An Ottawa defence-tech startup’s platform will soon be available to customers of Calian Group as part of a new program aimed at helping fledgling businesses serving Canada’s defence sector scale up and sell their inventions to the world. Kanata-based Calian announced this week that Tactiql, a software company founded by military veteran Mike Nelson, will […]
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An Ottawa defence-tech startup’s platform will soon be available to customers of Calian Group as part of a new program aimed at helping fledgling businesses serving Canada’s defence sector scale up and sell their inventions to the world.
Kanata-based Calian announced this week that Tactiql, a software company founded by military veteran Mike Nelson, will be the first partner in Calian Ventures.
Launched in September, Calian Ventures is designed to provide engineering and go-to-market support to up-and-coming defence-tech firms that are creating groundbreaking solutions for military customers.
Chris Pogue, Calian’s head of defence and space who oversees the program, told OBJ that Tactiql is a “logical” choice to kick off Calian Ventures.
“It fit all the criteria I could imagine in my head of who would be first,” Pogue said. “I would hope this is the first of what will be many partners to work with us through Ventures.”
Founded in 2022, Tactiql is based at Area X.O, an R&D complex for next-generation technologies run by Invest Ottawa in the city’s south end. The 15-person organization specializes in software that converts data coming from an array of sensors and other military equipment into a format that’s compatible with a range of software applications used by personnel in the field or at command-and-control centres.
Nelson, a former special operations officer who served nearly 15 years in the Canadian Armed Forces before leaving the military in 2021, explains that field operatives are doing a high-stress job, often in remote areas with limited access to wireless networks.
In those scenarios, time is of the essence. Tactiql’s software helps simplify the process of analyzing data by integrating multiple software applications and data streams into a single user interface.
“What works in an office or a corporate environment just isn’t reasonable for somebody deployed in the field,” Nelson said. “You need to make these things really, really simple, and that’s really hard to do. But that’s where our expertise is.”
The bootstrapped venture has quickly gained traction with customers such as the CAF. After doubling its revenues in its second year of operation, its revenues soared 500 per cent in 2024 compared with the previous year.
Nelson expects Tactiql to nearly double last year’s sales in fiscal 2025. The fast-rising firm gained further market cache when it was one of only 15 companies selected earlier this year from more than 2,600 applicants to advance to phase two of the NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) program.
Moving to the next stage of DIANA comes with perks such as 300,000 Euros (about $490,000) in non-dilutive funding, access to NATO test centres and support to get the firm’s technology into the hands of militaries across the 32-nation alliance.
Now, Tactiql will get a further boost from tapping into Calian’s engineering and marketing know-how, opening up potential pathways to new geographic markets and verticals.
“Calian gives us an opportunity to build out our product faster and deliver increased value to our customers,” Nelson explained. “To be competitive, you can’t just do things on your own. Through partnerships like this with Calian, it’s the means by which we do that.”
Tactiql, which is also enrolled in Invest Ottawa’s accelerator program for high-potential startups, has benefited from federal initiatives such as the Industrial Research Assistance Program and Innovative Solutions Canada that have helped it through its early growing pains.
But Nelson says he’s hoping for more support from the federal government, which has pledged to make buying Canadian a top priority as part of its plan to ramp up military spending by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.
“It’s a huge opportunity, but how (the Department of National Defence) is going to access our technologies – not just buy-and-tries, but actually scale it across the military, is a gap that needs to be addressed,” he said.
“We’re doing some great things with the CAF now, but how do we scale that across the CAF? That’s a question that remains to be answered.”
Pogue says he hopes that joining forces with a major industry player such as Calian – which generates about half of its annual revenues of more than $750 million from defence-related customers – will give Tactiql and other ascending Canadian companies the edge they need to become potential stars on the world stage.
“I think sometimes (procurement) decisions get limited by the concern that, will that small business be able to scale and be able to meet the (market) need?” Pogue said. “With Ventures, I think we can help mitigate that. I’m not saying it solves it, but it can help mitigate that.”
