I Walked Into Elevate and Walked Out of Nrth
Day one of the festival that used to be Elevate. They renamed it during their own opening night, and I happened to be in the room.
I went to the opening night of Elevate at Meridian Hall in Toronto on Tuesday night. About an hour and fifteen minutes in, a video played that ended with "The world has changed, and so we're changing too." Then the CEO came out on stage as the CEO of Nrth.
Elevate renamed itself in the middle of its own kickoff.
Looking back, the clues were there. The branding in the hall felt a little off, and our badges had no name or logo on them. She called that out on stage: you could leave your badge blank to prove you were there for the reveal, or grab a Nrth sticker on the way out. When I walked out of the hall, the whole place had changed over. New signs, and blue everywhere. It was a fun thing to see happen live.
Why the rename
The CEO said that when they started Elevate in 2017, the idea was that you shouldn't have to leave Canada to build a company that matters globally. They still believe that. But she said people don't only want a spotlight anymore. They want direction: which technologies actually matter, who to partner with, and how to make decisions when things move this fast. That's what Nrth is supposed to be.
The rest of the night
Before the reveal there was a round of short startup pitches. They ranged from at-home breast cancer screening to software for grocery stores that still order stock the way they did 30 years ago.
After it, the host summed up the program pretty honestly: "AI, a little more AI, a little more AI, a little more AI, and then basketball." A few things stuck with me:
Cohere and TD talked about AI moving past pilots and proofs of concept. Their point was that the hard part now isn't the technology. It's getting a company to actually adopt it.
DuckDuckGo argued that the best way to protect people's data is to not collect it in the first place. They also showed a spoof ad for "anti-surveillance smart glasses", which were just normal sunglasses.
Mistral talked about sovereign AI: owning your models, data and compute so nobody can switch them off on you.
As someone who builds AI products, the adoption point is the one I keep thinking about. Nobody on stage was short on models. Everyone was trying to figure out how to get people to use them well.
Days two and three
That was only opening night. I met some great people and made some good connections, and I'm back for the next two days. If you're at Nrth, send me a message and let's meet up. I'll write up the rest when it's over.