Evolution Follows Revolution: SmartD Is a VFD Brand – Not Just an Innovation
April 29, 2026
By Krystie Johnston
SmartD’s transformative Clean Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) is laying the groundwork for long-term progress in motor control
SmartD Technologies is a Montreal-based power electronics company cofounded by Simon Leblond in 2018. Their innovative SiC semiconductors and modulation algorithms are revolutionizing how we approach motor control today. And this is just the beginning. In this market, they are continuously evolving by increasing their recognition, expanding their product range, and embedding AI into their offerings. Leblond says 2026 is already off to a great start and is excited to share more technological innovations as the year unfolds.
SmartD gains recognition as a VFD brand
Leblond says there has been a notable shift for the company that has been building for some time: SmartD Technologies is moving beyond being just an innovation. They are becoming a VFD brand. “In the early years of the company, people would say, ‘We do not believe you.’ It was a lot about demonstrating the technology, proving that it works. And now, more and more, there is an entire stream of repeat business. People are coming back. They have deployed it. It makes sense.”
And it is more than repeat customers seeking SmartD as a VFD brand. Word of mouth is encouraging new customers who are looking for a motor control solution to consider them too. People hear about SmartD’s Clean VFDs being used in projects where other solutions have failed. They hear the success stories. And they want one too. Increasingly, SmartD’s Clean VFDs are being used in applications where customers have faced challenges with other motor control products, and SmartD consistently delivers a reliable solution.
SmartD’s solutions were deployed in the city of Stratford, where almost 1,400 feet of degraded, buried cable needed to be retrofitted at a clean water pump station. By using SmartD’s Clean Power VFD, they were able to achieve variable speed control and improve energy efficiency without modifying the existing infrastructure. And for Énergir Urban Heating and Cooling, SmartD helped resolve recurring motor bearing failures with a simple retrofit that delivered a clean sine wave, protecting both the bearings and the motor. There are other case studies too.
Leblond says they often are called upon to help with retrofit applications, but their Clean VFDs work just as well in new projects.
“We often get the ‘funky’ projects the first time around. The project where they tried everything else and everything else failed. But with SmartD, it works. And then we get another funky project [and it works]. And then we get a mainstream project, and it works there too. You need to get over that hurdle; you need a solution. SmartD is that solution.”
SmartD is also gaining recognition because they are a Canadian innovation. “I definitely feel – and specifically for the Canadian readers – there is more and more recognition. And as a Canadian company, there is a desire to buy Canadian-born innovation,” Leblond says. “The phone is ringing and the inbox is full with, ‘Hey, we have been looking to find a manufacturer that is from Canada.’ So sometimes that is the lead in and then they discover our value add.”
Expanding their products and software to suit the end user
In April SmartD made headlines when they announced a $15M CAD financing round to accelerate their product roadmap. Leblond says that what stands out about this round of funding (they have had others) is the continuation of trust from their investors, a quality they exemplify in their business too. “It is trust from one of the leading financial institutions in Quebec. It is trust from a power quality leader that has invested before and comes back for more. And this is really what we want to build on with our customers as well.”
With support from their partners and investors, they are building that trust factor and scaling their business by expanding their offering. “In terms of product roadmap, it is really going up in power and going down in power. We have many product improvements we are excited to share. We are bringing a new HMI that is going to be IP65, so watertight. We are bringing out a larger frame size. And we also have a smaller frame size we are working on.”
SmartD will make announcements when their new products are ready, but for now, Leblond says they are taking their time to get everything right before bringing them to market. He says the mining, oil and gas, and water and wastewater industries have made a lot of requests for larger drives. “We have learned with our first two frame sizes, and we see the opportunity to improve and get a better product out there. That should be coming this fall. And it is going to be great because everyone on my sales team could be booking drives in that frame size every single week.”
They are also making improvements to their software. “We have released Ethernet/IP. This is not an innovation, but it is reducing friction, so we are bringing this into the product.” As an eight-year-old company, his team is catching up on 30 years of software development and not wasting a minute. “The team has been super dutiful; every three weeks we have a new software release. And AI is speeding that up. We want to not just get on par with other manufacturers, but really get ahead.”
Embedding AI a natural progression
Leblond says he is excited about the ways they can use AI, like embedding it into SmartD’s solutions to help improve efficiency and speed in areas like coding and programming. For example, Leblond says there are exciting developments coming out soon that will make configuration even easier. “We teased some of that last year. In our mobile app, you can use the camera to snap a picture of your motor nameplate, and a configuration will be generated based on AI. That is just one of our early tasks; we have a lot more coming out on that.”
Leblond is not naive to the competition, but he is aware that SmartD has a niche in the industry. “A lot of the big players have a large Canadian presence, so we are not going to take that away from them, but it is not every day that you have a company start from scratch in Canada. I like to tell my partners and end users, ‘If you are in Montreal, come and visit us.’ And you will get a feel for what it is to develop, yes, cutting edge technology, but to do so not from an established base, not in a 100-year-old company, but from a company we built from nothing.”
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