Age: 37
Occupation: President and CEO, TCG Machines Inc.
A twisted knee changed the course of Graeme Gordon’s career. In 2015, sidelined by an Ultimate Frisbee injury on the first day of a hard-earned break between jobs as an oil-and-gas engineer, Gordon tackled a decade-old collection of trading cards he’d been meaning to sort.
Three straight eight-hour days later, his roommate looked at the pile and said what Gordon hadn’t yet let himself think. This was a job for a machine.
The result was the PhyzBatch, the robot at the heart of Gordon’s company, TCG Machines. It photographs a card, matches it against a database, and physically sorts it by price, rarity, print year or condition — work that used to eat entire days at hobby shops like Calgary’s Phoenix Comics and The Sentry Box.
The company’s most memorable customer arrived out of the blue. Order No. 10, placed in 2021, came from Post Malone, an avid Magic: The Gathering player. It caught Gordon by surprise. At the time, he was still assembling units in his basement with the help of his brothers-in-law.
That scrappiness now shows up as culture. TCG Machines has hired 40 employees with an average age around 28, and Gordon says turnover is close to zero.
The company runs escape-room outings, axe-throwing events and an office pool tournament that’s roped in half the staff. “It’s a strong subculture,” he says of the shared nerdiness, tabletop games and rock climbing that unite the team. “I don’t know, there’s just a je ne sais quoi… everyone’s just friendly, open-minded and open to games and fun.”
TCG Machines is on track to top $14 million in revenue in 2026. It holds patents in Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan and the U.S., and its machines have sorted more than 1 billion cards, or roughly 2,000 tonnes, across 20-plus countries.
Manufacturing has stayed in Calgary, aside from precision metal parts from China. “Calgary’s been so good to me and the company, and Alberta and Canada,” he says.
“I would feel very disingenuous if I’d been successful because of all these grant opportunities and mentors and support, and then just left.”
Top 40 Under 40 2026
Devin Fisher and Gabrielle Leakey