BlackBerry and L-Spark announce third cohort of joint accelerator program

BlackBerry and Canadian software-as-a-service accelerator L-SPARK have announced the launch of the third phase of their joint accelerator program, which aims to grow Canadian technology companies focused on connected vehicle solutions.

Following the success of the first and second cohorts, BlackBerry and L-Spark say the third phase will once again help small and medium-sized technology enterprises (SMEs) grow their businesses and bring new products to market using BlackBerry QNX technology. Applications will be open until March 7, 2022. BlackBerry and L-SPARK will then host a selection day where they will choose up to six companies to join the third cohort of the program.

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L-SPARK will again turn to the expertise of the Canadian government’s National Research Council of Canada-Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) to reach out to companies with business models and technologies that could benefit from working with the BlackBerry QNX product group. This year, the accelerator will also provide selected companies with access to BlackBerry’s intelligent vehicle data platform, BlackBerry IVY, enabling them to develop high-impact solutions leveraging in-vehicle data to improve driver and passenger experiences. A vehicle-first, cloud-connected software platform launched by BlackBerry in 2020 as part of a multi-year agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), BlackBerry IVY presents vehicle data in a normalized format. 

“After two successful cohorts with L-SPARK we look forward to going to back to the deep talent pool that exists within the Canadian start-up scene to help identify those companies that share our vision: a transportation industry – and in-vehicle experience – transformed by data,” said Peter Virk, vice-president of IVY Product and Ecosystem, BlackBerry, in a Nov. 23 press release. “As we continue to build out a robust ecosystem of services and automotive applications to leverage the rich data insights that BlackBerry IVY provides, we can’t wait to see the ideas and use cases that will emerge to help automakers unlock the vast potential of next generation intelligent connected vehicles.”