NOV 5, 2026 · Rogers Centre, Ottawa · Presented by Dominion Dynamics
DEPLOY
One day, inside SAAS NORTH AI. Software, AI, autonomy, cyber, data and the companies that don’t yet think of themselves as defence companies.
MISSION BRIEF
WHY SAAS NORTH AI. WHY NOW.
Canada just made domestic defence the default. Not by slogan, by policy. And Canada is turning to its own founders to deliver.
That’s DEPLOY, at SAAS NORTH AI. Eleven years in, Canada’s founder-heavy AI and SaaS community is now the home for its dual-use community.
This year, the people who set what Canada buys, and why, share the room with the founders building it. Defence industrial policy, army command, and the capital that funds the scale-up.
One day, one room, the full chain from requirement to product, here are four numbers on how fast it’s shifting:
// Defence Industrial Strategy 2026
// Budget 2025
// Defence Industrial Strategy 2026
Speaker Highlights
The people already building, funding, and buying Canadian defence tech. Curating the day for the founders coming next.
Commander
Canadian Army
Commander
Canadian Joint Forces Command (CJFC)
Co-Founder & CEO
Sentinel R&D
Lead Investor
Georgian
Co-Founder & CEO
North Vector Dynamics
CEO
Anvil
Canada is rebuilding its defence, and changing how it buys to do it.
One day of sessions with the people on every side of that: the commanders who set the requirement, the funds writing cheques, the founders already delivering, and the agency rewriting how Canada buys.
Presenting Partner
Lead Partners
Contributing Partners
Community Supporters
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
Canada’s next generation of defence technology will be built by ambitious entrepreneurs. DEPLOY exists to help them scale globally while strengthening Canada’s sovereign industrial capabilities. SAAS NORTH AI is the ideal place to launch that mission.
Canada’s defence sector is in a genuine period of growth. Opportunities that bring our tech and investment community together make the whole ecosystem stronger, which means more talent, more jobs, and more capability that stays here instead of going elsewhere. We’re proud to support DEPLOY at SAAS NORTH AI.
Book your turn-key exhibit in our Defence Showcase, featuring software, AI, autonomy and service experts to help you grow.
The founder-first defence and dual-use summit which takes place on November 5, 2026, Day 2 of SAAS NORTH. It’s for tech companies weighing or expanding in the defence and dual-use market, with a specific focus on software, AI, and autonomy.
Yes, and more than that, the day is built on you being there. DEPLOY brings together the companies building defence and dual-use technology with the people who fund it, buy it and set the requirements. Senior government, CAF and agency leaders are on the programme, not in the audience by accident.
Tech companies already operating in defence, defence-curious software and AI founders, the investors funding dual-use in Canada, and the operators who’ve crossed over. This year the customer joins them: the commanders, officials, and agency leaders deciding what Canada buys. The room stays founder-first.
Often, yes. Defence buys capabilities, not categories, and increasingly those capabilities are software, AI, autonomy, cyber, data, simulation and secure infrastructure. Plenty of companies at DEPLOY arrive selling commercially and leave knowing whether a defence application exists. Some leave knowing it doesn’t. Both are useful answers.
In commercial software, the better product usually wins. Defence buys capabilities that solve problems it already recognizes, so a technically impressive product can be irrelevant if it doesn’t map to a problem an operator already feels. DEPLOY is built around making that translation.
DEPLOY is a founders’ summit. But how Canada buys is now front and centre: the day opens on Canada as the customer and closes on where procurement is going, with the people setting policy and writing contracts taking real questions on stage.
Yes. DEPLOY is built for companies expanding in defence as much as those entering it: new problems to map, new capital to raise, new contracts to win.
Yes. DEPLOY takes place on Day 2 of SAAS NORTH, so it’s already included with your pass. It runs as a curated summit inside the event. One pass, two days: the full SAAS NORTH experience + DEPLOY.
Build what defends.
Canada’s defence edge will be built at home. Spend one day with the people already doing it.