Export Development Canada (EDC) is exploring ways to help assemble and finance stacks of Canadian technology in strategic sectors like AI infrastructure and critical minerals that can be marketed to global buyers.

“We are raising our game, because others have been out there with that practice and playbook for some time,” CEO Alison Nankivell told The Logic. 

Although international commerce is conducted between firms, European and Asian governments have long used capital and diplomacy to boost the sales of their homegrown companies abroad. EDC is now working with Global Affairs Canada’s new Strategic Exports Office (SEO) on a similarly co-ordinated toolkit to pitch “what Canada has to offer,” according to Nankivell. The Crown corporation is also in talks with other national trade credit agencies to identify opportunities that could package products and services from companies in each country.

The push comes as Ottawa looks to grow and diversify Canada’s trade, in the face of tariffs and threats from Washington. 

More and more countries are using the packaging approach—previously deployed to win large-scale transit and other infrastructure deals—to chase the huge sums being spent to build the industries of the future. “Everybody’s racing [to] position their companies to have maximum market share in some of these emerging sectors,” Nankivell said.

For example, EDC sees an opportunity in the supply chain for digital infrastructure, which governments and tech giants plan to spend trillions of dollars building out to power AI systems. The agency has made direct equity investments in model makers Cohere and Waabi, as well as hardware firms Spark Microsystems, Tenstorrent and VueReal and tool developers Boosted.ai and CoLab AI.

EDC has also mapped out the AI stack so it can pitch Canadian firms that make that hardware and software to data-centre developers and funders in other countries, said Guillermo Freire, senior vice-president of the mid-market group. It could then finance any sales of technology and services that result. 

The agency declined to publicly name the companies it has identified. A Canadian AI stack could, in theory, include customer service agents from Ada or legal tools from Clio; generative models from Cohere or physical AI controls from Waabi; cloud services from Denvr or ThinkOn; servers and other equipment from Hypertec or Celestica; heat-dissipation kit from CoolIT Systems; networking technology from Ranovus; and processors from Tenstorrent. The country doesn’t produce everything, however—one significant gap is the specialized chips used to train AI models, a market that Nvidia dominates.

Freire said agency staff recently pitched Canadian AI capabilities to executives from the Tata Group and EdgeConneX, both of which are planning significant data centre buildouts in India. EDC also sees opportunities across the Atlantic. “There’ll be a coalition of the like-minded coming together to jointly work, say, on European AI gigafactories,” Nankivell said, referencing the continent’s €20 billion plan to expand its compute capacity. 

In April, EDC announced a non-binding deal with Finnish firm Nokia, having struck a US$3-billion financing agreement with Swedish firm Ericsson last October. Both European firms have significant R&D operations and workforces in Canada, Nankivell said. “They might bring their Canadian value chain with them to be part of that in-Europe push.” 

Ottawa and Brussels aren’t the only ones looking to win a share of the AI trade. In July 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the creation of an American AI Exports Program as part of his administration’s push for “unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.” From April to June, the U.S. Commerce Department solicited proposals from private-sector consortia that can supply “full-stack American solutions” including hardware, data platforms, models, cybersecurity tools and applications. 

The department received 78 applications. Washington is promising selected groups that it will advertise their technology packages, facilitate deals with foreign buyers, give them priority access to export control processes and finance their sales. The U.S. Export-Import Bank is reportedly budgeting billions of dollars for the program. 

While the consortia must be U.S.-led, some involve Canadian firms, a U.S. embassy official told reporters in a July briefing conducted on the condition that they not be identified. The official said the export program is designed to promote U.S. companies abroad and ensure foreign markets don’t become dependent on systems that Washington considers “untrustworthy.” 

The Trump administration has already prioritized the U.S. AI industry in its foreign policy. In March 2025, the White House announced that the United Arab Emirates would be allowed to buy cutting-edge chips from U.S. firms, after committing to invest US$1.4 trillion in the U.S. over a decade. OpenAI then unveiled plans with Emirati AI firm G42 for a one-gigawatt data centre in the country. Trump struck a similar deal with Saudi Arabia in November, after the kingdom committed US$1 trillion to U.S. investments.

“The U.S. has been the most open about their strategy,” Nankivell said, adding that EDC and its federal government partners are “heading that direction.” In addition to her agency and the SEO, the effort could involve Canadian diplomats abroad and federal ministers on international trade missions.

The new strategy of assembling and financing packages of technology for export isn’t restricted to AI. EDC also sees opportunities in other growing sectors like space, defence and the processing of critical minerals. “It’s important for us to pick our places,” Nankivell said, adding that the focus is on areas where Canada has “enough of a critical mass of supply chain capabilities.”

EDC has recently strengthened ties with peer agencies in Japan, Korea and the U.K., said spokesperson Victoria Marcantonio, citing co-operation on critical minerals, cleantech, infrastructure and joint financing.

Some trade policy experts have called for Ottawa to take the package approach to selling Canadian products abroad, instead of letting firms figure out how to do business on their own in new markets.