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Turn SMB innovation into non-dilutive funding

GrowWise helps Canadian SMBs identify, track, and maximize SR&ED tax credits without slowing down founders, engineers, or product teams.

Our supervised AI platform captures eligible R&D work throughout the year, reduces documentation burden, and helps create stronger, audit-ready claims with less effort from your team.

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See how it works

Why SMBs choose GrowWise

Less drag
Reduce founder and engineering time spent on SR&ED
Stronger claims
Better technical detail and cleaner support
Year-round
Capture eligible work before it gets forgotten
More runway
Turn technical work into cash without dilution
  • Built for fast-moving teams

Ideal for SMBs iterating quickly with limited time and lean documentation.

  • AI + expert review
Technology accelerates the process while experienced SR&ED professionals strengthen the output.

Real numbers. Real impact on your growth.

What SR&ED means for your runway

64%

Refundable credit rate
Canadian-controlled private corporations can recover up to 64% of eligible SR&ED labour costs through combined federal and provincial credits.

$0

Equity given up

SR&ED is non-dilutive. You keep 100% of your cap table while recovering cash from R&D work you are already doing.

$50k – $300k+

Refundable credit rate
The average GrowWise startup claim falls between $50,000 and $300,000 annually, depending on engineering headcount and eligible spend.

70%

Less founder time required
GrowWise’s AI-assisted capture and structured review process reduces founder and engineering time compared to traditional SR&ED consulting.

A SMB-friendly SR&ED process

GrowWise combines supervised AI with expert review to make the process lighter for your team and stronger on the backend.

1

Identify eligible work
We help uncover qualifying technical work across product development, AI, infrastructure, performance, data systems, hardware, and experimentation.

2

Capture details year-round
Short technical interviews and structured capture reduce reliance on memory and prevent critical project details from being lost.

3

Build stronger claims
Generate clearer narratives, stronger support, and more audit-ready documentation while keeping review efficient for your team.

How GrowWise compares to traditional SR&ED consulting

A founder-focused SR&ED process should save time, improve visibility, and produce stronger outputs.

Category
Legacy Consultants
GrowWise
Founder and engineering time required
Heavy founder and engineering involvement
Designed to minimize time from founders and technical teams
Documentation timing
Year-end reconstruction of work
Continuous capture throughout the year
Documentation approach
Manual, inconsistent documentation
Structured AI-assisted capture with expert oversight
Project framing
Generic project framing
Startup-specific positioning around real technical uncertainty
Claim preparation style
Reactive claim preparation
Proactive claim development with better audit readiness

Who this is for

Ideal for innovative Canadian SMBs

GrowWise is especially well suited for seed-stage and growth-stage startups developing new products, systems, and technical capabilities.
Software startups
AI startups
Hardware startups
FinTech
Cleantech
Life sciences

Common startup activities that may qualify

  • New product development
Building functionality that required technical experimentation, iteration, or uncertainty resolution.
  • AI and data systems
Model development, training workflows, inference optimization, data pipelines, and performance improvements.
  • AI and data systems
Latency reduction, architecture redesign, concurrency, reliability, and throughput improvements.
  • AI and data systems
Testing components, validating technical feasibility, and refining prototypes through experimentation.

Focus on building. Let GrowWise capture the innovation.

Get Your SR&ED Assessment
See how it works

What the SR&ED process looks like with GrowWise

Most founders don’t know what to expect from SR&ED. Here is the full journey, from your first conversation with GrowWise to cash back in your account.

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Discovery call

A 30-minute conversation to understand your technical activities, team structure, and R&D spend with no prep work required.

Eligibility review

GrowWise reviews your projects and identifies which activities meet CRA's criteria for scientific or technological uncertainty.

Year-round capture

AI-assisted documentation captures eligible work as you build, reducing end-of-year scrambling and memory gaps.

Expert review

SR&ED professionals validate your claims, refine technical narratives, and ensure documentation meets CRA audit standards.

CRA submission

Your completed claim is filed with the CRA. GrowWise handles preparation, submission coordination, and follow-up tracking.

Funds received

Refundable credits arrive as cash - non-dilutive and ready to reinvest in engineering, hiring, or extending your runway.

Ideal for innovative Canadian SMBs at every stage

SR&ED is not just for mature companies with dedicated R&D teams. GrowWise is built specifically for fast-moving startups – from pre-seed through Series B – that are building something technically new.

Pre-Seed & Seed

Building before revenue? You likely qualify.

Pre-revenue startups are eligible for SR&ED refundable tax credits even without a commercial product. If your team is spending time solving technical problems that do not have known solutions, that work may qualify and GrowWise helps you capture it from day one.
Pre-product MVP development

Technical feasibility experiments

Algorithm and model prototyping
Infrastructure built from scratch

Series A & Growth

Scaling your engineering team? Every sprint counts.

As you grow your engineering team and accelerate product development, your SR&ED-eligible spend grows with it. GrowWise captures qualifying work at scale so your documentation keeps pace with your sprints without burdening your engineers or product leads.
Platform architecture at scale
Performance engineering challenges

Performance engineering challenges

Multi-tenant or multi-region infrastructure
Deep Tech & IP-Heavy

Building proprietary technology? GrowWise specializes here.

If your startup is building novel hardware, life sciences technology, or foundational AI systems, your claims require a higher level of technical framing. GrowWise’s expert reviewers have domain depth across deep tech, biotech, medtech, and advanced software to position complex claims correctly.
Custom AI and ML research
Biotech and genomics R&D
Hardware and embedded systems
Novel materials and processes

Common startup activities that may qualify for SR&ED

SR&ED covers work that involves technical uncertainty where your team had to experiment, iterate, or solve problems without a clear, known solution. Here are the types of work that frequently qualify across startup categories.

Software & SaaS SMBs

  • Developing custom algorithms with no off-the-shelf equivalent
  • Building novel API architectures or integration layers under technical uncertainty
  • Performance engineering where standard approaches failed
  • Designing multi-tenant systems with unresolved concurrency or isolation challenges
  • Creating proprietary search, ranking, or recommendation systems
  • Developing new software frameworks or developer tooling

AI & Machine Learning

  • Training custom models where existing models did not meet performance requirements
  • Designing novel data pipeline architectures with unresolved technical constraints
  • Research into new NLP, computer vision, or speech recognition approaches
  • Inference optimization at scale with no established solution
  • Synthetic data generation methodology development
  • Federated learning or privacy-preserving ML architecture

Infrastructure & DevOps

  • Latency reduction when standard cloud architectures were insufficient
  • Reliability and fault-tolerance systems built without established patterns
  • Custom orchestration or scheduling systems
  • High-throughput data processing pipelines under novel constraints
  • Security architecture innovations beyond standard frameworks

Hardware & Deep Tech

  • Developing and testing new sensor or actuator components
  • Embedded systems design with unresolved power or performance constraints
  • Prototype iteration where multiple technical unknowns required resolution
  • Novel materials formulation or testing
  • Integration of hardware and software under real-time performance requirements

Biotech & Life Sciences

  • Drug discovery research involving novel molecular mechanisms
  • Genomics pipeline development and bioinformatics tooling
  • Diagnostic assay development and validation under uncertainty
  • Clinical data analysis platforms with novel statistical approaches
  • Lab automation systems built without existing solutions

Fintech & Data Platforms

  • Fraud detection models that required novel ML or heuristic approaches
  • Risk scoring engines developed from first principles
  • Real-time financial data processing at scale
  • Regulatory compliance systems built without available templates
  • Open banking integration architectures with unresolved technical barriers

What founders say about GrowWise

Startups across Canada use GrowWise to recover non-dilutive funding from SR&ED without disrupting the pace of their engineering teams.

Mark S.
Systems engineering
As first-time SR&ED claimants, we expected the process to be complicated, but GrowWise made it very manageable. Their platform kept everything organized and the process was much easier than we expected.
Mike K.
Cybersecurity
We spoke with several SR&ED consultants before choosing GrowWise, and their technical understanding stood out right away. The process was seamless and required very little time from our team.
Sylvia G.
Electronics Manufacturing
GrowWise was fantastic to work with and made the SR&ED process feel approachable and clear. The process was well organized and communication was always straightforward. I would recommend GrowWise to anyone looking for SR&ED support.
Trevor M.
Biotech
After working with another SR&ED consultant, GrowWise was a completely different experience. The process was fast, simple, and only required a few hours from our team. Communication was excellent and everything moved forward quickly.
Rylan H.
Proptech
Working with GrowWise was a very smooth experience. Their team was proactive and kept everything moving while taking the heavy lifting and stress off our plate. The process was well organized and didn’t require much time or thought from our team.
Rory S.
Biotech
Compared to our previous SR&ED consultant, GrowWise required far less time from our team. Their AI platform made the process much more efficient and straightforward.
Oleksiy Z.
MedTech
The GrowWise team is knowledgeable and supportive, and their use of AI technology really streamlined the SR&ED process. The platform kept everything organized and reduced the time required from our team while making sure nothing was missed.

Not sure if your work qualifies? SR&ED eligibility is more accessible than most founders expect. The key test is technical uncertainty. If your team had to experiment or iterate to find a solution, the work may qualify. GrowWise offers a free eligibility review to help you assess your activities before committing to the process.

Get Your SR&ED Assessment

Questions startups often ask