Canadian mortgage technology company nesto has closed a CAD 302 million Series E financing round at a CAD 1.47 billion valuation, granting the Montréal-based company unicorn status. The round, announced on Wednesday, comprises both primary and secondary capital and equates to approximately USD 216 million.
New investors in the round include La Caisse — formerly known as CDPQ — Fidelity Investments Canada ULC funds, PICTON Investments and Endeavor Catalyst. Existing shareholders Portage, Diagram, NAventures, National Bank of Canada CVC, Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Fondaction all re-upped, providing continuity on the cap table alongside the incoming names.
SCALING THE AI LENDING PLATFORM
Proceeds will be used to accelerate development of Nesto Cloud, the company's AI-powered lending platform, and of Maestro AI, its automation layer for mortgage origination workflows. The company has positioned itself at the intersection of consumer mortgage brokerage and platform technology serving other lenders, a hybrid model relatively uncommon in the Canadian market.
The Nesto Cloud platform is offered on a business-to-business basis to Canadian banks and non-bank lenders, enabling them to modernise their origination and servicing operations without building the underlying technology in-house. Maestro AI targets manual steps in the mortgage-approval process, an area of long-standing inefficiency in the Canadian mortgage market where turnaround times have historically lagged those seen in more digitally mature jurisdictions.
UNICORN STATUS FOR MONTRÉAL FINTECH
The CAD 1.47 billion valuation elevates nesto into the unicorn tier of privately held technology companies, an achievement that remains relatively uncommon among Canadian fintechs. La Caisse's participation is particularly notable for a Québec-headquartered company: the province's sovereign investor has been a longstanding backer of local technology champions and its presence typically signals substantive due diligence and a long-dated investment horizon.
The continued participation of Portage, Diagram, NAventures, National Bank of Canada CVC, Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Fondaction alongside marquee new backers reflects continuity in the company's cap table. National Bank of Canada's corporate venture arm has been a strategic partner for nesto's mortgage platform in the Canadian banking market, and its ongoing involvement underscores the commercial relationships underpinning the equity story.
Nesto has not disclosed detailed operating metrics alongside the funding announcement. Full details of the round were published via GlobeNewswire and covered by fintech news outlets on the day of the announcement, with the company saying the capital will be deployed to support both organic growth in Canada and further platform development. The round places nesto among the largest privately funded Canadian fintechs by valuation. The company was founded in 2018 and has built out a mortgage brokerage business alongside its enterprise platform offering, giving it both direct-to-consumer distribution and a business-to-business channel through Canadian lenders that use its technology. The combination is intended to provide a data feedback loop between origination activity and the tools sold to other lenders, informing continued product development at Nesto Cloud and Maestro AI as the company grows. Canadian residential mortgage lending remains a highly concentrated market dominated by the largest banks, and the appetite of those institutions to modernise legacy origination platforms has been a factor in the growth of specialist providers such as nesto.