Salesforce CEO Among Investors In Fredericton Company’s $4-Million Raise
FREDERICTON—Fredericton’s Potential Motors announced a major round of funding this week.
The just over $4-million CAD round of financing was led by Brightspark Ventures and included investment from Build Ventures, NBIF, and TIME Ventures. TIME is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s venture fund.
Potential Motors is a software company that uses artificial intelligence to make offroad, Utility Terrain Vehicles (UTVs) safer, and help them perform better.
The company was founded in 2018 by a group of engineers from the University of New Brunswick. Originally, they hoped to help convert traditional cars into electric vehicles but saw an opportunity in the offroad vehicle market and pivoted.
Sam Poirier is Potential Motors’ CEO and co-founder.
In a February 11 interview, he told Huddle his company’s latest cash influx will be “the kickoff to what I think is going to be one of the most exciting years in Potential Motors’ history.”
Potential Motors’ last major round of funding, a $2.5-million raise in 2020, helped the company build out its technology and validate its product.
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“This round of financing is really taking the software and technology that we’ve been developing in a simulated [environment] and starting to move that into an actual off-road, electrified platform to start showcasing that technology,” Poirier said.
He wouldn’t provide many specifics about what that “showcase” will look like, saying only that everything will become “a lot more clear in the coming months.”
Poirier also said the new money will help Potential Motors grow its team, from 21 to 25 people. Most of that team is still based in Fredericton and Poirier says the company has no plans to leave the city.
Poirier says the electrification wave is just about to crest on the UTV market and he believes Potential Motors is in a prime place to capitalize on that.
“The [UTV] industry, in general, tends to trail the automotive industry by 10 to 15 years in general,” Poirier says. “We can kind of see that in electrification as well, where now we’re 10 years out from when electrification really started becoming a thing in the automotive space.”
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As companies begin seriously investing in electric UTVs, Poirier argues they need the kind of expertise Potential Motors provides.
“With electrification, there’s an opportunity to really look at these offroad vehicles and think about, how can we really improve this experience as we go from an older gas architecture to electric?” he says.
“We’re focusing in a space that I think is being overlooked…There’s a lot of demand for these types of vehicles right now and it’s about time that somebody takes this opportunity to move to electric to really revamp what these vehicles can do.”
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].