MaRS Discovery District
marsdd.com Direct + LP
MaRS Discovery District is a Canadian innovation hub and registered charity that supports startups and scale-ups with commercialization support, connections to capital, customers, and talent. It also operates a venture capital arm, MaRS IAF, which invests in seed-stage companies.
MaRS Discovery District is an accelerator headquartered in Toronto, Canada, founded in 2001. It invests both directly in companies and in funds as a limited partner, from seed to Series A, in health, climate, AI and cleantech. 1200 portfolio companies, as it reports.
“We provide startups and scale-ups with commercialization support, connections to capital, customers and talent, as well as access to an expansive community of advisors, researchers and partners.”
— MaRS Discovery District, own website
- Layer
- Direct + LP
- Type
- Accelerator
- Invests in
- Canada
- Sectors
- health, climate, AI, cleantech, life sciences, emerging technologies
- Founded
- 2001
- Portfolio
- 1200 companies
Team, as MaRS Discovery District publishes it
- Grace Lee Reynolds CEO, MaRS
- Christine Bomé VP, Public Affairs
- Nina Gazzola SVP, Innovation Hubs
- Jason MacFarlane Head of Venture and Partner Services
- Annette Verschuren Chair, Board of Directors, MaRS Discovery District; Chair & CEO, NRStor Inc.
Names and roles exactly as listed on marsdd.com. Nothing else about these people is recorded.
Co-invests most often with
Derived from portfolio pages both investors publish themselves: each pair below lists at least one company in common. 22 co-investors found.
- StandUp Ventures 3 shared companies: betakit.com, metafold3d.com, vivid-machines.com
- Real Ventures 2 shared companies: betakit.com, willful.co
- Ripple Ventures 2 shared companies: betakit.com, cognota.com
- Differential Venture Partners, LLC 2 shared companies: metafold3d.com, cognota.com
- 11.2 Capital 1 shared company: betakit.com
- Anzu Partners 1 shared company: betakit.com
- At One Ventures 1 shared company: betakit.com
- BKR Capital 1 shared company: betakit.com
- BOLD Capital Partners 1 shared company: betakit.com
- Celesta Capital 1 shared company: betakit.com
and 12 more — the graph.
Where this comes from
Every fact above was read from a page MaRS Discovery District publishes itself. Nothing is taken from third-party databases. Investment activity (deals, co-investors) is not yet recorded.
- https://www.marsdd.com/name, type, hq_country, hq_city, invests_in_geographies, sectors, thesis_quote, thesis_quote_page, description, portfolio_count, status, confidence
- https://www.marsdd.com/about/is_investor, layer, founded, people
- https://www.marsdd.com/invest-with-us/stage_min, stage_max
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Record 1491 · added 2026-08-28 · link last verified 2026-09-06 · confidence high
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