# Radical Ventures hits US$1B-plus first close on Canada’s largest AI fund

> Radical Breakouts Fund first-closes well over US$1 billion at Carney’s Investment Summit, backed by major pensions and banks, targeting AI scaleups that stay private longer.

- Desk: TIC Staff
- Published: 2026-09-15
- Section: Markets
- Canonical: https://trueinflation.ca/article/radical-ventures-1-billion-ai-breakouts-fund

TORONTO — Radical Ventures launched its Radical Breakouts Fund at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s inaugural Canada Investment Summit on Tuesday with a first close of well over US$1 billion (about $1.4 billion CAD), putting the multi-billion-dollar AI scaleup vehicle on track to become Canada’s largest venture fund by a wide margin.

“Canada has never had a shortage of world-class AI companies. What we have lacked is capital at the scale required to keep them here as they grow,” co-founder and managing partner Jordan Jacobs said. For decades, he argued, the country’s best firms looked to the United States for their most important funding rounds — and much of the value created left with them. The new fund is meant to close that gap, investing in Canada and globally with returns coming home.

Limited partners include PSP Investments, CPP Investments, HOOPP, TD Bank Group, BMO Financial Group, CI Global Asset Management and OPTrust. Radical, already a backer of Cohere and Waabi, moved into later-stage investing in 2024 with an US$800 million growth fund; Breakouts targets AI companies on a path to becoming “trillion-dollar businesses” as firms stay private longer and reach public markets at higher valuations.

Scale capital that stays in Canada is an inflation story about where future productivity rents settle: if AI winners fund and list at home, more of the upside compounds into domestic wages, tax base and investment capacity rather than leaking south.

Source: Radical Ventures­