Taiv

01The Platform

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Winnipeg, Taiv turns the television screens in bars and restaurants into a targeted advertising network. The Taiv Box installs behind the TV in under an hour and works with any provider. When a live broadcast cuts to commercial, Taiv replaces the national ad with something chosen for that room: an ad sold to an advertiser who wants those customers, or the venue's own promotion. When the break ends, the game comes back.

A graduate of Y Combinator's Winter 2020 cohort, Taiv installed its first venue in Florida in April 2021, reached 100 venues within eleven months, and now runs on more than 25,000 screens in over 30 U.S. cities.

02Venues & Advertisers

For venues the pitch is simple: install at no cost, run your own promotions in part of the break, and earn $1,000 to $2,000 a year from screens you already own. Venues renew at 99%. For advertisers, Taiv sells a room that could not previously be bought, targeted by venue type, market and daypart rather than by household.

The company has raised $30M USD to date, including a February 2026 round of equity and debt co-led by IDC Ventures and Emerging Ventures, with continued participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and Garage Capital. Taiv ranked #4 on the 2025 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, the fourth fastest-growing technology company in Canada.

03The Market

Bars and restaurants pay for the screens, the mounts and the subscription, then hand roughly a fifth of their screen time to commercials sold to viewers at home, sometimes for the competitor down the street. Advertisers, meanwhile, have no way to reach that room differently than they reach a living room, even though a venue full of people mid-game is one of the few places left where a large group watches the same screen at the same time.

Taiv's insight was that the commercial break itself is the asset, and that whoever can identify it reliably, in real time, controls a distribution channel that did not previously exist.

04Founders & Selection

Taiv was co-founded by Noah Palansky, Jordan Davis and Avi Stoller. The idea arrived during a hockey game: Noah was watching at a bar when the broadcast cut to commercial and the ad that played was for cheaper beer at a rival bar down the street.

Noah Palansky, CEO, founded a charity supporting children affected by cancer at 13, which raised roughly $1M CAD, then left school at 21 to lead marketing at a national payroll provider before returning to specialize in AI. Jordan Davis, CTO, leads hardware, firmware, software and product strategy, and built the first Taiv Box prototypes with Noah; detecting a commercial break in real time and fully offline took roughly a year to solve. Avi Stoller, CRO, built the sales team that brought venues onto the network and now leads the revenue organization that works with Taiv's large advertiser clients. Noah and Jordan are both Forbes 30 Under 30 honourees.