Mapping Canada’s Future: How Calgary’s BigGeo is Turning Spatial Data into National Advantage

As governments and enterprises race to keep pace with the data era, one Canadian company is quietly building the sovereign infrastructure needed to ensure our geospatial intelligence stays fast, secure, and domestic.

BigGeo, based in Calgary and led by CEO Brent Lane, is redefining how Canadian organizations collect, analyze, and monetize spatial data. Their platform is built entirely in Canada, giving governments, enterprises, and data creators the ability to ingest, visualize, and sell large geospatial datasets in real time, all without relying on foreign cloud platforms.

“Our view is simple,” says Lane. “The future of AI and data infrastructure isn’t just about speed or scale, it’s about sovereignty. If we want to capture long-term value from Canadian intelligence, we need to build the infrastructure that brings it home and keeps it here.”

BigGeo’s Spatial Data Cloud includes three core tools:

• Datalab, where users can upload, govern, and license datasets, tracking usage and monetization from day one;
• Datascape, a map-first analytics engine that turns vast, complex data into actionable insights in seconds, no GIS expertise required;
• Marketplace, a powerful data commerce platform for licensing spatial data, offering subscriptions and on-demand purchases directly through the platform.

Together, these tools allow Canadian organizations to operate at the speed of global competitors while retaining full control over infrastructure and data governance.

The platform’s advantages are already seeing measurable impact. Jennifer Howell, a Calgary-based Director of GIS Product Management at S&P Global, shared: “We had been looking for a solution that could keep up with the scale and complexity of our data without slowing us down. BigGeo allowed us to go from raw files to fully interactive maps in seconds, and that speed changed how our entire team works.”

For Lane, BigGeo’s mission fits into a much broader shift. As he’s written extensively on his blog, “Sovereignty in the AI era isn’t about isolation. It’s about building the critical layers that others won’t build for us, systems aligned to our geography, our regulation, and our economic reinvestment.”

By anchoring geospatial infrastructure in Canada, BigGeo ensures that as our economy grows more intelligent, it also becomes more resilient, and more Canadian.

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This article is part of CCI’s new “By Canadian Innovators” series, which showcases how members of the Council of Canadian Innovators work with homegrown companies to fuel their growth and make Canada more prosperous. Each story in this series highlights the unique contributions of these companies to building a more prosperous, innovation-driven economy. To learn more about the companies CCI works with to build a more prosperous Canada, visit our member directory.