North Forge: Canadian AI on the world stage
An award at the Manitoba AI Innovation Showcase, a place on TechCrunch's Top 30, and a booth in Paris. North Forge traced how a beatboxer ended up running an AI company.
North Forge, the Winnipeg technology and startup hub, profiled Moonlite Labs under the headline "Moonlite Labs Brings Canadian AI to the World Stage." Its opening line is the best summary of the founder anyone has written: Adam Fainman used to hype up a crowd with nothing but a loop pedal and a microphone.
An unlikely founder story
The path was not linear, running from a computer science degree at the University of Winnipeg to a diploma in digital media design from Red River College and a master's in music and multimedia technology from the University of Toronto, all of it circling the same question of what technology can do for a working artist. "I'm always tinkering and trying to figure out ways tech can help with things like music production," he told North Forge.
He describes the product itself just as plainly: "It's a content generation platform that allows users to create videos, images, animations, talking avatars, sound effects and voice-overs [...] your whole multimedia creation tool."
Moonlite Labs showed itself publicly for the first time at the Manitoba AI Innovation Showcase, and left with an award. "That was a massive confidence boost. It was our first time sharing with the public what we've been up to for the last year," he said. New users and beta testers followed quickly.
TechCrunch, then Paris
Next came a place on TechCrunch's Top 30 Startups of the Year, a shortlist that included only two Canadian companies, and then VivaTech 2025 in Paris, Europe's largest startup and technology conference with more than 180,000 visitors. Backed by Scale AI, Moonlite Labs travelled as part of Canada's official delegation the year Canada was named Country of the Year at the conference.
We had a massive space. The French president came through our whole area. It was the craziest thing.Adam Fainman, speaking to North Forge
He had two days on the floor with a booth each for the business and consumer sides of the platform, plus a stage slot where he told the story of going from beatboxing artist to tech founder. He is honest about the nerves: performing music is easy for him, standing in front of venture investors is not. What carried it was that the subject was still storytelling. "I'm literally making the tool that I wish I always had," he said. "I'm not standing here selling something I don't believe in."
Adam joined North Forge after receiving funding through the National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program, entering the Founders Program at Ascent, its third of four stages, because validation and market research were already done. The programme is free for Manitoba founders and meets them where they are.
