Kaster Technologies Raises $1.6 Million to Scale up Pharma Manufacturing
•February 9, 2026
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Companies Mentioned
Why It Matters
The solution directly tackles persistent drug shortages and margin pressures in Canada’s generic pharma sector, potentially improving patient access and industry profitability. Successful scaling could set a new efficiency benchmark for regulated manufacturing worldwide.
Key Takeaways
- •Kaster raised CAD 1.6M pre‑seed led by Graphite Ventures.
- •Platform boosts pharma production capacity by 20% without new equipment.
- •Addresses Canadian drug shortages by optimizing generic manufacturers' schedules.
- •Strategic partnership with Optel to accelerate market adoption.
- •Founder leveraged CDL accelerator to secure early investors.
Pulse Analysis
Canada’s pharmaceutical supply chain has been strained by recurring shortages of essential antibiotics and other generic drugs, prompting government task forces and new regulatory frameworks. In this environment, Kaster Technologies positions itself as a digital lever, using production‑cycle modeling to smooth bottlenecks without the capital expense of new machinery. By translating equipment constraints, inventory levels, and batch scheduling into actionable plans, the platform offers a pragmatic answer to the chronic capacity gaps that have plagued Canadian hospitals.
The core of Kaster’s offering is an AI‑guided optimization engine that evaluates every step of a drug‑maker’s workflow. While the company currently employs AI internally for model refinement, it remains cautious about feeding proprietary data into large‑language models due to strict health‑care regulations. Early tests claim a 20 % uplift in throughput, a figure that can translate into millions of additional doses per year. This efficiency gain not only eases margin pressure for generic manufacturers but also reduces the risk of stockouts, aligning with Health Canada’s 2024‑2028 drug‑shortage mitigation plan.
The CAD 1.6 million seed round underscores growing investor confidence in supply‑chain tech for life‑sciences. Backed by Graphite Ventures and strategic partners like Optel, Kaster is poised to expand its client base beyond Delpharm, targeting other Canadian producers before a planned U.S. entry. The infusion will fund product refinement, talent acquisition, and go‑to‑market initiatives, potentially accelerating the adoption of data‑driven manufacturing across the regulated pharma sector. If successful, Kaster could become a template for how AI‑enabled scheduling transforms high‑risk, low‑margin industries worldwide.
Kaster Technologies raises $1.6 million to scale up pharma manufacturing
During the apex of COVID-19, respiratory viruses, and flu season, Alexandre Clarizio went to the pharmacy to pick up antibiotics for his wife and daughter. He encountered something many Canadians have run into over the past few years: a shortage.
“I was flabbergasted,” Clarizio said in an interview with BetaKit. “Why do we have shortages and back orders in Canada?”
“I was flabbergasted. Why do we have shortages and back orders in Canada?”
Clarizio was completing a master’s degree in industrial engineering at Polytechnique Montréal—and this seemed like a supply-chain problem he could solve. After calling pharmaceutical companies to better understand the bottlenecks that some companies face, he reached Delpharm’s Boucherville, Que. plant, which told him they’d support a research project to help streamline production.
That research has since become the venture-backed startup Kaster Technologies, and Delpharm has become a client. The company announced on Monday that it has closed a $1.6-million CAD pre-seed equity round led by Graphite Ventures, with participation from Hidden Layers Capital and angel investor Louis-Martin Rousseau, Clarizio’s Polytechnique director.
Clarizio said he connected with his investors through the Montréal edition of the Creative Destruction Lab accelerator program. Though he claimed Kaster was approached by multiple American VCs, the founder and CEO said the company still has lots to work on in Canada and would explore that option when it comes time to expand to the US.
Kaster’s software platform considers a manufacturer’s production cycle, including equipment, constraints, and stock, and produces optimized production plans. The startup claims its product can increase production capacity by 20 percent, without new equipment.
Clarizio said generic drug makers that supply to many Canadian hospitals are struggling to keep up with high demand and high prices. “Their prices for everything else—their own suppliers, the ingredients—keep increasing,” he said. “So we help alleviate that margin stress.”
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The Canadian government created a task force to address drug shortages in 2022, in the wake of shortages that ranged from fever-reducers for children to antibiotics for tuberculosis. Health Canada has since introduced a plan to bolster the supply of needed pharmaceuticals when shortages are caused by manufacturing issues and spikes in demand. The plan includes maintaining a list of drugs vulnerable to shortages, requiring safety shortage stocks for certain drugs, and introducing new reporting requirements from manufacturers.
The company uses AI internally in a “guided, intentional” way, Clarizio said, but not yet in its software. In a regulated industry like pharmaceuticals, he said that Kaster must be cautious about what kind of data it would eventually put into large-language models.
Kaster plans to use the funding to refine the company’s software as it gears up to sell to new drug makers, as well as add a few more employees to its full-time team of six. The startup also signed a “strategic commercial partnership” with Québec supply chain company Optel to help bring Kaster’s product to market.
Feature image courtesy Kaster Technologies.
The post Kaster Technologies raises $1.6 million to scale up pharma manufacturing first appeared on BetaKit.
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