Engineering Transparency. Saving Lives.
TruDiff is a pre-seed hardware company building the Dynamic Crosswalk Safety Device — a retrofit-ready, AI-powered system that gives unprotected crosswalks the active detection and verifiable safety data that full smart-intersection upgrades can't deliver at municipal budgets.
Faye Shahidi
Founder & CEO, TruDiff Technologies Inc.
THE FOUNDER
Built From Watching Engineering Quality Actually Matter
Faye has spent 10+ years in hardware, medical technology, and embedded systems engineering — leading quality assurance, systems integration, and hardware-in-the-loop testing for production embedded systems in regulated environments where failure has real consequences.
That background shaped how she thinks about crosswalk safety: not as a paint-and-signage problem, but as a hardware reliability and verifiable-data problem. Calgary loses pedestrians every year at crossings with no detection, no warning, and no record of what happened — and she founded TruDiff to bring the same engineering discipline she'd applied in regulated hardware industries to the streets near Calgary's schools and neighborhoods.
"I didn't come from transportation engineering — I came from building hardware that has to work, every time, because people's safety depends on it. A crosswalk should meet that same bar."
TruDiff Technologies Inc. was founded in 2025 and is based in Calgary, Alberta.
- Years in hardware, medical tech and embedded systems
- 10+Years in Hardware, Medical Tech & Embedded Systems Engineering
- TruDiff founded in Calgary
- 2025TruDiff Founded in Calgary
- Alberta municipalities in conversation
- 2Alberta Municipalities in Active Conversations
- Pre-seed SAFE round
- $350KPre-Seed SAFE Round Open, Targeting Q4 2026 Close
THE JOURNEY
From Hardware Engineering to Founding TruDiff
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10+ Years Prior
Engineering Foundation
Faye builds a career in hardware, medical technology, and embedded systems engineering, focused on quality assurance and hardware-in-the-loop testing for regulated, safety-critical products.
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2025
TruDiff Founded
Motivated by Calgary's rising pedestrian fatalities — particularly near school zones — and witnessing the problem firsthand as a school Council member, Faye founds TruDiff to apply hardware engineering discipline to crosswalk safety.
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2025–2026
Early Validation
TruDiff enrolls in a VC accelerator, completes the Trade Accelerator Program with a UK export plan, and opens conversations with Alberta-area municipalities and the Calgary Board of Education.
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Q4 2026 (Target)
Prototype & Pilots
Working prototype lab-tested and patent filed; preparing for three Calgary pilot installations in Q2 2027.
THE WHY
A Hardware Engineer's Answer to a Public Safety Gap
Static signage and paint are invisible at night, in rain, and to a distracted driver. Full smart-intersection rebuilds cost $500K–$2M and take years — out of reach for most cities trying to act now. And when something does go wrong at an unprotected crossing, there's rarely any data to show what happened or to make the case for the next investment.
The DCSD exists to close that gap: detection, real-time alerting, and a verifiable, timestamped record — all on a retrofit budget, on infrastructure cities already own.