Weekly Regional Business Intelligence
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Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.
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Deep Breathe one of just 15 companies selected for NATO DIANA’s Mission Track
Deep Breathe, a London-based health-tech firm that builds AI-guided ultrasound diagnostics, has made it onto a list of approved businesses able to sell technology to NATO. Deep Breathe is one of 15 businesses now approved for NATO’s DIANA Mission Track program (DIANA stands for ‘Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic’ and looks to identify dual-use technology and fast-track it through the NATO network), and the company said it also closed its first military sale to the U.S. Air Force pararescue division. “We are on the world stage for military adoption,” founder and CEO Dr. Rob Arntfield (also an intensive care physician at London Health Sciences Centre) told The London Free Press, calling the pararescue division “the James Bond of paramedics.” The company’s main software, ATLAS, uses AI-guided handheld ultrasound to diagnose chest and abdominal injuries in the field, and was accepted onto the DIANA list after being used in test exercises over the past six months. “What this really means is we are helping to solve meaningful problems,” Dr. Arntfield said. “This is a list of elite companies that show the most promise.”
The upshot: While we here at London Inc. can’t claim to be subject matter experts on battlefield wounds and their treatment, all public indications seem to be that the defense industry has taken major interest in the technology Deep Breathe has created. In 2024, Deep Breathe won the US Army’s xTech International competition, and last year received just over $1 million in funding from FedDev Ontario to help support commercialization of the technology. That Deep Breathe’s first major sale is going to the US Army at a time when the two countries are embroiled in a trade war doesn’t faze Dr. Arntfield. “It is not about politics. The military is all about the mission,” Arntfield said. “It is refreshing.” The new listing should also allow the company to broaden its customer base — inclusion on the list opens the door to selling to the other 30 NATO member states, and Deep Breathe said they are “in talks with three European countries” to sell the technology to.
Read more: London Free Press | EIN Presswire
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Rock the Runway, BCKYRD Fest move from YXU to Harris Park
Rock the Runway and BCKYRD Fest are relocating from London International Airport to Harris Park, after organizers said they couldn’t land a traffic management plan for the airport site. Jones Entertainment Group announced the move last Friday, saying the two festivals will now run downtown on September 17 and 18. “When it became clear that we could not achieve the traffic plan we felt was necessary, we made the decision to move the event,” the company said in a media release. “From day one, our goal has always been to create an incredible festival experience while ensuring the safety of our patrons and the surrounding community.” The change in venue will likely be welcomed by students, many of whom will be much closer in proximity to Harris Park than they were to the airport. “Harris Park gives us the opportunity to deliver the same experience in a location that is accessible, right in the heart of the city and proven with the last 22 years of Rock the Park,” the release said. Rock the Runway’s Thursday lineup includes Limp Bizkit, Cypress Hill, JJ Wilde and The Dirty Nil, while Friday’s BCKYRD Fest features Disco Lines, Loud Luxury, Bunt., Ian Asher, Dudley and Nader.
The upshot: Last year’s effort to stage a mega Noah Kahan concert at the airport was a bit of a logistical mess, with complaints about poor wireless service, difficulties securing transportation out of the airport grounds and general traffic woes. The festival had already capped attendance at 15,000 this year — far smaller than last year’s 25,000 attendance to see Kahan, which turned out to be London’s largest ever concert — in hopes of mitigating some of the logistical issues, but it seems that it wasn’t enough. So, seeing that the airport and festival organizers couldn’t figure out improvements probably spells the end of YXU’s brief foray into concert hosting (it was definitely some innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, even if it didn’t work out.) That said, reviews last year did praise the vibe and atmosphere at the airport, so it wasn’t like the whole thing went off the rails. Harris Park will likely be a much easier and more familiar location for the team at Jones Entertainment to deal with, though, and the city’s music office probably won’t mind if the concerts remain downtown. So for the long-term prospects of the festival, the move probably makes sense.
Read more: CBC News London | London Free Press
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A final fade-out for EMAC Recording Studios after 46 years
EMAC Recording Studios, which has made an unmarked, 10,000-square-foot building on Rectory Street home for the past 46 years, has closed for good, its owners announced. Robert Nation (pictured), who co-founded the studio in 1979 along with Joe Vaughan, told CBC News London they received an offer for the building they “couldn’t refuse,” and that “the time was right” to sell the building and move on. “We became a great place, with a lot of bands that came in, whether it’s local, regional, from out of town or wherever,” Nation said. Mario Circelli, founder and chair of the Forest City London Music Awards, called EMAC’s impact on the city “immeasurable,” and said that London’s UNESCO City of Music designation was “built on the back” of musicians who recorded there. “Those two names, Joe Vaughan and Rob Nation, will live on forever as the individuals who brought EMAC to the city, curated it for 46 years and opened the door to so many bands and musicians. It’s a big loss,” he told CBC.
The upshot: Legendary studios come and legendary studios close, and with any luck EMAC will be one of those places that pros talk about with a twinkle in their eye, years from now. Closures like this come along with a bit of a look in the rearview mirror, and with EMAC, it’s a star-studded one — names like Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries, Bif Naked, Kittie, The Arkells, Fetty Wap, Our Lady Peace and actors like Christopher Plummer had all passed through the studio at one point or another (shoutout to CBC News London for posting a time capsule of old snapshots — a blast from the stylistic past, if nothing else). Nation said he was a disappointed the studio wasn’t going to continue, telling the CBC he “would have liked the studio to carry on, and utilize the beautiful space,” but conceded that “I never really thought that was going to be a possibility.”
Read more: CBC News London
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IKEA to open its small format store on September 29
IKEA’s new “compact” store format at White Oaks Mall will open at the end of the month. The store is Ikea’s newest iteration of their smaller-format store: 43,000 square feet, roughly one-fifth the size of the Burlington location, with about 2,500 products. It’s the latest attempt from the company to carve out a retail model that differs from its flagship warehouses, and will be situated in part of the former Hudson’s Bay space at White Oaks. “We are excited to launch this new concept store as the first of its kind in Canada, making our affordable, functional and inspiring home furnishing solutions more accessible to those in London, Ontario and surrounding areas,” said IKEA Canada CEO and chief sustainability officer Selwyn Crittendon, adding the company is “committed to continuing to meet our customers’ evolving needs and dreams and helping to create a better everyday life for the many.”
The upshot: A late-September opening seems ideal — just in time for parents to visit their new university students to say: “Oh, you’ve been sleeping on that?!” But ultimately, we’ll have to see whether this new smaller store concept has legs for IKEA (last year, IKEA shuttered a similar small-format store at the Scarborough Town Centre shopping mall in Toronto, saying shifting consumer behaviour toward online shopping and the limited range of products resulted in weaker-than-expected performance). On paper at least, it seems like London will be a good test bed for the next iteration of this concept — student and young family population, an anchor unit in a large and popular shopping centre, etc. But its smaller-format stores are still experiments to a degree, and IKEA hasn’t necessarily cracked the code on alternatives to its big, wander-able warehouses, so it will be worth watching what kind of traction this one gets.
Read more: CTV News London | IKEA Canada
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Trail’s End ordered closed over fire code violations
Trail’s End Farmers Market in Thames Centre has been ordered closed by the local fire department, over what fire chief Nick Dorken called “potentially catastrophic fire code violations.” The trouble allegedly started last spring, when a fire inspector acting on a public complaint found blocked fire exits; additional inspections followed over the next several months, multiple agencies got involved and the list of violations kept growing. “As the list grew, we reached out to our advisors with the office of the fire marshal, who then attended themselves,” Dorken told CTV News London. After a recent two-day inspection by the fire marshal’s office, the market was officially ordered to close, leaving the future of the market and the businesses of many of the vendors who rely on it in limbo. The market, however, is vowing to reopen after addressing the concerns. “Please bear with us,” they wrote in a statement issued to vendors on Wednesday, after the closure order was reported. “We are working diligently with the fire department and our legal team to remedy the issue and rectify any outstanding concerns with respect to the closure notice we received from the fire department this week.”
The upshot: What seems to be weighing most on the minds of fire inspectors is the spectre of a repeat of the 1993 fire that destroyed the previous building on the same site, then known as the London Sales Arena. Of particular concern seems to be the fact that many of the same issues that caused the building to burn down over 30 years ago were being repeated, although the fire department didn’t say exactly what those were. “The ball is in their court right now to be able to come back to us with suggestions on how to make the building safe,” Dorken said. “We do not want to be in the situation where we have another structure fire, especially given the amount of people that attend that location, especially on the weekends.”
Read more: CTV News London | London Free Press
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Museum London names Shad its first musician-in-residence
Museum London is launching a new musician-in-residence program this fall, and it has tapped London-raised rapper Shad as its first artist. The year-long residency will include performances, public programs and educational initiatives, the museum says, with new music created during the residency joining Museum London’s permanent collection. “Shad’s residency considers how people and communities are shaped by the places they call home, the experiences they carry forward and the stories they choose to remember,” the Museum said in a press release. Shad grew up in London and started his career here before going on to become a major name in Canadian hip-hop, holding the record for most appearances on the Polaris Prize shortlist. He would go on to win a Juno for Rap Recording of the Year in 2011, hosted CBC Radio’s Q for a brief period and hosted Netflix’s Hip-Hop Evolution series. “It’s really exciting, and unusual opportunity for me. It’s something I’ve never done before, but it feels like the perfect fit at the perfect time,” Shad told CBC’s London Morning show. “I’ve been putting out music for over 20 years now, so this feels like a culmination at this point, to make new work and reflect on what I’ve always been trying to say.”
The upshot: Museum London is a bit vague in talking about what this musician-in-residence program will actually look like — possibly because as a brand-new program, it’s going to be figured out a little bit on the fly. On the Museum London side, it’s an exciting collab even just in the sense that it’s something new and creative on the museum front. For fans of Shad’s music, it sounds like it could be an interesting creative period for the artist. “I am realizing, having put out sis, seven, eight albums, that I really do keep making the same thing. I have these questions that come from deep in my personal history, my family’s history, that I keep trying to answer,” Shad said, adding that working with a museum has “caused me, so far, to reflect on my own history in London, and my own history as an artist.” Shad called Museum London “a special space, right literally in the heart of London, which is a city that means a lot to me.”
Read more: Museum London | London Morning
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Dispatch: September 11, 2026
A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week.
View listings here
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