BDC LIFT eligibility — the actual test, not the marketing copy.

The hard floor: $1M revenue. No exceptions.

The first and most-failed test is the revenue floor. BDC LIFT Track A requires at least $1M in annual revenue. Track B raises that to $5M. These are not soft targets — they're underwriting thresholds, and BDC does not grant exceptions for fast-growing pre-revenue companies, businesses where one strong quarter would have crossed the line if extended, or recent acquisitions that haven't booked a full fiscal year under current ownership.

The number BDC reads is the most recent completed fiscal year, audited or reviewed. Not trailing-twelve-month rollups. Not annualised run-rate from your strongest month. If your last completed fiscal year landed at $920K and you're tracking to $1.4M this year, the honest answer is wait — close the current year, get the financials reviewed, then apply. BDC writes a lot of loans; LIFT is not the one where they bend the criteria.

One nuance worth knowing: if you operate multiple Canadian corporations under common ownership, BDC will look at the operating entity that will receive the loan — not consolidated group revenue. If your group does $4M total but the operating subsidiary that will use the AI is at $700K, you're under the Track A floor. The fix is usually structural (route the AI work through the right entity, or roll up first), not arguing eligibility with underwriting.

Ownership rules: CCPC, and BDC reads the cap table

BDC LIFT is built for Canadian-controlled private corporations — CCPCs in the CRA's defined sense. That means three overlapping tests:

• Incorporated in Canada — federal under the CBCA, or provincial. A US-incorporated entity with a Canadian branch office does not qualify, even if all the people and customers are in Canada.
• Not controlled by non-residents — non-residents (individually or together) cannot hold more than 50% of voting shares. Foreign minority stakes under 50% are usually fine, but BDC will read the shareholders' agreement for veto rights or control blocks that effectively confer control beyond cap-table percentage.
• Private — public companies and their subsidiaries are out. Wholly-owned subsidiaries of foreign multinationals are out, even if the local operation is large.

If you're a high-growth company that took US venture capital, this is the test you'll spend the most time on. A 25% US investor with no special voting rights generally passes. A 25% US investor with a board veto on financing decisions probably doesn't. The right answer is to have your counsel summarise control rights — voting, board, financing, transaction — before you spend time on a LIFT Advisory engagement.

Operating history: two full fiscal years, under current ownership

BDC wants to see at least two complete fiscal years of operating history under the current ownership and corporate structure. This isn't a "we've been doing business for 18 months and we're crushing it" loan — LIFT underwriting is built on backward-looking financials. The Advisory team will ask for the last two years of statements, and the credit team will read them.

This rule catches three common cases:

• Recent management buyouts. If you bought the business 14 months ago and re-organised the corporate structure as part of the acquisition, the "current ownership" clock restarted. BDC may grant some flexibility if the operating business itself has decades of history, but you'll need to make the case explicitly.
• Recent incorporation. If you operated as a sole proprietor for five years and incorporated last year to access LIFT, you're still inside the two-year window from BDC's standpoint. The operating history transfers, but the corporate vehicle does not — the corporation needs its own two years.
• Newly formed holding structures. If you rolled multiple operating businesses into a new holdco last year to consolidate, the holdco is fresh. The operating subsidiaries that have history might still be the right LIFT applicant, depending on which entity is taking the loan.

Sector eligibility: who's in, who's out

Track A is sector-agnostic for any operating SME — services, retail, professional services, trades, B2B SaaS, distribution, light industrial. Track B is restricted to sectors where AI is paired with physical equipment: manufacturing, transport and logistics, wholesale trade, construction, agriculture, mining, and architecture/engineering.

Beyond track scope, BDC has standing restrictions on lending into a small set of sectors regardless of which program — these apply across BDC's lending posture, not just LIFT:

If you're in a grey-area sector (vape and tobacco retail, payday lending, certain crypto-adjacent businesses), ask BDC directly before booking an Advisory engagement. Better to spend 20 minutes on a phone call than three weeks on a scope document that won't underwrite.

Financial readiness: what BDC looks at on your balance sheet

The eligibility tests above are pass/fail. Financial readiness is more like a sliding scale — BDC won't reject you for being lean, but the loan size and terms move with the underlying numbers. The things underwriting will look at:

• Gross margin and EBITDA trend. A business with declining margins over two years gets a harder look than one that's stable or improving. The story matters more than the absolute number; a margin compression you can explain (one large customer renegotiation, a deliberate pricing move) reads differently from a slow drift downward.
• Debt service coverage. Existing debt, lease obligations, and the projected LIFT payment all need to fit inside cash flow. The 24-month principal-payment postponement helps, but interest accrues from day one — your model needs to absorb that without straining working capital.
• Working capital position. BDC isn't fixing a working-capital problem with LIFT. If your AR is stretched, payables are aging, and the AI implementation is meant to "fix" cash flow, that's an underwriting concern, not a feature.
• Personal guarantees. Standard BDC practice — expect the principals to personally guarantee some portion of the loan, particularly under $250K. For larger loans, security against business assets typically reduces the personal exposure.
• Tax compliance. CRA arrears, unfiled returns, or unresolved tax disputes will stall underwriting. Clean these up before applying, not during.

The AI scope test: what counts as a qualifying AI project

Even if you pass every other test, the project itself has to qualify. BDC's working definition of a qualifying AI project under LIFT is implementation work that introduces or scales AI capabilities inside the business — design, build, integration, deployment, change management, and post-deployment measurement of AI systems that change how the company operates.

Project shapes BDC routinely funds:

• LLM-based agents for intake, support, sales follow-up, operations triage, and back-office workflow. Integrated into your CRM/ERP/PMS, with measurable outcomes.
• Computer vision for quality inspection, safety monitoring, inventory recognition, or automated visual workflows.
• Predictive analytics tied into your operational systems — demand forecasting, churn prediction, maintenance scheduling, dynamic pricing.
• AI-augmented automation — process automation where AI is the core decision layer, not a marketing label on a generic workflow tool.
• Data infrastructure that's the prerequisite for the above — warehouse, pipelines, model-serving — when it's clearly in service of a defined AI use case, not a speculative "data platform" build.

Project shapes BDC will not fund:

• Ongoing SaaS subscriptions to off-the-shelf AI tools you could pay for on a credit card.
• Generic website rebuilds with "AI features" bolted on as cover.
• CRM replacements framed as AI projects — LIFT does not fund CRM migration work.
• Pre-built point solutions sold by vendors where the SME is just buying a license, not commissioning implementation.
• R&D experimentation with no defined production deliverable — that's NRC IRAP territory, not LIFT.

The line BDC's Advisory layer draws is roughly: is there real integration work being done by a real integrator, producing a measurable change in how the business runs? If yes, it's in scope. If you're just buying software, it isn't.

Common disqualifiers — the patterns we see weekly

These are the eight patterns we tell people about on screening calls, in roughly the order they show up. If any of these describes you cleanly, save yourself the Advisory engagement and have the structural conversation first.

If you don't qualify — where to look instead

LIFT isn't right for everyone, and we'd rather point you to the program that fits than burn your week on an application that won't underwrite. The closest neighbours, depending on which test you failed:

For the longer comparison, the blog post on Scale AI vs. BDC LIFT walks through which program fits which company shape. The "What is BDC LIFT" primer is the right pre-read if you're still mapping the landscape, and the 2.25% Canadian-integrator post covers the rate clause that's worth eyes on once eligibility is confirmed.

The next step — a 30-minute screening, not a sales pitch

If you've read this far and you're not sure whether you're on the right side of these tests, that's the call to book. Thirty minutes, we walk through the eligibility tests against your actual numbers, and at the end either we tell you the path is clear (and how to scope the Advisory engagement), or we tell you which test you're not passing and what to do about it.

If you're already past screening and ready to start scoping a defensible AI project for BDC underwriting, the LIFT readiness assessment is the right next step — it produces the implementation plan you'd take to BDC. The LIFT loan calculator works out the dollar shape of what a project at your revenue level realistically looks like, including the 2.25% rate effect.

Once you know you qualify, the sibling pages on Track A (the $2M AI-only loan) and Track B (the $5M AI + equipment combined loan) cover what each track funds in detail. And the main LIFT hub is the right place to land if you want the full program overview.

Eligibility FAQ