Through its collaboration with the Digital Technology Cluster, Ideon Technologies accelerated its growth and brought its cutting-edge subsurface imaging technology to market, allowing it to scale much faster than it would have otherwise.
Working within the cluster ecosystem helped Ideon de-risk innovation, validate its solution and expand its reach across Canada and internationally. In this video, Ideon explains how partnerships with industry and academic institutions supported through the Digital Technology Cluster enabled the company to transform breakthrough research into a commercial solution.
Ideon's digital platform uses advanced, non-invasive imaging to help mining companies identify, map and monitor critical underground resources like minerals, groundwater and geological structures with greater accuracy. The video highlights how this collaboration enables faster, more confident decision-making and advances low-impact mining innovation while strengthening Canada's innovation economy.
Transcript
At Ideon, we use the energy from supernova explosions in space to image deep beneath the Earth's surface.
Hi, my name's Gary Agnew. I'm the CEO and co-founder at Ideon Technologies. The basics of how the technology works: supernova explosions happen in outer space. They create cosmic rays. Those cosmic rays, they penetrate deep inside the Earth, and we deploy detectors in drill holes underground. Multiple sensors then produce an image just like a CAT scan.
We are imaging hundreds of millions or billions of cubic metres of Earth at any one time. So having a partner like the Clusters to be able to cheer us on, support us financially when you're building a world-leading technology has been a game changer for us.
Yeah, when we started with the cluster, we were a company of 5 or 6, I think. The trust that they had in us, to back our idea, allowed us to scale way faster than I think we would have otherwise.
Today we're 70 employees here in Canada, Australia, and we're growing in other markets globally. Across the two projects with, with Digital, we really brought together some amazing partners. The ability to bring partners together under this program really wasn't how I was thinking about developing our roadmap.
I look back now and, like, wow, that kind of leap of faith that we took together has really helped us transform this business—you know, be more ambitious, stretch for bigger goals, achieve bigger product outcomes. And so having that kind of partner that's financially supporting you has enabled us to push way harder than we would ever have done on our own.
And so in terms of the Innovation Cluster program, I mean, this is a great example of being willing to fail. The Cluster program underwriting the R&D risk for us to go through those failures. The commitment of Canadian companies to want to succeed and then together to be able to deliver that success. Yeah, my advice to another startup looking to get involved in the Cluster program—this can be transformational in terms of the trajectory they're currently on.
Digital Technology Cluster
- Partners:
- Dias Geophysical, Fireweed Metals Corp. VRIFY, Simon Fraser University, The University of British Columbia
- Impact:
- Natural resources and mining technology
- Location:
- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada