Seven tech and innovation events coming in November

November’s tech and innovation calendar is about what happens when ambition meets the work of getting technology into real use.

Teams are working through how AI fits into daily operations, SaaS companies are rethinking how they build and grow. CleanAI and femtech companies are trying to move promising technology into the systems that can use it.

And across the whole tech and innovation ecosystem, founders still need customers, and ideally Canadian ones.

After a busy September and October, the conversation keeps going, with events stretching from Vancouver to Dartmouth, focusing on what has to happen before a good idea becomes something people use in the real world.

Global Summit AI Vancouver

Nov. 2-3
The Nest, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C.

A big part of the conversation at Global Summit AI Vancouver are the practical problems that can come up once AI is put to work inside organizations.

The agenda gets into whether systems stay reliable and secure, what they cost to run, how teams know when something has gone wrong, and when a person needs to step in.

There’s also a software angle, with sessions on how AI is changing the way products get built and what that means for the teams responsible for them.

Diana Fox Carney, economist, researcher, and cultural advocate delivers opening remarks. Speakers include:

Diane Gutiw, vice president of AI research at CGI
Mani Malek, research scientist at Google DeepMind
Kevin Leyton-Brown, professor of computer science at UBC and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Amii
Shelly Badhesha, director of banking at RBCx

Calgary Innovation Week

Nov. 2-5
Platform Calgary (HQ for the week)
Events across Calgary, Alta.

With a theme of “Built Here. Backed Here,” Calgary Innovation Week features more than 70 events across the city, with a focus on connecting founders with buyers.

“Last year was about celebrating growth and momentum,” Platform Calgary CEO Jennifer Lussier told Digital Journal’s Jennifer Friesen earlier in October.

“This year, founders are telling us that customer access is their number-one focus. They want Canadian enterprise buyers to open their doors, shorten procurement timelines, and actively back local innovation.”

To capture different audiences, each day of Innovation Week has a different focus.

Monday is founders and startups, and will include a showcase of the top 10 startups in Calgary, chosen through community nominations and expert review. Each startup will give their pitch, and awards will be announced the same evening.

On Tuesday, the spotlight is on technology talent and careers, Wednesday on industry and investors, and Thursday is the YYC Tech Crawl and Launch Party, which celebrates the 10 top startups.

Here’s a look at Digital Journal’s previous coverage of Calgary Innovation Week.

Femtech Canada Forum

Nov. 3
Artscape Daniels Spectrum
Toronto, Ont.

Femtech founders can prove their technology works and still hit barriers when it comes time to sell into hospitals or health systems.

Access to health data and the policy environment can shape what happens next.

This year’s Femtech Canada Forum is centered on turning the sector’s growth and momentum into action, looking at finding and leveraging meaningful data, what drives procurement, and how femtech priorities can influence policy.

“We know where the gaps in women’s health are, and we know what they cost,” says Femtech Canada founder and lead advisor Rachel Bartholomew. “What founders need now is data they can build on, procurement pathways they can actually enter, and policy that keeps up with them.”

In addition to Bartholomew, featured speakers include:

Skaidra Puodžiūnas, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Council of Canadian Innovators
Renee Kokts-Porietis, co-founder of My Normative
Parnian Majd, founder and CEO of Fibra
Jovan Matic, director of the health innovation policy branch of Ontario’s Ministry of Health

The Global CleanAI Summit

Nov. 4
The MaRS Centre
Toronto, Ont.

According to CleanAI Initiative, Canada is the third most active cleanAI market in the world by deal count. It also found that one in four Canadian AI companies is a cleanAI venture.

AI is transforming the physical world and the energy, food, water, critical minerals, and infrastructure that keep it running.

Taking place in Toronto with the theme “Entering the Age of Physical AI,” the Global CleanAI Summit brings together investors behind cleanAI, founders, and the enterprises that deploy the technology, all looking at the economic opportunities of the sector.

In addition to a look at the ecosystem with CleanAI Initiative’s director of knowledge Emily MacIntosh, the agenda includes a fireside chat between the initiative’s founder Nicholas Parker and Ade Famoti, global head of AI research incubations at Microsoft.

The speaker lineup includes:

Priya Donti, assistant professor at MIT and co-founder of Climate Change AI
Spencer Low, head of regional sustainability, APAC at Google
Dana Tizya-Tramm, former Chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and director at Nadlii
Becky Park-Romanovsky, founder and executive director of Toronto Climate Week

SAAS NORTH AI

Nov. 4-5
Rogers Centre
Ottawa, Ont.

AI is starting to change some of the assumptions that have shaped the SaaS business model, and companies are figuring out which parts of the old playbook still hold up.

This year’s SAAS NORTH AI, returning to Ottawa for its 11th year, explores these changes with a theme of “Scaling in the Era of AI.”

The agenda gets more specific, with conversations about product strategy, pricing, distribution, capital, trust, and how teams are changing as AI becomes more deeply embedded in the business.

Speakers include:

Niramay, executive director at CIBC Innovation Banking
Jodi Baxter, vice-president of 5G and industry solutions at Telus
Pat Belliveau, CEO of Gambit
Jeremy Black, GM of banking at Float

New this year is DEPLOY, a one-day defence-technology and dual-use summit on Nov. 5, presented by Dominion Dynamics and co-sponsored by Anvil.

It’s a timely addition, after Ottawa launched its Defence Industrial Strategy in February, committing $6.6 billion over five years to building domestic capability.

A June 2026 report from BDC, with Forum Research and The Icebreaker, based on a survey of 642 Canadian SMEs, also found that 374 firms were interested in pursuing defence opportunities.

Sessions at this summit aim to help founders explore whether the defence sector is the right fit for them, how they can build for the space, and the realities of navigating government procurement.

AIAI Toronto

Nov. 12
Marriott Downtown at CF Toronto Eaton Centre
Toronto, Ont.

As generative and agentic AI move into day-to-day operations, tech leaders are deciding which tools are ready for real use and which actions still need a human in the loop.

Hosted by AI Accelerator Institute, AIAI Toronto is two summits under one roof.

The Generative AI summit will explore model selection, infrastructure, tooling, observability, security, and what it takes to build applications that can keep working as the technology changes.

The Agentic AI Summit dives deeper into autonomy, orchestration, evaluation, and how much control organizations are willing to hand over to AI agents.

Before the two tracks diverge, a headliner stage will feature Haider Zaidi, deployed engineer at LangChain, Christopher Nuland, chief AI architect at Red Hat, and Victor Krim, senior AI engineer at OpenAI.

Additional speakers include:

Zeinab Alliji, head of AI, wealth technology at BMO
Victor Krim, senior AI engineer at OpenAI
Olga Tsubiks, director of data and AI at RBC
Lin Liu, director of data science at Wealthsimple

The Atlantic Technology Summit 2026

Nov. 18
Dartmouth, N.S. (Cineplex Cinemas Dartmouth Crossing)
and Saint John, N.B.

This year’s Atlantic Technology Summit comes to Dartmouth and Saint John with a theme of “Secure Velocity,” built around moving faster with AI without losing control of security, trust, or cost.

Sessions will look at getting AI out of experimentation and into real workflows, strengthening cyber resilience, managing cloud spending, and building more technical capability inside organizations.

Dartmouth hosts the main stage, with programming streamed to a connected hub in Saint John.

New this year is The Founders Floor, where attendees can meet the next generation of early-stage Atlantic Canadian companies. This addition was designed to give startups a dedicated space to talk about what they need next, whether that’s customers, a pilot partner, seed capital, or a technical co-founder.

Featured speakers include: