OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, has led a US$4.035 million funding round for Daedal Systems, a Toronto startup building standardized measurement equipment for the fusion energy industry.

The all-Canadian syndicate also included Garage Capital, Panache Ventures, Ripple Ventures and the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, along with a group of angel investors, Daedal said in a media release.

Daedal builds plasma diagnostic systems that measure conditions inside fusion machines, helping developers confirm whether their reactor designs are working. The company said fusion firms typically build these measurement tools themselves, even though diagnostics are not core to their reactor intellectual property, which duplicates work across the industry and diverts capital from reactor development.

"After building and deploying plasma measurement systems at General Fusion, I saw the same challenge across the sector: every company needs high-quality diagnostics, but too much time and capital is spent recreating similar systems in-house," said Henry Gould, Daedal's founder and CEO. "Daedal was created to solve that problem by giving fusion companies access to standardized, high-quality plasma measurement systems that can improve the quality of their data and help them move faster toward commercialization."

The funding will go toward building the company's first three diagnostic systems and deploying prototypes with pilot customers under contract, Daedal said. The company has a research partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Johan Frenje, a technical adviser to Daedal, said advanced plasma diagnostics were among the technologies that enabled ignition and target gain at the US National Ignition Facility in 2022. "As fusion technology advances in the private sector, measurement solutions designed specifically for private-sector needs will be essential," he said.

Pension fund's venture arm

Brian Kobus, managing partner of OMERS Ventures, said the investment reflects an opportunity for Canada in the emerging fusion sector. "While fusion remains nascent, its significant long-term potential makes Daedal a compelling opportunity to participate in the advancement of this important technology," he said. "It is also exactly the kind of Canadian-founded company with global ambition that we want to back."

OMERS is a jointly sponsored defined benefit pension plan serving more than 665,000 active, deferred and retired members, mainly municipal employees across Ontario, including workers in emergency services, transit and school boards. It reported C$8.2 billion in net investment income for 2025 and a smoothed funded status of 99% as of Dec. 31, 2025, according to a Benefits and Pensions Monitor profile.

The fund has said it wants to grow its Canadian holdings. CEO Blake Hutcheson told the Globe and Mail earlier this year that OMERS aims to increase its Canadian allocation from about 18% to 25% of its roughly $145 billion portfolio over five years, an additional $10 billion beyond what it already owns. The fund already holds a major stake in nuclear energy provider Bruce Power.

Daedal is part of VentureLab's hardware portfolio, and its most recent funding prior to this round was a pre-seed round led by Ripple Ventures in August, according to Caplight data.