Canada is funding the AI workforce for local businesses. Vendasta is building it.

Vendasta receives $1,416,100 through PrairiesCan's Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative to build AI Employees for local businesses across Canada

Saskatoon SK, Canada, May 07, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vendasta has received $1.4 million in funding through the Government of Canada's Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative (RAII), delivered by Prairies Economic Development Canada. The investment accelerates Vendasta's mission to democratize enterprise-grade AI for local businesses, putting the same technology that powers the world's largest companies to work for the local plumber, restaurateur, and law firm.

This is what it looks like when the right investment meets the right moment.

“At a time of global uncertainty, it is more important than ever to support homegrown innovations that create good jobs and strengthen Canada’s position as an innovation powerhouse,” said the Honourable Eleanor Olszewski, Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada. “Our new government is investing in Saskatchewan’s dynamic tech sector to drive growth, attract investments and build Canada strong.”

Read the PrairiesCan News Release and Backgrounder.

Local businesses are outnumbered

52% of large firms already use AI. Only 17.4% of small businesses do.

That gap isn't about relevance — AI is just as useful to a two-person dental clinic as it is to a Fortune 500 company. The gap is about access: the complexity, the cost, and the assumption that enterprise-grade technology was never really meant for them. Among the small businesses that have made the leap, 91% report a direct boost in revenue. The technology works. It just hasn't reached everyone yet.

That is the problem Vendasta was built to solve. And it's the problem this funding helps accelerate.

About the Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative

The RAII is part of Canada's Budget 2024 commitment to securing Canada's AI advantage. Through the program, Prairies Economic Development Canada is delivering $33.8 million over five years to help AI companies in the start-up and scale-up phases bring real solutions to market, and to help businesses in agriculture, healthcare, clean technology, and manufacturing actually adopt the technology. Projects receive between $250,000 and $5 million in funding, available on a continuous basis through December 31, 2028.

Vendasta has been awarded $1,416,100 under the initiative to commercialize AI-augmented workflows that support local businesses across Canada and beyond. This funding will accelerate the development and distribution of AI employees for local businesses across Canada and beyond.

This is the right investment at the right moment. Canada is already a global leader in AI research and development. The RAII ensures that leadership translates into real productivity gains for the businesses that drive the Canadian economy.

Putting AI to work for local businesses

That's not just a phrase, it’s the whole point. For years, "AI for business" has meant dashboards, reports, and tools that make the work slightly less painful. Vendasta makes something different: AI employees. Workers. Role-based, pre-loaded with a business's own data, deployed in minutes, and on the job from day one.

AI Receptionist answers calls and books appointments around the clock. AI Reputation Specialist monitors and responds to reviews across every platform. AI Sales Assistant captures leads, qualifies them, and moves them through the pipeline, entering everything directly into the CRM without a human lifting a finger. Each one arrives knowing the business: its data, its history, its customers. Each one gets to work on day one.

Watch what that looks like in practice: Put AI to Work — Vendasta's campaign.

The recent launch of MARiO — Italy's first AI employee purpose-built for local businesses, deployed at national scale through Italiaonline — proved what Vendasta has always believed: an AI workforce isn't a future concept. It's a scalable reality for every local business, in any market, right now.

Through a network of 60,000+ channel partners — agencies, media companies, telcos, and software providers — Vendasta's AI employees are already reaching more than 8 million local businesses worldwide. This funding helps us reach more of them, faster, and build the next generation of role-based AI workers that local businesses actually need.

"We started Vendasta because we believed local businesses deserved better technology than they were getting. That's still the whole mission,” said Jeff Tomlin, co-founder, Vendasta. “What's changed is what's possible. AI can now do work that used to require a full-time hire. A business with two employees can have the responsiveness of a company with twenty. This funding helps us put that in front of more businesses, more quickly. And the fact that we're doing it from Saskatoon, well, that part never gets old."

Built here. Proven everywhere.

Vendasta has been headquartered in Saskatoon since day one. That's a choice, and it's one we'd make again.

This province builds things that last. The technical talent, the founders who stayed and built instead of leaving for somewhere shinier, the culture of doing serious work without making it a performance, that's the foundation Vendasta stands on.

This funding lands at a meaningful moment for the Prairie ecosystem. VVendasta is a proud part of the Uniting the Prairies conference — organized by Co.Labs, Saskatchewan's tech incubator, and the largest annual tech event in the province — bringing together founders, investors, and builders from across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to grow something that doesn't exist anywhere else. The RAII is exactly the kind of investment that community has been earning: federal recognition that world-changing companies are being built here, and that the ecosystem deserves the resources to keep growing. Vendasta is one of five Saskatchewan organizations recognized in this funding round, alongside Coconut Software, HomeTeam Live Technologies, the University of Regina, and Artificial Intelligence Saskatchewan Corp.

The Prairie tech ecosystem is not emerging. It has emerged. Vendasta is proof. And with this investment, we're just getting started.

About Vendasta

Vendasta is the AI workforce platform for small and medium-sized businesses. Vendasta provides AI Employees that execute the work of marketing, sales, and operations automatically — helping local businesses reclaim time and scale without the overhead of traditional hiring. Founded in Saskatoon, Vendasta has a global network of 60,000+ partners to help SMBs stop managing software and start achieving outcomes. Learn how to hire your first AI employee at Vendasta.com.

Attachments

Nykea Behiel
Vendasta
(306) 955-5512
nbehiel@vendasta.com

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