— Flying Fish hired Tiffany Linke-Boyko as principal to lead a new Alberta hub, its first office outside of Seattle.
The firm also revealed Tuesday that it landed $7.5 million from Alberta Enterprise Corporation, formed by the Government of Alberta in 2008, as part of its new $70 million fund.
Linke-Boyko, former CEO of Startup Edmonton, is based in Edmonton and will help Flying Fish scout for startups in Alberta and across Canada.
The partnership with Alberta’s government and the hire of Linke-Boyko are part of Flying Fish’s broadening focus beyond the Pacific Northwest. It was already active in Seattle, Portland, and British Columbia — but is now looking all across Canada and the U.S. with the latest fund.
The firm, which backs early-stage machine learning and artificial intelligence startups, will still dedicate around 70% of the fresh capital for Pacific Northwest companies. But it is casting a much wider geographic net.
“We think Alberta is a particularly undercapitalized AI talent base (much like Seattle),” said Heather Redman, Flying Fish managing partner. “We think it is a positive that local Seattle investors are sought out by entrepreneurs and investors for our expertise, and view it as just further strengthening the opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs in our own backyard.”
The deal with Alberta Enterprise Corporation does not require Flying Fish to make a certain number of investments in Alberta, the firm said.
— Tobias (Tobi) Hartmann, former chief executive officer of Corsearch, joined Panopto as chief executive officer.
Hartmann previously served as managing director at legal database LexisNexis for 10 years. He will be based in Seattle.
Panopto’s enterprise video platform has been used at 1,200 universities in 69 countries over the past two years. The Seattle-based company employs 200 people.
Chris Knowlton, former principal program manager at Microsoft, joined Panopto in March as chief evangelist.
— Nuno Taborda, former senior vice president at Rolls-Royce, joined Everett, Wash.-based aerospace company magniX as chief executive officer.
Taborda spent more than two decades at Rolls-Royce, most recently as senior vice president of production programs. He led engine production programs for the company’s aviation unit.
Taborda replaces Roei Ganzarski, who stepped down earlier this year and is now CEO of Alitheon. Michele D’Ercole, MagniX’s chief operating officer, was serving as magniX’s acting CEO.
MagniX focuses on building electric propulsion systems for aircraft. The company, majority-owned by the Singapore-based Clermont Group, has a wide array of partners for all-electric airplane conversions and last year won a five-year, $74.3 million NASA contract to demonstrate electric propulsion technologies for aircraft.
Other personnel changes in the Pacific Northwest tech industry:
- D-Wave announced new board members: Michael Rogers, Roger Biscay, Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, and Emil Michael.
- Larry Blasko, former chief revenue officer, was promoted to president of field operations at Seattle-area software company Apptio.
