Top 10 biggest tech firms in Waterloo Region: WEDC

The Waterloo Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) has released a list of the biggest tech firms in the region.

The WEDC, which is an independent organization designed to help foster companies arrive and grow in the area, used the number of employees as a way to create its list.

It says the 10 biggest tech companies in the region are split equally between Kitchener and Waterloo, with Google headlining the list.

The global behemoth’s office in Waterloo is one of the company’s biggest engineering hubs, as it has steadily grown its Kitchener office since arriving in 2005.

While Google tops the list, a couple of homegrown companies that have grown up in the city of Waterloo check in next, with OpenText and Blackberry taking the second and the third spots in the rankings.

Opentext has held a spot on the Waterloo scene since being founded in 1991 following a partnership with Oxford University, which looked to get the Oxford Dictionary online. The company now has 14,000 employees worldwide, according to the WEDC.

While at one time Blackberry would have occupied the top spot on the list, the company has reshaped itself over the years. It still has a major presence in the area.

SAP, a German multinational software corporation, steps in at No. 4 on the list, having first arrived in the city of Waterloo in 1991.

Rounding out the top five is EPAM Systems, a Belarussian software company that was founded in New Jersey and only arrived in Kitchener in 2021.

Another international juggernaut, Oracle Netsuite, is ranked sixth ahead of four local startups that have been growing quickly since being founded over the past 25 years.

D2L (Kitchener), ApplyBoard (Kitchener), eSentire (Waterloo) and Arctic Wolf (Waterloo) have all been spreading their wings after having been founded in the region.