A Calgary artificial intelligence startup that automates the regulatory paperwork behind major infrastructure projects has raised $13 million in Series A funding, the company said Sept. 11, as Ottawa pushes to fast-track approvals for a new slate of nation-building projects.
Ultimarii’s round, which combined equity and debt financing, was led by BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and included Mistral Venture Partners, Staircase Ventures, Alpaca VC and more than 30 angel investors, according to the company and BetaKit. The National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program also contributed non-dilutive funding. The new capital brings Ultimarii’s total funding to more than $18 million since the company launched in January 2024, according to The Logic.
The company was co-founded by Doug Schweitzer, a former Alberta minister of justice and solicitor general who later served as the province’s minister of jobs, economy and innovation, and Josh Malate, who previously founded the legal technology firm Athennian, BetaKit reported.
Ultimarii’s software is trained on more than two million curated documents drawn from over 50 Canadian and U.S. regulatory bodies, according to the company, and is meant to help government agencies, energy producers, mining companies and utility operators cut through paperwork that can delay major projects for years.
“North America cannot build infrastructure at the speed and scale required without modernizing the systems used to approve it,” Schweitzer said in a company statement.
The raise lands as the federal government works to speed up its own approvals process. The Building Canada Act, passed in 2025, created a Major Projects Office with the power to fast-track a list of “projects of national interest” through federal reviews that have historically stretched on for years, according to the government’s One Canadian Economy website. Ottawa began accepting nominations for that list in June and is now working through an initial slate of energy, mining and infrastructure projects the government has deemed critical to the country’s economic future.
Ultimarii’s co-founders have credited that federal push with fuelling demand for their platform, telling The Logic that Ottawa’s drive to get more major projects built in Canada is a factor behind the company’s growth.
With the new funding, Ultimarii plans to expand its regulatory intelligence platform south of the border, building out U.S.-specific datasets covering agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Texas Railroad Commission, the company said. It is targeting a global energy infrastructure investment market it expects to reach US$3.4 trillion in 2026, as it competes to become the regulatory intelligence layer for permitting decisions on both sides of the border.
The deal is the second Ultimarii has closed inside a year, following a $5.2-million raise in September 2025, according to Calgary.Tech, a sign of how quickly investor interest in Canadian regulatory-technology startups has grown as Ottawa and the provinces race to unclog a permitting system widely blamed for slowing everything from mines to transmission lines. Whether that translates into faster shovels in the ground remains to be tested, but for now, the money is flowing toward the bureaucracy that decides when they can start digging.
