The Narwhal List 2020 – 2019 was another remarkable year for Canadian Narwhals. In particular, there were 9 financings of Narwhals that exceeded $100 million (all amounts in $US). Two of these financings were in healthtech and 7 in computer technology. Of particular note were deals that provided $388 million to Verafin in St John’s, $270 million to Nuvei out of Montreal, $250 million to Clio from Vancouver and $200 million to Toronto’s 1 Password. It is interesting that all of these companies are more than 10 years old and none had previously made the Narwhal List cut-off.
Several prominent companies graduated from the list this year. Lightspeed POS had an IPO, Bluerock was acquired by Bayer, and Wealthsimple has been classified as acquired as its largest investor now owns more than 50% of the company.
While Kik Interactive was removed from the list of Unicorns maintained by CBInsights, two new Canadian companies made the list. These were Nuvei with a valuation of $2 billion and Coveo with a valuation of $1.1 billion.
For the first time, we have expanded the list by 10 companies to include cleantech ventures. Exhibit 1 features the ten leading Canadian Narwhals.
The Narwhal List 2020 V5As would be expected, the greatest number of companies on the list is from Toronto with substantial numbers coming from Montreal and Vancouver as well.
In terms of when these companies were founded, the average year of founding is 2010 with more than half founded since then.
For more information on the Narwhal List 2020, please click here.