Canada-U.S. border restrictions have been loosening as of late, but it seems capital is flowing into the north more so than tourists as two more American firms are acquiring Vancouver tech companies.
Gen II Fund Services LLC, a New York-based fund administrator in the alternative investment space, revealed Monday it was acquiring Vancouver’s Update Capital Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
Update Capital co-founder and CEO Ran Kohavi joins Gen II as chief product technology officer following the close of the deal.
Meanwhile, Impact Tech Inc. announced Tuesday it was acquiring Vancouver startup Pressboard Media Inc.
Like the Update Capital deal, the acquirer is based in New York and the selling price was undisclosed.
Pressboard is best known for promoting and providing analytics for sponsored content.
It raised $2 million in a 2017 funding round led by the Vancouver Founder Fund.
Last year the company measured 9,692 sponsored content campaigns from 324 media publications – up 80 per cent from 2020, CEO Jerrid Grimm told BIV.
His seven-person team will be added to the 900 employees working at Impact – better known as impact.com.
These smaller acquisitions come just weeks after customer relationship management (CRM) giant Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE:CRM) inked a deal to acquire Burnaby-based Traction on Demand (Traction Sales and Marketing Inc.).
Traction has about 1,500 workers on the payroll globally, with more than 500 of them based in B.C., making it one of the largest tech employers in the province.
The selling price is expected to be disclosed in Salesforce’s next quarterly financials in the spring.
In 2020, Salesforce acquired Vancouver’s Mobify Research and Development Inc. That was soon followed by a cash-and-stock deal worth US$27.7 billion for messaging service Slack Technologies Inc. (NYSE:WORK), which was founded by Vancouverite Stewart Butterfield and maintains sizable offices in the city.
