When Praveen Arichandran worked at Facebook in the San Francisco Bay Area, he noticed the tech giant’s top source of talent wasn’t Harvard, MIT, or even nearby Stanford. It was University of Waterloo, his own alma mater, thousands of kilometres away in Ontario. 

Arichandran left Canada to help build a “globally disruptive company,” and last year decided to bring his skill set back home. After stints at Facebook across continents and a role as Tesla’s director of growth, he’s now CEO of Ontario-based Argo, a TSX Venture-listed startup developing an on-demand public transit system that bills itself as being as convenient as driving but priced like standard fare.

 

“Canadian tech talent specifically has played an overweight role in building the largest global tech companies,” he said in an interview. 

Arichandran’s move to the U.S. wasn’t unusual—but his return home could reflect a growing trend. Many of the company’s founding members left Canada and are now coming back to build. In his circles, the decision to move home wasn’t necessarily political—but came down to available opportunities as well as investors “placing those bets” to back ambitious ventures. 

The U.S. has long attracted top global talent with its research dominance and track record of producing billion-dollar tech firms. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and deep cuts to academic funding—including up to US$400 million at Columbia University—at the same time Harvard and other universities have instituted a hiring freeze due to funding instability, could reverse that trend. It has also raised the question of whether other countries can stand to benefit from the fallout.

Canada, for instance, has struggled for years with a talent exodus to its southern neighbour. Each year, thousands of Canadians emigrate to the U.S., with the latest U.S. census data showing an estimated increase of 6,276 from 2022 to 2023, bringing the total to 548,735. ComIT, a charity which works to improve tech literacy in Canada and train people facing employment barriers, has encountered many people who feel they need to leave the country to advance their careers, the organization’s founder and executive director Pablo Listingart said in a press release. 

The move is particularly common among tech professionals seeking higher pay and lower taxes, said Saru Kanapathipillai, founder of Canadian startup PR Coach, a platform that helps immigrants and immigration professionals navigate Canada’s permanent residency process.

After Kanapathipillai graduated from the University of Waterloo, he said more than half of his class now works in the U.S. “They just have more buying power,” he said. It’s challenging for Canadian companies to compete with Silicon Valley’s level of venture capital floating around and ambition, he said. “I think Shopify is the best example that we have, but the U.S. has like, 100 of those,” he added. 

Moving home often means accepting the “reality” of lower pay for other benefits—aligning closer with the culture in Canada, the permanency of returning home and political stability, Kanapathipillai said. 

Even so, a shift could be well underway. Aside from Canadians, U.S. job seekers have expressed sustained interest in Canadian jobs, according to data from job posting site Indeed shared with The Logic. That cohort has increased from 1.3 per 1,000 searches in October 2024, to 1.6 per 1,000 searches last month. 

In February, the month after Trump was inaugurated, U.S.-based Google searches for “Canada tech jobs” hit their highest level in 20 years of internet data—surpassing previous spikes in November 2016 and November 2024, when Trump was elected. Google Trends assigns a score from 1 to 100 based on relative search popularity; February 2025 scored a peak 100, while both 2016 and 2024 scored 91.

Every election cycle in the U.S. prompts a rise in interest in Canadian jobs, regardless of the outcome, according to Brandon Bernard, an economist at Indeed. “Those are usually pretty fleeting,” he said. This time, Bernard has seen a shift that surpasses the “common trope” of people heading north when they are rattled by election results, he added, as it has remained elevated.

“I don’t know if that’s quite the same this time, because we’re a little bit further out from the election,” Bernard said. 

U.S. job seekers are also showing a slight bias towards STEM jobs. Scientific research and development, health care and social science now account for a larger proportion of postings that U.S. searchers click on for jobs in Canada. For example, scientific research and development has grown from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent in terms of the share of U.S. clicks for Canadian jobs, according to Indeed’s data.

A study conducted by Nature showed applications to Canadian roles by U.S. scientists rose 41 per cent in the period from January to March 2025, compared to the same period a year prior. Three Yale professors that study fascism—Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley—have decided to move to the University of Toronto. 

The increased interest in Canadian jobs comes as Mark Carney’s government and various sectors, like health care, have pledged to boost funding. Canada’s United Health Network has invested $15 million to recruit early career scientists in Ontario.

Universities offer another pipeline for bringing fresh talent into Canada’s tech ecosystem. The University of Toronto has seen a “meaningful increase in applications” from potential U.S. students, compared to recent years, spokesperson Philippe Devos told The Logic. Montreal’s McGill has seen applicants for its bachelor’s programs from U.S. high schools increase around 3 per cent for the 2025-2026 school year, compared to one year prior, according to spokesperson Thierry Bélair.

While University of Waterloo hasn’t seen an rise in overall applications from the U.S., specific faculties like engineering have seen “increased interest and applications,” spokesperson David George-Cosh wrote in a statement to The Logic. Web traffic from the U.S. on the university’s site has risen 15 per cent since September 2024. However, more than 90 per cent of UWaterloo graduates throughout the last decade remained in Canada after graduating, he added. 

Over the past decade, the number of PhD students Canada has lost in AI or quantum computing is a “clear alarm bell,” Gabriel Miller, CEO of Universities Canada said in an interview. Miller said they’re now hearing from universities about their “phones ringing off the hook,” from Americans considering a move north. 

Canadian universities have been boosting funding for research to attract more postdoctorate students, Michel Tremblay, president of the Royal Society of Canada’s Academy of Science told The Logic. But the government’s decision to cap international student applications last year has been a blow to its reputation and disincentivized international applications, both Miller and Tremblay argue.

Still, the recruitment of Americans into Canada could just be a “blip” compared to how many Canadians leave for the U.S. Even if scientists and engineers leave the public sector as areas are cut—the U.S.’s capital-rich private sector remains a highly attractive buffer.