For all the excitement around places like Austin and Miami, the biggest tech expansion has been in Canada’s largest city.
A new $100 million complex built by the University of Toronto will house artificial intelligence and biotech companies.Credit…Brendan Ko for The New York Times
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TORONTO — In late February, Microsoft opened four floors of new office space near the top of a 50-story glass tower in downtown Toronto, a block from Scotiabank Arena, home of the Maple Leafs and the Raptors.
Apple and Amazon were already in towers just down the street, and Google was about to open a new building around the corner. Meta, formerly Facebook, did not yet have an office downtown, but many Toronto start-ups complained that the social media company was driving tech salaries to Silicon Valley levels as it recruited top engineers across the city. During the pandemic, it was hiring anyone willing to work from home.
A few blocks north, construction workers in yellow vests and hard hats were finishing three floors of new office space for another social media company: Pinterest. Stripe, an American payments company, was opening an office near City Hall, where Klarna, a Scandinavian payments company, had just announced its arrival with a flashy photo op alongside Mayor John Tory.
As the tech industry continues to expand and communities all over the world compete for tech jobs outside Silicon Valley, many executives, investors and entrepreneurs are promoting warm climes like Austin and Miami as the next big tech hubs. But they are tiny tech communities compared with the new hub growing in the cool air along the shore of Lake Ontario.
Thanks to years of investment from local universities, government agencies and business leaders and Canada’s liberal immigration policies, Toronto is now the third-largest tech hub in North America. It is home to more tech workers than Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, D.C., trailing only New York and Silicon Valley, according to CBRE, a real estate company that tracks tech hiring.
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