What’s UpNext: Signals from the Global Startup Circuit
The F1 Circuit of the Startup Ecosystem. Tracking founders, momentum, and signals as they emerge.
Welcome back. September was full. Nrth (formerly Elevate) brought 10,000 people to Toronto. ALL IN packed 6,500 into Montreal. LiONS LAIR gave $55,000 to health founders in Hamilton. And Switzerland just named its top startup for the second year running. We have recaps from all of it, plus the Italian Trade Agency's first delegation to a Canadian tech festival. October starts with TechCrunch Disrupt two weeks away.
Let's get into it.
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Jump to: Nrth 2026 Recap · Italian Delegation · LiONS LAIR · Swiss Top100 · Spotlights · TechCrunch Disrupt · UpNext Events · Final Thought
Event Recaps
Nrth 2026: Winners and Standouts From Toronto's Startup Stage
September 22–24, 2026 | Toronto
Elevate is now Nrth. The rebrand came with an expanded format. Multiple pitch sessions ran across seven venues and partners. DMZ, Moneris, the Italian Trade Agency, University of Toronto, QueerTech, and the Brampton Innovation District each hosted their own stages. The result was less one big room and more a connected set of smaller, sharper ones.
The big winner: Moro Technologies. Mohamed Ali took home $50,000 from the Tangerine From Pitch to 50K competition. MoVA Realities (Sophie Jiang) won $10,000 in the Moneris eCommerce North Showcase. Cotriply (Faith Oloruntoba) won the Brampton Innovation District Audience Choice award. SCOOTY took runner-up.
ReaDI, an Irish company that records R&D work as it happens and turns it into tax credit documentation, stood out on the international side. The company works with clients like Combilift and Saint-Gobain and just opened a Toronto office. It is one of a growing number of European companies using Toronto as their entry point to North America.
One moment from opening night stuck with me. Julio Himede took the stage. He is the designer behind the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show and the Eurovision 2023 stage in Liverpool. He builds worlds for the biggest live audiences on the planet. But the part that landed was not about scale. It was about a phase he called the romantic period. You fall in love with a design. A solution. It feels perfect. Then the next day, you fall out of love with it. He said that is not failure. That is the process. You have to go through it.
I thought about that all week. It is the same thing founders do. You find an idea. You fall for it. You build around it. And then something shifts. The ones who make it are the ones who let the first version go. They do not marry the first solution. They marry the problem.
The shift from Elevate to Nrth signals something bigger. The festival is moving toward year-round founder programming alongside the annual event. Worth watching.
Read the full recap → Nrth 2026: Winners and Standouts From Toronto's Startup Stage
Edwin J. Frondozo
Italy Comes to Toronto: Six Startups Looking for Canadian Partners
September 23, 2026 | Nrth 2026, Toronto
The Italian Trade Agency brought six companies to Nrth. It was the only international delegation on the programme. Deputy Trade Commissioner Paola Furno hosted the 40-minute session. Her message: Italian startups have always looked to the U.S. first. That is changing. Stronger ties between Italy and Canada are making Canada a real option.
The companies came market-ready with specific asks. Nano-Tech makes advanced composite materials and already supplies F1 teams and aerospace firms. They want Canadian racing and aerospace partners. Fast Charge Engineering builds high-performance battery packs and is raising €3 million to set up Canadian operations. Therness uses thermal cameras and AI to catch welding defects in real time. Prometeo has been doing supply chain math since 1994 and is looking for North American manufacturers. PickEat runs mobile ordering inside Italian sports stadiums and wants to expand to Canadian venues. BCC Studio simplifies startup investment paperwork across Europe. And Avacam monitors landslides and glaciers with AI time-lapse cameras.
These were not early-stage pitches. These were companies with products, customers, and a plan to land in Canada. Toronto as a soft-landing city for international founders is becoming a real pattern.
Read the full article → Italy's Startup Delegation at Nrth 2026
Edwin J. Frondozo
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