Diagram’s Opportunity Fund Has Final Close at $120M

We are proud to share that Diagram’s Opportunity Fund, our first growth-focused fund, closed at $120M, exceeding our target range of $80-$100M.

Our fund is anchored by Sagard and includes a number of new and prior investors from family offices in Canada and abroad. This includes several prominent Canadian, US and European entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and corporate leaders as investors in the Fund such as John McCall MacBain, Mike Paulus, Bradley S. Shaw, Philip Fayer, Patricia Saputo, Andrew Chisholm, and Razor Suleman among others. We are thrilled by the vote of confidence from founders of our portfolio companies – most of whom also participated in the fundraise.

As Diagram crosses the five-year mark since its founding this May, the Opportunity Fund positions us to deliver on the next horizon of our goal to build and support sector-defining companies in Canada,” said Diagram Co-Founder & CEO, Francois Lafortune. “We are encouraged by the level of enthusiasm from Canadian and international investors, and proud to have the vote of confidence from founders in our portfolio.”

The Next Horizon for Diagram

With its existing seed stage funds, Diagram has created over $1 billion in shareholder value and 600 full-time jobs across Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco and New York for our 11 portfolio companies, eight of which are headquartered in Canada, and seven in Quebec. After launching four new ventures in 2020 including Wingo, Baselane, ClearEstate, and Synctera, we are on-track to launch up to five new companies in 2021 and every year thereafter. Novisto recently announced a Series A fundraise of US$8 million, and Dialogue, the inaugural idea that Diagram helped conceive and launch in 2016, completed an IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange this March, raising $100 million.

“When Francois and I launched Diagram in 2016, our goal was to have an impact on the Canadian economy and create opportunities for entrepreneurs to build companies that could become global champions,” said Paul Desmarais III, Co-Founder and Chairman of Diagram and Chairman and CEO of Sagard. “It is highly rewarding to see how far we’ve come in five years, and I’m looking forward to our journey ahead.”

The first investment from our Opportunity Fund is in Synctera, where we participated in their most recent US$33M Series A raise. We have some more exciting investment news coming up – stay tuned!