Tech leaders, senior government officials, investors, CEOs, and strategic partners gathered on April 17, 2018 at the Shopify Toronto office for the launch of Elevate TechFest 2018.
Elevate TechFest is a unique four day city-wide tech and innovation festival taking place in Toronto from September 24-27, 2018 which will bring together 10,000 guests, 300 speakers, and 250 venues to explore emerging technologies such as blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and FinTech and relevant topics on data privacy and digital inclusiveness.
Formerly called Elevate Toronto, Elevate TechFest provides an unparalleled collaborative and educational platform for Canada’s booming high tech startup ecosystem. According to Razor Suleman, co-founder and CEO of Elevate TechFest, the new name reflects Elevate’s desire to build on last year’s momentum, “to disrupt together as a country, and demonstrate to a global audience that Canada is a powerhouse of innovation and technology.”
The Elevate 2018 launch event announced headline speakers, community initiatives, and new partnerships. Last year, Elevate featured top speakers such as the godfathers of artificial intelligence Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, renowned investor Vinod Khosla, CBC Dragon and Clearbanc co-founder Michele Romanow, and many more. The initial line up of speakers announced at the Elevate 2018 launch includes Former VP of the US and co-founder of Generation Investment Al Gore, founder and CEO of Bumble Whitney Wolfe Herd, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare Michelle Zatlyn, CEO of the MaRS Discovery District Yung Wu, and managing partner at CasaVerde Capital Karan Wadhera.
This year, the festival will feature all new content tracks and will launch new features including a corporate buyer zone, one-on-one meetings with investors as well as an expanded Elevate-R Pitch, and a March-madness style pitch competition showcasing the best Canadian scaleup companies.