BDC Launches $50M Fund to Boost Women-Led Businesses in Canada

• BDC reveals $50 million Thrive Fund to provide women entrepreneurs the resources to start a company
• The objective of the fund is to increase female-owned small businesses to surpass the 19% of the currently owned by women

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) has decided to use a new method to address the two small-business issues that are closely related. These issues include the insufficient number of women-led companies and the excessive number of business owners looking to sell.

On September 22, 2025, BDC, the Crown corporation, revealed its $50 million Thrive Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Fund, aimed at supporting the financing and providing mentoring for women who want to take over and manage existing businesses.

Such a project is a part of the newly emerging practice in M&A, known as the search fund or entrepreneurship through acquisition. The concept is that the investors pay an entrepreneur to find and buy a business and then become the CEO. The investors provide money to the purchase in exchange for a share of the company.

BDC's fund is intended to take advantage of an impending ownership change, whereby more than one in six small- and medium-sized business owners are predicted to sell or wind up their business within five years or 142,000 entrepreneurs according to BDC. By supporting women as buyers, BDC wants to raise the proportion of female-owned SMEs, currently at only 19 percent.

In addition, the division of BDC that supports women entrepreneurs, Thrive Lab’s managing director Sévrine Labe stated, “There’s a huge opportunity there to rebalance the equity within the ownership space.”

Direct investments to women buying businesses to the tune of $40 million will be made by the fund. A portion of the funds will be allocated to those starting their own search fund, a capital fund raised from investors to locate a company to buy and the buying process itself.