New Brunswick's VC Numbers Just Went 10x — and Carried Atlantic Canada With Them

Atlantic Canada's venture capital numbers for the first half of 2026 are in, and they read like two different regions. The Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) released its quarterly data this week, and — as Entrevestor's Peter Moreira reported — New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador between them accounted for 96% of all the venture funding raised across Atlantic Canada in H1 2026.

The New Brunswick line

Entrevestor's topline figure: New Brunswick companies booked $31.6 million in the six months to June 30. In a note to Entrevestor, the CVCA itself put the province's number slightly differently — $30.6 million across seven VC deals — but both figures describe the same story: New Brunswick's H1 2025 total was just $2.7 million, meaning the province's venture funding grew roughly tenfold year-on-year.

The province's biggest single contributor was no mystery. In May, Fredericton-based cybersecurity firm Lastwall closed a $16 million round led by BDC Capital's StrongNorth Fund — on its own, more than five times New Brunswick's entire 2025 haul.

Split by quarter, the momentum held up rather than front-loading into a single deal: Q1 contributed to the total, and Q2 2026 alone brought in $23.7 million across four deals in New Brunswick.

For context on just how thin the province's prior baseline was, the $15 million New Brunswick raised across all of 2025 is now smaller than what the province raised in Q2 2026 alone.

Newfoundland and Labrador, and the rest of the region

Newfoundland and Labrador posted $21 million across three deals in H1 2026 — the CVCA noted that's triple the province's deal count from the same period in 2025. Of that, $5.5 million on two deals landed in Q2.

Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island tell the opposite story. Nova Scotia — normally the region's largest and most populous VC market — raised just $2 million across two deals in H1 2026, down from roughly $32 million in the same period a year earlier, a 16-fold drop. PEI recorded no venture capital at all in the period.

Atlantic Canada as a whole raised $22.4 million in Q1 and $31.2 million in Q2, per the CVCA's quarterly releases — modest by national standards, but a total now dominated by New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador rather than spread across the region.

The national backdrop

New Brunswick's surge landed against a Canadian venture market that grew in dollar terms while contracting in deal count: CVCA reported $2.7 billion invested across 250 deals nationally in the comparable period, versus $2.3 billion across 274 deals a year earlier — dollars up 17%, deal count down 9%.

"Canadian investors kept capital moving through a period that would have halted most markets," said CVCA CEO Benjamin Bergen. "As rounds get larger, more of the world's investors come to the table, a sign of how much Canadian companies can attract at scale. The work ahead is building more of the capacity to lead those rounds at home, so Canada captures more of the upside."

Reading the New Brunswick number

A single $16-million round can flatter a small province's numbers, and it would be a mistake to read one strong half as a trend reversal on its own. But the pattern this site tracked in the lean 2024 numbers — real deal flow, but nothing scaling past the $4-5 million mark — is exactly what changed here. Lastwall's round is the kind of Series A-sized event New Brunswick's ecosystem has been waiting on, and it moved the province from the smallest funding story in Atlantic Canada to its biggest in the space of one half-year.

Whether it's a turning point or an outlier depends on whether the next $10-million-plus round shows up from a different company. For now, the number is real, and it is New Brunswick's best half in years.

Sources

• CVCA Data Shows Feast or Famine on the East Coast — Entrevestor's report on the CVCA's H1 2026 Atlantic Canada venture data, all provincial and quarterly figures, and the CVCA/Benjamin Bergen quotes
• Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association — primary source organization for the underlying venture capital data
• Lastwall Lands $16M Round Led by BDC Capital — NB Tech News' coverage of the Fredericton cybersecurity round driving New Brunswick's H1 2026 total
• The Numbers Behind a Lean Year — prior NB Tech News coverage of New Brunswick's $15M/15-deal 2024 total, for comparison