Entrepreneur of the Year 2025: How Soroush Karimzadeh built Canada’s leading welding-robotics company

Soroush Karimzadeh developed a passion for machines early on. Growing up in Tehran, he accompanied his father, a metallurgical engineer, on tours of radiator factories. Those experiences sparked his interest in technology and paved the way for him to earn master’s degrees in applied science and in finance and strategy from UBC.

By 2013, Karimzadeh was ready to make his mark. He joined forces with Reza Abdollahi and Hamid Abdollahi to build Novarc Technologies, a Burnaby-based robotics company, and took on the role of CEO a year later.

“The biggest challenge our customers face is a shortage of human welders,” says Karimzadeh. While demand for welding-dependent industries like shipbuilding, oil and gas, housing and data centres is rising, “the average age of a welder is 54 years old, and millennials and Gen Z don’t want to go into welding.”

Novarc’s flagship product, the spool welding robot (SWR), has been a game-changer for the welding industry. The heavy, 3,500-pound robot, with a small four-by-four-foot footprint and a long 15-foot reach, mimics a human arm but has the right degrees of freedom to provide a precise weld.

For users like local shipbuilder Seaspan, the SWR has cut welding time from hours to minutes.

Novarc’s latest product, NovAI, is a set of eyes and a brain for other welding robots: it can “see and react to real-world weld scenarios in real time,” says Karimzadeh. It’s able to detect gaps and automatically adjust the settings so the weld stays smooth and consistent. And, unlike systems that use lasers or sensors to conduct prescans and make decisions before the welding starts, NovAI can make live changes based on the actual welding environment.

In March 2025, Novarc Technologies secured US$50 million in series B funding. The company is growing at around 30 percent year-over-year, with 150 team members and revenue nearing $30 million.

“I really wanted to develop a solution or a product that I could see people using and benefiting from in the physical world,” says Karimzadeh. “And we make sure those robots are being used. They’re not sitting idle or collecting dust. That, to me, is real impact that we can have on our customers’ bottom line.”

Describe your dream employee in three words.

Humble, hungry, smart. 

Your favourite part of your job?

Seeing people grow into new roles and achieving their potential.

An odd job you’ve had?

For a very brief moment in time, I was commissioned to do a voiceover in German for a play.