Calgary is quickly becoming a recognized Tech Hub

Successful cities reinvent themselves to adapt to new economies, technologies and urban living expectations. Over the past 100+ years, Calgary has evolved from a ranching/agricultural based city, to become not only an oil and gas city, but an inland port and distribution centre and now a tech hub. Here is the story of how Calgary became one of the fastest growing Tech Hubs in North America.

For decades Calgary’s economic development leaders worked to diversify the city’s economy with limited success. However, a new plan in 2021 has been so successful, that Calgary is now the faster growing tech community in North America.

The fostering of a vibrant Calgary tech sector dates back in 1981 with the City of Calgary’s formation of the Calgary Research Development Authority working in collaboration with the University of Calgary. It was later rebranded as Calgary Technologies in 1990 and today is known as PLATFORM Calgary. 

While there were several  success stories late in the 20th and early 21st centuries, an urgent need to ramp up Calgary’s status as a tech hub happened in 2015 when oil prices collapsed and downtown office towers became empty.

Tucked inside this parkade on 9th Ave SE in downtown Calgary is the PLATFORM offices.

Amazon Awakening

Calgary’s application to become Amazon’s secondary headquarters in 2017, identified that while Calgary had many advantages as a corporate headquarter city, it lacked a large tech sector community to support a full-fledged tech hub with major tech corporations. 

It was then that leaders in Calgary’s tech community decided to rethink their approach to creating a thriving tech hub.

• The University of Calgary pivoted to offer more diverse software programming courses, as did SAIT -  and Bow Valley College developed a “gaming programmers” diploma.

• Calgary Technologies was rebranded as PLATFORM and moved downtown into office space incorporated into the huge, quirky, above ground parkade next to the Central Library in 2022.

Today PLATFORM occupies its own 3-floor funky (55,000 square foot) space, that hosts 30,000 entrepreneurs, investors and educators/month, for various workspace options, programs, talks, funding pitches and social events.  It even has its own café and sports court  to “shoot hoops.”  It is a one-stop shop for most tech start-ups.

But wait, there is more. The lower two floors are open to the public from 8:30am to 4:30pm, Monday to Friday. Just wander in, grab a coffee, set up your computer and use their free Wi-Fi.  It could be fun a place to hang around and maybe learn about what’s next when it comes to technology and innovation.

The inside space is just as quirky as the outside.

Calgary’s Tech-Hub Master Plan

In 2021, Calgary created a master plan to become a major tech-hub by 2031. One of the goals was to have 45,000+ tech employees by 2031. Today there is an estimated 27,300+ tech sector employees in Calgary so we are on target.

Another goal was NOT to attempt to attract a couple of large tech companies to Calgary like Amazon, but rather to foster the creation of 1,000 smaller companies with an average of 50 employees each. This too is working as tech companies in Calgary have grown from 721 in early 2021 to 1,200+ today.  And Calgary boasts a healthy diversity in the size of its tech sector companies with 72% of Calgary’s having between 5 and 49 employees, and 21% having four or less employees. 

We are more than half-way to meeting our 2031 goals in the first five years, and the world is taking notice.

For example, a 2025 the CRBE Scoring Tech Talent Report recognized Calgary as North America’s fastest-growing tech talent market for the second consecutive year, boasting an impressive 61% increase in tech talent from 2021 to 2024. Today, Calgary is ranked 17th in North America for tech talent with a total of 64,000 tech sector employees.

In 2025, Calgary overtook Kitchener (Waterloo Region) to become the 5th-ranked startup hub in Canada according to the Global Startup Ecosystem Index, driven its 30% year-over-year growth rate.

When it comes to venture capital deals, the Canadian Venture Capital Market Overview’s Q3, Report for 2025, found Calgary ranked 3rd with 43 deals totalling $341M - with only Montreal (58 deals, $563M) and Toronto (113 deals, $2.4B) ranked higher in Canada.

Another major accomplishment over the past few years is the University of Calgary (UCalgary) solidifying its position as one of Canada's top five research universities (according to Research Infosource Inc., 2025). As the youngest university in this top tier, UCalgary achieved this ranking with $588.5 million in sponsored research income for the 2023-24 fiscal year. The university is recognized for its significant impact in energy, health, and emerging fields like quantum technology. The University is actively proceeding with the creation of its Innovation Quarters next to the Brentwood LRT Station, making it easy for entrepreneurs to “flip” back and forth from PLATFORM downtown.

Bow Valley College, just two blocks from PLATFORM, has also played a role in Calgary’s rapid rise as a tech hub, with is Advance Game Development, Esports Development and Esports Business Management programs. It even has its own Esports Arena with 40 competition-ready gaming stations. FYI: Esports (electronic sports) is a specific subset of gaming. It involves organized, competitive, professional video gaming where individuals or teams compete for prizes, often in front of spectators. 

Annual Festivals like Calgary Expo it its Parade of Wonders (POW) make downtown Calgary fun place to live, work and play.

Urban Playground

Calgary has not only created PLATFORM as a funky incubator for tech hubs, but it has also fostered the development of our City Centre as fun place to live and play for young entrepreneurs. Music festivals like Block Heater and Sled Island, light shows like Chinook Blast and Night Light and pop-up music venues like Cowboy Park are what make Calgary a fun place for techies to live. They also love the sports courts that the city has developed in East Village, Victoria Park and Century Gardens. BUMP’s 200+ murals give our greater downtown a quirky sense of place that appeals to young creative class.

Festivals like Calgary Expo (cosplay) with its POW parade (Parade of Wonders) festival adds another playful element to living in the greater downtown. The diversity of restaurants, cafes, brew pubs and patios make our city centre an urban playground for the young and adventurous.

Did I mention Calgary has one of the youngest tech sector demographics in North America?

Night Lights is another fun annual event in the downtown that helps make it an attractive place young professionals to move to Calgary.

Last Word

Ever wonder who is going to move into the 2,000+ new office-to-home conversions in the downtown? My bet is many of them will become homes for young tech sector entrepreneurs who want to live, work and play in our downtown.  If this turns out to be true, it will go a long way in changing the vitality of our downtown weekends, evenings  and even daytime, as they’re not tied into the “9 to 5” regime of corporate offices that have dominated our downtown culture for decades. 

I can’t wait to see what Calgary’s downtown will look like in 2031, with the renovated Glenbow, new performances spaces at Werklund Centre, new Olympic Plaza and tens of thousands of techies calling downtown “home.”

Conceptual rendering of renovated Olympic Plaza that is currently under construction. It will hopefully become the heart of a vibrant creative district at the east end of Stephen Avenue Walk that includes Western Canada’s largest museum art gallery and one of North America’s largest performing arts centres. You can see the new performance hall in the lower right hand corner. The white building is the Martha Cohen Theatre, there are plans for renovations to the existing theatre complex in the future.