Not Just Hype: How Builders Are Using AI

AI Isn’t Coming. It’s Already Here.

It’s changing how Canadian startups build — faster, leaner, smarter.

You don’t need a PhD or a YC badge. You need this toolkit.

What Real Teams Are Already Doing with AI

✅ Customer Support, Automated

→ Tools like Fin by Intercom are handling 60–80% of FAQs. Plug in your docs. Done.

✅ Grant Research in 10 Minutes

→ Founders are using Claude or Perplexity to map eligibility and flag deadlines — no more CTRL+F through PDFs.

✅ Pitch Outreach at Scale

→ Fine-tuned GPTs are writing cold emails, customizing pitch decks, and summarizing investor call notes.

✅ Content Ops, but Fast

→ AI drafts your launch copy, job posts, and Notion updates — then you humanize it. (Never the other way around.)

✅ Internal Tools + Zapier + AI

→ Automate onboarding flows, changelogs, inbox filtering — all without a dev team.

🧑‍💻 “We automated our grant funnel and saved ~15 hours a week. We’re a 3-person team — every hour counts.”

— Cleantech founder, Halifax

Tools We Rate (and Use)

ChatGPT Pro – Train your own GPTs for internal use

Perplexity AI – Clean, sourced research without hallucination

Fermat – One-click slide decks and strategy docs

Zapier AI – Automate tasks with plain-English commands

Rationale AI – Pros/cons decision support (budget-friendly cofounder)

Free Money for Builders (Still Open!)

💸 Free Money for Builders (Still Open!)

Google Canada AI Fund

→ $13M for training Canadians in AI

Scale AI Project Funding

→ Get 40% of AI project costs covered

Alberta Catalyzer (Rolling)

→ Coaching + investor exposure for early-stage founders

Western Accelerator – Deadline June 13

→ 15-week bootcamp with seed funding + mentorship

Build-Ready Events, No Fluff

🧑‍💻 TechTO Hackathon – Toronto

📆 June 23

📍 MaRS Discovery District

🔗 Join here

🌐 Canadian Cloud Summit (Online)

📆 June 19–20

→ Copilot, Azure, and AI demos for devs + orgs

🔗 Register

🗓️ Want more? We track events like this in our Luma calendar — and drop highlights in the FiC newsletter every week.

Still Googling “Grants for Canadian Startups”?

The FiC Directory is your real-time, no-login-needed hub for:

✅ Funding programs

✅ Support orgs

✅ Builder-first opportunities

💡 Search by org type, audience, or sector — and actually find something useful.

We’re Not Just Curating. We’re Building.

Founders don’t need another PDF. They need tools that work.

That’s why we are building the FiC Directory, Live Grant Tracker, and Builder Drops. And we’re just getting started.

📬 Join the Waitlist – Get early access to features made just for Canadian innovators.

🧠 Launch is coming in hot.

Built by builders. For builders.

Always real. Never boring.

No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just better startup tools — finally