Ontario is a city based on the Canadian mainland that is home to just over 15 million people, making it the country’s second-biggest province. It is also the country’s wealthiest province, being rich in natural resources and also being host to a very diversified economy. It’s the economy, in fact, that we’re going to look at closer today. We are going to look at just how diverse the economy in Ontario is, just how much tech is contributing to the economy of the city and how big of a part it plays in the tech scene in North America in general.
How big is Ontario?
It’s estimated that there are around 25,000+ IT organisations that call Ontario home. This remarkable number makes it the second biggest ‘cluster’ of tech firms after Silicon Valley in California. Of these 25,000 IT companies, there are around 300 based in either the electric or autonomous vehicle sectors. It’s become such an attractive hub for tech talent that organisations are flocking to the Forest City like nothing anyone has seen before. In fact, having gained over 90,000 jobs in the tech sector, the influx has indeed outpaced fellow Canadian cities Toronto and Seattle and even the San Francisco Bay area. There are also a good number of both land-based and online casinos based in Canada, with a lot of Canadians opting to explore a variety of slot games for Ontario players .
What firms are based there?
Before we look at what IT firms are based in Ontario, to give you some numbers just to highlight the sheer magnitude of the IT sector in the province, there are over 404,000 IT workers, and the GDP of the IT sector in the city is over $48.3B. It’s also home to just under half of the country’s entire IT working population. The bulk of the IT firms are mainly concentrated in three of the province’s main cities: Ottawa, Toronto, and Waterloo. Some of the big industry giants that are located in the province include Microsoft, Intel, Google, SAP, AMD, and NVIDIA, just to name a few.
Investment and growth
There is also plenty of investment and expansion within the province. Just last year, German automotive manufacturing giant Volkswagen pledged $7 billion of investment in an EV battery plant in St. Thomas. Bringing thousands of new job spaces to the area, the investment as such is the largest in the country’s history. Also in the EV industry, Dana Canada has expanded its operations in Ontario, creating an extra 105 jobs. The automotive sector in particular is hugely growing within the area, specifically when it comes both to electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles. The latter shouldn’t come as a surprise when you think that AI is also a growing sub-part of the tech boom that is currently happening within Ontario.
Why Ontario?
So why is it that Ontario has seen just an explosion in its IT sector? It certainly doesn’t offer the warm weather that Silicon Valley and the likes of San Francisco do. Well, that’s what we’re going to look at also. Of the population of Ontario, 43% of the people who call it home weren’t even born in the country. Meaning that its considerable growth is due to this influx. The concentration of tech firms in the province has also made it an area hot for investment and VC firms. Such investment firms include the Maple Leaf Angels, Golden Ventures, and Beehive Capital, just to name a few.
Home of the Top Talent
And so one of the big reasons that it’s become such a tech hub is that IT firms are moving to the area because this is where all of the top talent is also moving for the same reasons; it’s akin to a chicken and egg scenario. Start-ups and industry giants alike always want to recruit the best IT talent and Ontario has set itself up as one of the biggest and richest talent pools of IT workers in all of North America. Toronto, in particular, is a city known for having skilled IT workers.
Also contributing to this pool of skilled IT workers is the area’s educational infrastructure. The University of Waterloo, which provides a lot of undergraduates and postgraduates to firms in the area, has a rich history of fruitful contributions to the computer science industry. And there is also the University of Toronto, which is home to some industry-leading and pioneering projects. And investment within these universities is also continuing to grow as the industry is hungry for more and more top talent within the region.
In Summary
Hopefully today has given you a bit of an insight into just how big the tech sector is within Ontario and how it ranks as one of the biggest tech hubs in North America and also in the world due to the number of firms there and the top talent it is home to.