About ThriveAI

ThriveAI is an AI engineering company in Ottawa that builds private AI systems for manufacturers and distributors in Ontario and Quebec, on their own data. Traditional manufacturers can win at AI too, and ThriveAI works hands on with your team to make sure you do. Derik Lawlis, the founder, leads every project and stays close to the build.

Derik Lawlis Founder, ThriveAI

What ThriveAI does

A private AI system for your company

ThriveAI brings what your ERP, email, drawings and spreadsheets hold into one database that belongs to your company. Your team asks it questions in plain language, and every answer shows where it came from. It also drafts routine work, such as order entries, purchase orders and quotes, for someone on your team to approve.

Custom AI tools, built with your team

ThriveAI works on site with your team and builds each tool on your own data. This way of working is called forward deployed engineering. The people who will use the tool shape it while it gets built, so it fits how your team already works.

Workflow automation

ThriveAI connects the tools your team already uses, so a task you repeat every week runs by itself. Anything going to a customer or a supplier waits as a draft until someone on your team sends it.

Working with Derik to build these AI agents has been fun, very worthwhile, with a huge ROI for my team.

Fahd Alhattab, Founder, Unicorn Labs.

What makes ThriveAI different

Hands-on help for smaller companies

Large manufacturers have many AI vendors and products to choose from, and smaller ones rarely get hands-on help. Deloitte describes its forward deployed engineering for enterprises as “pods of specialist professionals,” and Cohere’s private deployments page says Cohere sends buyers the components to deploy on their own. ThriveAI works on site with your team, and Derik stays involved from the first meeting to support after launch.

Your data stays on your own server

The platform ThriveAI builds on is designed to keep each client’s data on its own server in Canada, and you choose the AI model that reads it: one on that server, or a hosted model under a written agreement that the provider keeps nothing after answering. Microsoft says Copilot processing in Canada arrives in 2027. OpenAI stores ChatGPT data in Canada only for eligible API customers and new Enterprise or Edu customers.

You keep the systems you run

ThriveAI’s systems read your ERP and your other software as they are, including older versions installed on your own server. Every connection only reads data, and nothing touches a live system until you approve what it will read.

Every answer shows its source

Each number links to the document or ERP record it came from. When your data cannot answer a question, the system says what is missing instead of guessing.

Someone on your team approves every draft

Nothing is sent or saved in your systems until the person responsible approves it. Every correction is saved in your company’s own record, and you can export all of it at any time.

Who uses ThriveAI

ThriveAI works with smaller, owner-led companies in Ontario and Quebec.

• Manufacturers. Machine shops, fabricators and custom equipment builders where a few experienced people hold up quoting, scheduling or purchasing.
• Distributors. Industrial and equipment distributors where orders arrive by email and PDF and someone types them in by hand.
• Owners and presidents. In most of these companies the owner makes the call, and the plant or operations manager joins.

The team behind ThriveAI

Derik Lawlis, founder

Derik Lawlis founded ThriveAI in December 2025 and leads every project. He loves the technology and what AI can do for a business, and he stays close to every build. Before ThriveAI he worked in sales at American Iron & Metal, co-founded Mindbliss, which was later acquired, was a product manager at Invert, and built Paddle.ca, a canoe retailer he grew through search and sold in May 2025. Follow him on LinkedIn.

How ThriveAI started

Thrive Adventures Inc. was incorporated on October 12, 2021, and its first business was paddlesports. ThriveAI started inside the same company in December 2025, after Derik sold Paddle.ca.

Who does the work

ThriveAI is a small company, and Derik leads each project and stays involved in the build. ThriveAI also publishes free browser tools for shop files: a STEP file viewer, a STEP to STL converter, an STL to STEP converter and a G-code viewer.

He proposed solutions that were effective to implement and everyone on our team was impressed and happy to work with him.

Rios-Karim Mercier, Belmont Capital.

How ThriveAI works

Working sessions

Derik is your main contact. Working sessions run on site with your team, in French or English.

How to reach ThriveAI

Use the contact form, write to derik@thriveai.com, or book a meeting. Derik reads every enquiry himself and usually replies within one business day.

Stage one: a prototype

ThriveAI builds a working tool for the one job that costs you the most, at a fixed price, in weeks. It runs on your own systems, and if you stop there, you keep it.

Stage two: the full build

Stage two connects the systems you already run and builds the tools your team uses every day. You decide whether to start it after you have seen stage one working.

Stage three: adding to what runs

Once the first tools are in daily use, ThriveAI keeps adding to them as your business changes and as AI models get better.

Key facts