Toronto's Wittington Ventures has closed its third venture capital fund at $180 million CAD to invest in climate, commerce, consumer, healthcare, and food technology startups at Series A and B stages. The fund is 50 percent larger than its $120-million predecessor from 2022, bringing the seven-year-old firm's total assets under management to $820 million. Limited partners include Wittington Investments, the Weston family's holding company that controls Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart, plus undisclosed institutions. Wittington Ventures plans to back 15 companies, deploying an average of $10 million per investment. Managing partner Jim Orlando, who previously led OMERS Ventures, launched the firm in 2019. It has since backed over 25 companies, including Toronto-based Grey Matter Neurosciences and Vancouver's ViewsML.

Vancouver-based ViewsML closed an oversubscribed $4.9 million seed round to advance its virtual biomarker staining platform. Wittington Ventures led the round, with participation from new investors Mayo Clinic and Continuum Health Ventures, alongside existing backer Debiopharm. The company uses AI to generate virtual biomarker stains directly from routine H&E pathology images, eliminating the need for traditional wet-lab immunohistochemistry processes. CEO Kenneth To said the technology delivers per-cell predictions and enables spatial mapping of biomarker expression within tumour microenvironments. The platform aims to help biopharma companies generate more biomarker insights from existing tissue samples whilst conserving scarce biopsy material for downstream molecular testing. ViewsML plans to use the capital to expand its roughly 12-person team and accelerate commercialisation and clinical validation work. Mayo Clinic's participation as a new investor marks a significant endorsement, with the clinic already collaborating with ViewsML through Mayo Clinic Digital Pathology's ecosystem of AI developers.