AGI Ventures brings AI-curious Ottawans together in ‘grassroots community’ of tech builders

Launched two-and-a-half years ago, AGI Ventures is the brainchild of Hai Nghiem and Neilda Gagné, a pair of Ottawa tech entrepreneurs who wanted to build a “grassroots community” to foster innovative ways of tapping into the power of AI.

When Parisa Zare attended her first pitchfest at Invest Ottawa three years ago, one thought went through her mind: “There’s no way I could ever do that.” A few months ago, at the 2026 version of the same event, Zare walked away with the Crowd Favourite Award. “Life is strange like that,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post afterward. PitchPal, the app she invented with business partner Marc-Antoine Ruel, has now been used by hundreds of entrepreneurs — including Zare herself — to help rehearse conversations with investors, partners and customers. The “AI-powered pitch coach” allows founders to record a pitch and get feedback on how it can be improved within seconds.  “You can practise your one-minute pitch or you can practise your 20-minute pitch that you are going to do in front of an investor for a variety of different environments and use cases,” explains Zare, whose day job is running projects designed to make Invest Ottawa more efficient at using artificial intelligence tools.  “We are hoping to empower founders and builders to do better pitches and get better opportunities as a result of that.” It’s an idea that came to fruition literally overnight, thanks in part to an Ottawa-based organization called AGI Ventures Canada.  Launched two-and-a-half years ago, AGI Ventures Canada is the brainchild of Hai Nghiem and Neilda Gagné, a pair of Ottawa tech entrepreneurs who wanted to build a “grassroots community” to foster innovative ways of tapping into the power of AI. Originally called AI Tinkerers, the organization now serves a growing community of more than 2,000 people who “tend to be a very curious, playful and internally motivated bunch” when it comes to quickly devising new uses for AI, Gagné says. “They’ll find a problem, and they will find ways to solve it no matter what,” she adds. AGI Ventures hosts events throughout the year aimed at bringing together AI-curious folks from diverse backgrounds and allowing them to let their imaginations run free.  The gatherings typically take the form of “hackathons” — one-day coding marathons in which participants use AI-powered tools to come up with new software applications.  Thanks to AI, Gagné and Nghiem note, almost anyone can build software using natural language prompts, rather than traditional line-by-line programming that often requires years to master. That’s opened the door to a whole new wave of creators. “We’re kind of like a catalyst,” says Gagné, who founded a software company in Silicon Valley before moving to Ottawa at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to be with her now-husband, tech entrepreneur Jonathan Gagné.

'Variety of backgrounds'

It was at one such hackathon last year that the idea for PitchPal was born.  Zare, a native of Iran, moved to the National Capital Region in late 2022 and started working at Invest Ottawa a few months later as a program co-ordinator. After attending the first few AI hackathons as a curious observer, she ended up being a judge at one of the events and, despite not having any formal coding experience, finally decided to enter one herself. “I saw that everyone with a variety of backgrounds can join,” she says. Zare had “no actual plan” for what she was going to create before she set foot in Bayview Yards that Saturday in September, she says. She was matched with a couple of CEGEP students from Quebec as her partners, and they “went through a few different ideas, decided to work on a pitch evaluator tool and started building,” she explains. Zare and her collaborators worked on the app from 9:30 in the morning until 10 p.m. “We had people testing the tool that night,” she says. The experience ultimately changed her life, laying the groundwork for an award-winning new business. Zare says the mentors AGI provided during the hackathon were “super-valuable” sources of advice and support as they helped her navigate the high-pressure environment. “It was a lot of fun,” she says. “Providing a space to go past that fear of ‘I'm not technical, I don't know what to do’ to ‘I'm actually building something’ was the most valuable support that I got. And also, as part of that, it's not just the space and the time, it was for us the people in that room who could just help unblock (challenges) that came up right on the spot.” Since then, AGI has put a few twists on the traditional hackathon concept in a bid to spur even more creativity among developers.

In January, for example, the organization hosted a “hacker house” at an apartment in downtown Ottawa. Eleven founders chosen through an application process had access to the building from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., where they gathered throughout the month to code, brainstorm ideas and share wisdom.  The venture ended up spawning two businesses that have received multiple funding offers from venture capitalists. AGI is now planning a similar event, Hacker Cottage Weekend, at a cabin in St-Sauveur, Que., over four days in late August. Gagné says nearly 80 developers have already expressed interest in grabbing one of the 22 available spots. “Building never stops,” she says. “Actual genius happens during the weekends and (after normal working hours from) 5 to 9. We just give (developers) the space and the people who have similar mindsets under the same roof, and amazing things happen.” The organization’s latest focus is AGIV Industries, an initiative launched in June that it bills as a “monthly show-and-tell” where AI users gather to present real-world case studies on how they’ve employed the technology to improve productivity in their workplaces.  AGIV Industries’ next event, scheduled for Tuesday at Bayview Yards, will feature speakers from fast-growing Ottawa software startups Knak and Fellow and is expected to draw more than 100 people.

Consulting business spinoff

Meanwhile, AGI is hosting another hackathon next Saturday, dubbed “Hackers & Healers,” that will bring developers and health-care professionals together to come up with tools designed to “make primary care more doable by reducing repetitive work, supporting preparation and follow-through, and protecting the continuity of patient care,” the organization says.  Nearly 180 participants have already signed up for the one-day event, which will feature judges and mentors such as Doug Archibald, the director of research and innovation at the University of Ottawa’s Department of Family Medicine, and Blake Daly, the director of innovation at Bruyère Health.  Like many of AGI’s events, it is free to attend. While the organization does have a few corporate sponsors, including local tech firms Ross Video and Solace, those contributions alone aren’t enough to pay the bills. As a result, Gagné and Nghiem incorporated the business last August and began branching out into consulting early this year to generate more revenue to fund future projects. The firm, which has a handful of full-time employees, is now working with several mid-market tech companies in Canada and the United States. The company’s goal, Nghiem explains, is to help clients “make sense of all the noise that is out there” by offering workshops, educational resources and other tools to allow them to implement AI more effectively in their organizations.  AGI’s revenues have been doubling month over month, and the firm invests 15 per cent of that growing income directly into its hackathons and other events.   “The more money we make, the more community stuff we can do,” Nghiem says. “That’s been our north star since day one.” The company plans to continue rolling out events throughout 2026, including a conference near the end of the year. Nghiem believes it’s only a matter of time before founders from across Ottawa and beyond start circling AGI’s gatherings on their calendars. “We really want this to be the marquee event in Ottawa for AI, where people will travel to Ottawa to attend,” he says of the year-end conference. “We want it to be as big as SaaS North, if not bigger.” AGI appears to be gaining momentum, and Nghiem says he couldn’t be happier. “Honestly, I feel like I have the best job,” he says. Gagné, an OBJ Forty Under 40 recipient in 2026, agrees. “Being around builders is my happy place.”