A commercial break at a Jets playoff game gave two University of Manitoba students an idea. Nearly a decade later, Taiv’s AI powers the screens in thousands of venues across North America. It still calls Winnipeg home.
On a spring night in 2018, Noah Palansky was watching a Winnipeg Jets playoff game at a local bar when the broadcast cut to commercial. He noticed an ad for a rival restaurant’s beer special on every screen in the venue. The same beer he was drinking, at a better price, down the street.
“It clicked that this was one of the last places advertising hadn’t evolved,” Palansky says.
The bar had no control over the ads that played on the screens in their establishment. Palansky, then a computer science student, teamed up with fellow student Jordan Davis, and the two began building prototypes in a Winnipeg garage. Avi Stoller joined as co-founder in 2019. Their answer became Taiv: an AI OS for business television that connects to cable boxes and runs custom AI models that analyze the live TV feed to detect TV commercials in real-time. It replaces these ads with promotions for the venue, licensed content, and relevant advertisements. This helps venues lift sales for their products, improve customer experience, and gain unprecedented control over every screen in their establishment. Plus, the solution is entirely free for venues, ensuring no business is too small to utilize the technology. Taiv makes money by selling targeted ads to relevant third-party companies, and then shares this revenue with the venue, turning their TVs from a cost center to a profit center.
Taiv Team, Holiday Party
SHUTDOWN AND STARTUP
The idea won top prize at North Forge’s RampUp Weekend in 2018. In 2020, Taiv became the first Y Combinator participant from Winnipeg, and TechCrunch ranked Taiv first among the roughly 200 startups at Demo Day. That same month, COVID-19 ravaged the entire hospitality industry, and Taiv’s subscription model became vulnerable. Bars and restaurants lost disposable income, laid off employees, or closed altogether.
In response, the founders moved to Florida, where venues were still open, and knocked on doors in Miami. While venues stayed open, they faced similar macro-economic challenges. As a result, Taiv changed its business model: instead of charging a monthly subscription fee for venues, they sold advertising slots to other local businesses who wanted to play ads “in the bars down the street.” That model proved wildly successful, and hasn’t changed since.
Taiv Advertiser Campaign
THE TAIV FLYWHEEL
Today Taiv operates nationally across thousands of venues throughout the United States, reaching millions of customers and serving billions of impressions every month. Brands including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, BMW, ESPN, Netflix, and FanDuel buy the inventory, with 99% of venues renewing monthly. Every new venue makes the network more valuable to advertisers, and every new advertiser drives more revenue for venues. Those compounding network effects placed Taiv fourth on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list of Canada’s fastest-growing companies, and Palansky and Davis were named to Forbes 30 Under 30. They’ve raised more than $30 million CAD from investors including Y Combinator, IDC Ventures, Emerging Ventures, Aperiam Ventures, Garage Capital, and RBCx.
Taiv Office
MADE IN MANITOBA, BUILT FOR THE WORLD
Taiv has made a substantial commitment to growing one of the largest tech companies in Canadian history from Manitoba. This includes physical headquarters, employee demographics, and funding. Roughly 80% of the 100+ employees work from the company’s headquarters in downtown Winnipeg.
“Throughout Taiv’s history, we have promised to create jobs in Manitoba and have since followed through, creating over 75 jobs since 2025,” Palansky says. “We will continue to support the local economy as we build Taiv into a key part of Manitoba’s tech ecosystem.”
Taiv’s roadmap from here is ambitious. They plan to be live in every major U.S. market by the end of 2026, and in most major Canadian markets thereafter. The platform has already spread beyond bars into gas stations, convenience stores, casinos, and hotels. The long-term goal is bigger: any screen in any venue, anywhere in the world, working harder for the business that owns it. Venues earn more. Advertisers reach further. Patrons get better TV.
Taiv Venue Promo
