H2 Analytics has received $800,000 in non-dilutive funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), the agency said last week.
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One of Ottawa’s fastest-growing defence-tech companies is getting a six-figure boost from the federal government.
H2 Analytics has received $800,000 in non-dilutive funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), the agency said last week.
The Ottawa-based firm said it plans to use the money to expand its international footprint and upgrade its AI-powered Exercise Architect Suite (EASE) platform, which streamlines the development and deployment of realistic intelligence simulations for military customers, including the Canadian Armed Forces.
In a news release, FedDev Ontario said the platform enhancements will allow users to design and manage more complex training exercises, support multilingual co-ordination and improve the system’s performance.
“This funding will help us hire highly skilled Canadians while accelerating the next phase of EASE development,” H2 Analytics founder and CEO Hugo Hodgett said in a statement. “It’s an important step in scaling Canadian-built software that supports operational readiness.”
Hodgett, a former military veteran, launched H2 in 2017. The company has been riding a wave of growth as governments ramp up military spending, and its revenues have risen more than 550 per cent in the last three years.
Now at 47 employees, H2 Analytics has been self-financed for most of its existence. Hodgett told OBJ last week that banks and other investors are jumping on the defence-tech bandwagon as Canadian sovereignty becomes a hot-button topic, but he said more work needs to be done to attract funding from big-money capital providers that “fundamentally don’t understand” his industry.
“Defence was a dirty word in VC in Canada. That has, in theory, changed,” he said during an interview at Area X.O, where H2 Analytics tests its software.
“There is no doubt that the government is serious about (boosting defence spending). There is a huge amount of education that is required to be done here. Our experience has very much been an education battle of trying to educate investors on how it works, why it works, why it’s important, rather than those assumptions being baked into the system. It's far past time that Canadian capital gets off the sidelines.”
With federal initiatives such as the multibillion-dollar Defence Industrial Strategy now in place with the goal of increasing the amount of contracts awarded to domestically owned businesses like H2, Hodgett said his company’s future is bright.
“We’ve been growing at a pretty steady clip and it looks like we’re going to do it again this year,” he said, noting his firm has nearly doubled its headcount in the last six months. “It’s been a pretty good journey so far.”
