: She runs Horizn, which uses games to educate people about new products from companies like Google and Motorola. Fun fact: Diner rang the opening bell at the London Stock Exchange as part of a Canadian fintech tour.

Chakameh Shafii, 27

Her backstory: Shafii is a graduate of U of T’s engineering school and a former project manager at GE. Her company: After struggling with anxiety, Shafii founded TranQool, a one-stop digital platform where clients could receive affordable video counselling from licensed therapists. Fun fact: She loves skydiving in her spare time.

Candice Faktor, 39

Her backstory: She has spent her whole career in tech. Most recently, she was the GM of Wattpad, growing its user base to 45 million in three years. Her company: Faktory Ventures is a microfund that helps founders scale their ideas. Her clients include an AI company and the maker of a wearable device that helps people with heart conditions. Fun fact: In 2005, she created a proto-Yelp review site called OurFaves.

The Incredible Rise of Tech

Welcome to the new Silicon Valley

We have hungry entrepreneurs, deep-pocketed investors, next-level start-ups and an infinite supply of brilliant ideas. Inside Toronto’s tech revolution

We asked 140 start-up founders about Toronto’s tech scene. Here’s what they said

Toronto’s top entrepreneurs on start-up stereotypes, wild investor stories and who they admire most

Toronto tech gurus start young

A Q&A with Tanmay Bakshi, a 13-year-old techy YouTube star who has built apps for the App Store and written a coding textbook

These companies are revolutionizing health care

Figure 1, OpenCare and other apps that are taking telehealth into the future

U of T is banking on the future of quantum computing

At U of T's Creative Destruction Lab, tech wizards are banking on the quantum future

Life

This doctor is making Star Trek dreams come true

A Q&A with Julielynn Wong, a doctor who 3-D prints medical supplies in remote rural areas, in war zones and even in space

The Financial District has a glittery tech playground

Inside the Deloitte Greenhouse, featuring an adorable AI robot, VR headsets and 3D printers

A handful of RIM escapees are leading the Toronto tech scene

Five ex–RIM staffers turned tech tycoons

People are shelling out thousands to learn HTML

HackerYou, Lighthouse Labs and Bitmaker are pumping out tech geniuses

Investors are paying attention

Five deep-pocketed American venture capitalists that are pouring millions into Toronto start-ups

Augmented reality is a reality

These companies are building Matrix-like virtual smartphone adventures

The big banks are finally entering the digital age

Guess which of the Big Five banks has a neon-lit bowling alley and a speakeasy bar

Waterloo has its own wearables factory

Inside Thalmic Labs's secret wearables warehouse

CAMH is using futuristic brain science to cure depression

Everything you need to know about neuro­informatics

A little town west of Toronto is doing big things

How Stratford, a town known for staging Shakespeare, became a hub for self-driving cars

The godfather of artificial intelligence is a Torontonian

Geoffrey Hinton and the Vector Institute are helping to make Toronto the AI capital of the world

Self-driving cars are storming the streets

Uber's Raquel Urtasun is revolutionizing the automobile at U of T

Tech giants are setting up shop in Toronto

The lowdown on Okta, Slack, Amazon and Thomson Reuters's new digs

Life

There’s a tech champion at city hall

A Q&A with Toronto’s chief innovation advocate Michelle Holland

The Norwegians want to learn from us

Why a bunch of Scandinavian start-up founders spent a week touring Toronto

High-speed travel is going places

Getting from Toronto to Waterloo is about to get much easier

These three companies are about to go supernova

Everything you need to know about Wealthsimple, Hubba and League

A Geordi La Forge visor and other cool do-gooder gadgetry

Glasses that help the blind see, a device that lets the disabled use smartphones and 3D-printed prosthetics

Everybody’s hiring

In the last year, Toronto created some 22,500 tech jobs—twice the number of new gigs as in New York City

The brightest Canadians are moving home

“We have amazing talent here, and nobody knows it”

Ross the robot is the city’s best legal mind

Jimoh Ovbiagele on Ross, his company's AI assistant that helps lawyers find legal precedents for their cases

These incubators are hatching the titans of tomorrow

Including MaRS, the Ryerson DMZ, OneEleven and more