Meta representatives made the case for its $13 billion Sturgeon County data centre during the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association’s (AIHA) annual conference this Thursday. 

The AIHA is an economic development and investment organization representing Alberta’s Industrial Heartland—an investment zone in the Greater Edmonton Region. The AIHA advocates on behalf of its five municipal members: Edmonton, Sturgeon County, Fort Saskatchewan, Lamont, and Strathcona County. The association’s annual conference attracts roughly 1,000 business and community leaders from the area. 

“It’s really incumbent on the company to be a part of the long-term solution to domesticate, and recruit and retain talent here.” 

Matt Sexton, Meta

Matt Sexton, an Iowa-based community engagement manager with Meta, spoke at the conference as part of a session called Behind the Build with Invest Alberta CEO Keith Bradley. The session was billed as an opportunity for the US tech giant and AIHA attendees to get a closer look at the data centre buildout, which will be the largest in Canada, that’s planned for Sturgeon County. The panel did not take audience questions.

Meta first announced plans to build the company’s first Canadian data centre last July. The one-gigawatt facility is slated for construction within Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. The company has claimed the project will support 3,000 jobs during construction, and 300 permanent jobs once operational.

The facility is purported to eventually be powered by natural gas from the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a 932-megawatt natural gas facility currently being constructed that is not intended to come online until 2030. 

Sexton, who supports data centre development both in his home state of Iowa as well as in Wisconsin and Alberta, faced questions including what made Alberta attractive for investment, what kind of benefits development would bring to trade workers, what community investment would look like, and what the company hoped the project would represent for Sturgeon County in five to 10 years time. 

Sexton largely used the 30-minute fireside chat to expound on the economic and social benefits Meta believes will come from the data centre and its subsequent operations.

“I have seen both qualitatively and quantitatively what this project means,” Sexton said, adding that he lives near a data centre in Iowa. “3,000 trade workers on site for the arch of this project. There are going to be over 25 million work hours.” 

Sexton said Meta has already contracted much of its workforce for the project within Alberta, and that it was involved in spurring economic impact throughout the supply chain, including by supporting prefabrication work as far away as Calgary.

“That extends all of the ancillary economic benefits outside of the property,” he said. “These are every part of the supply chain from warehousing to transportation, security to culinary services.” 

“It’s really incumbent on the company to be a part of the long-term solution to domesticate, and recruit and retain talent here,” he added. 

Sexton reiterated several times throughout the conversation what he claimed would be the long-lasting economic impact of operating the data centre in terms of construction timelines, which he said would be long and cyclical. 

“That kind of general contractor relationship never dissipates. These buildings, not unlike a phone or laptop, after a certain time, say five to seven years, there’s new technology and reliability goes down, and we begin the process of refreshing … and installing the newest models,” Sexton said. “So that life cycle keeps these projects moving as economic catalysts. 

RELATED: Here’s how every Canadian province and territory is governing data centres

Sexton also sold the audience on the notion of long-term community impacts created by Meta through tax revenues paid to the County, as well as commitments around philanthropic investments—Meta has promised to invest $60 million in local infrastructure improvements—in the community. 

“We’re looking at more than $30 billion of collective investment, and that has a real ancillary rolling impact,” Sexton said. 

Meta is one of the signatories of Canada’s new framework encouraging the development of responsible data centres. The framework is non-binding and has no mechanism for compelling companies to follow its guidelines, which include asks for facilities to generate their own power and create economic value for Canada. A recent report from environmental think tank the Pembina Institute estimates that the data centre could drive up Alberta electricity costs by hundreds of dollars per household per year. 

Meta isn’t the only US tech giant eyeing Alberta for a data centre buildout. Last month, job postings from AI firm Anthropic indicated it is also considering building in the province. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image by Jesse Cole for BetaKit.

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Toronto’s Wittington Ventures has closed its third venture capital (VC) fund, securing $180 million CAD to invest in more climate, commerce, consumer, healthcare, and food technology startups at the Series A and B stages.

The news: Wittington Ventures managing partner Jim Orlando announced the news on LinkedIn on Thursday. The fund’s limited partners include Wittington Investments (the billionaire Canadian Weston family’s holding company, which controls Canadian grocery and pharmacy chains Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart), and other undisclosed institutions. Wittington Ventures’ third VC fund is 50 percent larger than its $120-million, 2022 predecessor, and brings the seven-year-old firm’s total assets under management to $820 million. Wittington Ventures has not yet made any investments via the fund, but it aims to back 15 companies and deploy an average of $10 million apiece.

From the source: Orlando told BetaKit in an interview that Wittington’s investing in areas where they have “differentiated” points of view. He said Wittington Ventures’ third VC fund will bring more of the same. “I think we’ll just continue doing what we’re doing.”

The context: Launched in 2019 under Orlando, who previously led OMERS Ventures, Wittington Ventures got its start as a single, $100-million VC fund focused on commerce and healthcare, run by a small team with the capacity to lean on the broader Weston portfolio. The firm has since grown into a broader, 15-person platform that also covers pre-seed, seed, growth equity, climate, consumer, and food tech—areas Wittington Ventures believes it possesses an advantage in thanks to its close relationships with the various Weston-family firms. This spans a $100-million early-stage strategy geared toward Canadian deep tech and bridging the gap between research and commercialization, $400 million across three core VC funds, and $320 million for profitable and near-profitable growth companies (including a $100-million carveout for Canadian food growers and producers.

Wittington Ventures has backed more than 25 companies to date, from Toronto-based Grey Matter Neurosciences, Odaia, and Shakudo to Vancouver’s ViewsML and US-based Gatik, some of which have also begun working with other Weston businesses.

Final thought: Orlando is proud of what Wittington Ventures has built, and expects its next seven years to look similar to its first. He wrote that the firm plans to keep focusing on providing patient capital and support to talented people tackling tough problems, with the help of its colleagues at Loblaw, Shoppers Drug Mart, Choice Properties, Holt Renfrew, Wittington Investments, and the Weston Family Foundation. 

Feature image courtesy Wittington Ventures.

The post Wittington Ventures closes third, $180-million VC fund first appeared on BetaKit.

We don’t spend much time thinking about the technology behind ordering food through an app, tapping a phone to pay, or using AI to compare products before making a purchase. We simply expect every interaction to be fast, intuitive, and secure. As new technologies reshape commerce, those expectations are only growing.

Balinder Ahluwalia, SVP and group head of market development and digital partnerships at Mastercard in Canada, believes one principle remains unchanged.

“When we talk broadly about the future of commerce, generative AI, and agentic commerce, the customer has to remain at the centre of everything. Ultimately, technology is an enabler,” Ahluwalia said in a recent interview with BetaKit. 

That future is closer than we think

Ahluwalia believes Canadian FinTechs are well-positioned to help shape how people shop and pay in this new phase of growth. But building a great product is only part of the challenge. Payments must move reliably, fraud risks must be managed, and growing regulatory requirements must be met, paired with delivering seamless experiences that customers feel confident using every day.

That’s where Mastercard comes in. 

While often viewed as the technology powering payments behind the scenes, Ahluwalia says Mastercard’s role increasingly extends beyond the transaction itself. By working alongside startups, the company shares insights on customer needs, security considerations, and the compliance landscape, as founders bring new products to market. Mastercard’s experience in Canada across financial institutions, merchants, FinTechs, and consumers for over 50 years provides a network perspective on what drives adoption and trust. 

That kind of co-creation will be part of the conversation at the Canada FinTech Forum, running from Sept. 14 to Sept. 15 in Montréal. There, founders, investors, financial institutions, and policymakers will gather to explore agentic commerce, open finance, cybersecurity, payment modernization, and what those developments mean for customers and companies. 

From experimentation to implementation

For Ahluwalia, one of the biggest shifts happening across the ecosystem is the move from exploration to execution.

“We are moving from experimentation to implementation,” said Ahluwalia. “FinTech founders know what kind of experience they want to create for customers. What they need are partners who can help deliver the technology, trust, and infrastructure to make it real.”

Mastercard’s role can vary depending on a company’s stage of growth. Some founders arrive with deep industry experience and a clear idea of which parts of the business they want to own. Others are looking for support from inception through launch, and beyond.

“Co-creation means helping entrepreneurs move faster. We see customer friction points, evolving compliance requirements, and trends emerging across global markets every day. Sharing those insights helps founders stay focused on solving real customer problems while drawing on Mastercard’s technology, network experience, and market perspectives. “

As products scale, trust becomes just as important as innovation. Security, reliability, and transparency help create the confidence customers need to adopt new experiences, which is core to the support Mastercard can help provide to fintechs.

In a sector where people want to know who is handling their money and how it is being protected, that confidence can be a powerful driver of growth.

“Security and compliance actually give customers the confidence to adopt something new,” he said. “The second the trust is gone, they’re not going back.” 

Built in Canada, ready for the world

Canadian companies have already shown they have what it takes to become international players. Ahluwalia pointed to Lightspeed, Shopify, and Nuvei as homegrown innovators that have scaled into global market leaders. At the same time, companies including Propel Holdings, KOHO, and Neo Financial are as part of a newer group continuing to grow within the Canadian market. 

For Ahluwalia, their success reflects one of Canada’s greatest strengths: products built for one of the world’s most diverse and globally minded markets are often well-positioned to succeed elsewhere.

“Building a FinTech here is a pretty powerful, exportable product,” he said.

The challenge isn’t creating innovative ideas; it’s ensuring those ideas can scale across markets while maintaining trust, compliance, and performance. 

“That’s where experienced partners can help founders accelerate growth while remaining focused on their customers,” adds Ahluwalia. “Canadian FinTechs should not start by chasing scale. They should start by solving a real customer problem in a way that reduces friction and builds trust. If they get that right, growth will follow.”

For Ahluwalia, that’s why he remains optimistic about the future of Canadian innovation.

“Canada has the talent, the ambition, and the ideas to drive fintech innovation forward for tomorrow.”

PRESENTED BY

Ready to build what’s next in Canadian FinTech? Connect with Mastercard to explore how we can help take your idea further.

Feature image courtesy Mastercard.

The post What’s next for trust, innovation, and co-creation in the Canadian FinTech ecosystem? first appeared on BetaKit.

When global investors arrive in Toronto on Monday, ahead of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit, Carney will be pitching them on several Canadian tech projects.

The summit, which will bring 100 global investors to rub shoulders with Canadian politicians and business leaders, aims to spur more than $1 trillion CAD in investment in Canada over the next five years. A 66-page “pitchbook” obtained by BetaKit shows a list of 167 projects (and their associated price tags and financing objectives) for investors to peruse. 

The document’s introduction says it “highlights projects seeking financing and strategic partnerships today, while also providing early visibility into future investment opportunities.” In an email to BetaKit, the Prime Minister’s Office said it did not share a prospectus with the media, and that it appears the pitchbook was leaked. 

Alongside infrastructure projects like oil pipelines, carbon removal projects, transportation infrastructure, and mining developments, the prospectus includes several projects to support the technology sector, from a large-scale quantum computer to a commercial spaceport. 

Here are some highlights of what tech Canada will be selling to global investors next week, according to the pitchbook: 

Digital technology

• Canadian Photonic Fabrication: The federal government recently announced it was opening up Ottawa’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre to commercial investment. The pitchbook lists the semiconductor chip foundry as seeking “access to private capital” under a “new ownership model.” 
• Canada Sovereign Systems Centre: A proposed advanced manufacturing and research and development centre in Ottawa focused on “Canadian-controlled data, autonomous defence and dual-use technologies,” seeking roughly $427 million USD ($591 million CAD). 
• Project Optimism: Toronto quantum company Xanadu, which was featured in BetaKit Most Ambitious, is seeking public equity investment for its $1.3-billion advanced photonics research, development, and manufacturing hub in Etobicoke, Ont.

Data centres 

• AHI AI Hub of Innovation: A data centre and “behind-the-meter” power project in central Alberta that could scale from 300 megawatts to one gigawatt of power, currently under construction. Developer Havenz Smart Communities is looking for equity, strategic investors, and anchor partners. 
• Alto Northern Alberta Projects: Three “AI-ready” data centre campuses in Northern Alberta that could provide up to two gigawatts of capacity, looking for financing and strategic partners. 
• Spruce Lake Data Centre Hub: Calgary-based Beacon Data Centers is looking for financing for the construction of an AI data centre hub in New Brunswick with up to 365 megawatts of capacity. 
• Redcliff AI Data Center Campus: Data centre developer BW Velora is seeking equity and debt for a $14.5-billion build of an eventual 1.2-gigawatt data centre campus near Medicine Hat, Alta. 
• The Grande Prairie Project: Another BW Velora project, still in the permitting phase, is looking for $2.4 billion to finance the repurposing of an industrial site into an AI data centre campus. 
• Project Wheatland: Calgary-based data centre developer StratGrid is looking to build an AI data centre campus in Wheatland County, Alta., starting with 240 megawatts of power but scaling past one gigawatt. 

Advanced manufacturing

• Canobi Distributed Food Resilience Network: Farm equipment supplier Canobi wants equity, project financing, and partnerships worth up to $220 million USD for a platform to support food security for remote communities. 
• Project Kardium: BC medical device maker Kardium is seeking $250 million in equity and non-dilutive funding to scale up manufacturing of its cardiac mapping and ablation devices.
• Spaceport Nova Scotia: Halifax-based Maritime Launch Services is looking to raise equity investment and other financing for its orbital launch facility in Canso, NS, as Canada looks to build sovereign launch capacity.
• Project Vanguard: BC quantum company Photonic, which was featured in BetaKit Most Ambitious, is seeking $500 million CAD in financing for what would be Canada’s first quantum semiconductor manufacturing facility in Vancouver.
• Telesat Lightspeed Leo Constellation: Aerospace company Telesat is offering a minority equity stake in the company, or its Lightspeed low-Earth orbit satellite network, which is valued at $5.2 billion USD. This follows a federal contract to expand the satellite fleet. 
• Deployable Optics for Trusted, Sovereign ISR: Edmonton-based spacetech company and BetaKit Most Ambitious honouree Wyvern is looking for equity, strategic partnerships, and government co-investment for its optical satellites for hyperspectral Earth observations, worth a total of $230 million CAD. 

Power and utilities

• Micro-Modular Reactor Platform: The Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation (CSMC), which was featured in BetaKit Most Ambitious, is seeking capital and project partners to support its mini nuclear reactors to provide power for remote communities, mining projects, and other uses. 

Clean energy 

• Deep Sky One: Montréal-based cleantech company Deep Sky is looking for equity, construction debt, and investors to finance its direct air carbon capture facility in Alberta. Price tag: $328 million USD. 
• Northern Spruce Project: BC-based Svante Technologies plans to build a bioenergy with carbon capture and storage development in Alberta, and is looking for long-term equity investment. Price tag: between $420 million and $500 million CAD

Feature image courtesy Mark Carney via LinkedIn.

The post The tech projects Canada is selling to global investors at next week’s summit   first appeared on BetaKit.

Halifax-based Galaxia Space Systems has raised $4.5 million CAD to build out sovereign compute infrastructure in space. 

The news: Galaxia announced the funding round, co-led by Montréal-based VC Amiral Ventures and provincial business development agency Invest Nova Scotia, on Thursday. The startup is developing satellites with compute power and AI built right in, allowing space missions to process and analyze data in orbit, and reducing the need to wait for the satellite to send the data down to Earth for processing.  

Galaxia said the funding will support its next phase of growth, including the deployment of its satellite systems and hybrid space networking capacity, as it looks to scale up its offering to both commercial and government customers.

From the source: “We are building the foundation for a new class of space systems which deliver intelligence, not just data,” Galaxia CEO Arad Gharagozli said in a statement. “This funding enables us to scale that capability, strengthen sovereign capacity, and accelerate the transition to real-time, software-defined operations in orbit.”

The context: Galaxia says its platform is built on Canadian innovation and intellectual property, and looks to provide sovereign space capabilities for Canada and its allies. Demand for sovereign space infrastructure has increased since the federal government designated space-based intelligence, surveillance, and satellite communications as a key sovereign capability in the Defence Industrial Strategy earlier this year. 

Galaxia isn’t the only Canadian option for orbital compute. Toronto-based Kepler Communications recently brought its very own commercial space data relay service online. Similar to Galaxia, Kepler’s relay allows data to be processed and analyzed directly in space, rather than waiting for a downlink to Earth. 

Final thought: More companies are looking to store compute in the stars. Google, Starlink, and Amazon have been transparent about their desire to launch orbital data centres, which could take advantage of solar power and the cold space environment. Some experts argue, however, that orbital compute could pollute the atmosphere, or is simply impractical. 

Feature image courtesy Galaxia.

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As travel demand climbs in Canada and around the world, airlines and their partners are looking for ways to move people more efficiently, without compromising the passenger experience.

Toronto Pearson, for example, is prioritizing digital capacity and tools as it embarks on a modernization and expansion program intended to increase capacity from its current 47 million annual passengers to 65 million, within its existing footprint and while reducing friction for travellers. 

“We can’t keep thinking solely about adding physical infrastructure as the only way to expand capacity.”

Mark Manickaraj,
Toronto Pearson Airport

Pearson is already working to pilot biometric processing and boarding, deploying four biometric e-gates with partner airline Air Canada as part of a wider digital ID program aimed at making the passenger journey more seamless.  

Mark Manickaraj, Executive Director of Digital Products, Data, and AI at Toronto Pearson Airport, believes it is one important part of Toronto Pearson’s effort to meet passengers where they are.

“Passengers today use digital tools and experiences to enhance their daily lives, whether that be banking, shopping, or healthcare, and they expect the same seamlessness when they walk into our airport,” said Manickaraj. “When the journey doesn’t match that expectation, that’s where we see there’s a gap.”

The e-gate deployment, which brings together technology from Toronto Pearson, Air Canada, and several partners, uses a live image of a passenger’s face to verify their identity against an approved traveller record. At the gate, that verification can replace the final passport or boarding pass check.

The project is part of a much larger effort to rethink how technology supports Canada’s largest and busiest airport. Toronto Pearson currently handles 47 million passengers annually, and expects that number to reach 65 million in the early 2030s. Supporting that growth will require physical expansion, operational improvements, and, according to Manickaraj, digital infrastructure.

“We can’t keep thinking solely about adding physical infrastructure as the only way to expand capacity,” he said. “We need to really look at all of our processes and all the technology that we’ve deployed and really ask ourselves: Are we maximizing our investments? Can we increase capacity with technology and software? And that’s where digital ID shines.”

The digital identity work is expected to scale through Gateway, the terminal-expansion component of Toronto Pearson’s LIFT (Long-term Investment in Facilities and Terminals) program. The multi-billion-dollar LIFT program also includes upgrades to the airport’s existing infrastructure and a revitalization of Terminals 1 and 3. The airport is also exploring ways to make airport wayfinding smoother and more tailored to each unique passenger, and is looking to equip passengers with more personalized, purposeful information about airport services and amenities through digital channels like WhatsApp.

The e-gates are supplied by Dormakaba, a Swiss security technology company. Companies like Airsphere and Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA) provide the middleware that allows the gates to communicate with identity databases, while Air Canada supplies the enrolment software and identity gallery used for participating domestic passengers.

The pilot also depends on close coordination across airlines, airport operators, government agencies, and technology providers. While travellers interact with a single gate, the process relies on multiple systems working together behind the scenes.

RELATED: How Toronto Pearson is turning Canada’s busiest airport into a proving ground for innovation

Toronto Pearson’s deployment includes one domestic e-gate and three gates in its transborder area for passengers travelling to the United States. The domestic process requires passengers to enroll through the Air Canada mobile app before reaching the gate. Since a traveller’s image is already captured during US pre-clearance, the three transborder e-gates can compare a live facial image against an existing identity record without requiring registration in advance.

“What we’ve seen, actually, is a very pleasant look on people’s faces when they arrive here and they don’t have to pull out all of their documents,” Manickaraj said.

Toronto Pearson has also observed improvements in boarding times. The airport plans to track usage, processing times, passenger throughput, and customer satisfaction as the program expands. All the while, participation will remain voluntary. 

“This will be an opt-in process,” Manickaraj added. “We think that’s really important.”

While Toronto Pearson’s digital ID pilot is currently limited to boarding, it plans to expand biometrics to other passenger processing areas. Manickaraj envisions a future where, once passengers arrive at the airport, they “never have to pull out a document.” 

“Our focus is really reducing friction at every touchpoint, and we strongly believe that digital ID is one important part of that effort.”

Mark Manickaraj,
Toronto Pearson Airport

Pearson’s vision extends beyond boarding. The long-term goal is a more connected travel journey where identity can be verified securely across multiple touchpoints, helping passengers move through the airport with fewer interruptions, while maintaining strong privacy and security standards.

Achieving that will require identity infrastructure that Canada does not currently have. The US already operates a biometric matching service for international traveller verification, and the European Union has also rolled out a biometric entry and exit system of its own.

Canada currently has no equivalent national identity gallery that airports and airlines can use to verify travellers, Manickaraj said, which is why Toronto Pearson is working with Air Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, and other agency partners to develop a privacy-compliant foundation.

“The airlines have brought this to our attention first,” Manickaraj said. “They really see a future where biometrics are used in all parts of the journey, not just at check-in and boarding, but also at all of their gates and lounges, and so they’ve been working very closely with us to enable that experience.”

Manickaraj said privacy is being built into the program from the outset. “Privacy, safety, and security” must come first, he added. “Everything else is secondary to that.”

Pearson is treating digital identity as a foundational part of its operating architecture, and it is betting that biometrics can improve processing, create capacity, and make the passenger experience feel closer to the seamless digital services people already use. 

“We’re not just an airport. We’re a gateway into our country. We are a space where millions of adventures begin, and we represent our nation to the world,” Manickaraj said.

“Our focus is really reducing friction at every touchpoint, and we strongly believe that digital ID is one important part of that effort.”

PRESENTED BY

Explore how Pearson is building a more connected, seamless airport experience.

Feature image courtesy Toronto Pearson Airport.

The post Toronto Pearson wants to clear biometric travel for takeoff first appeared on BetaKit.

More than 1,000 homes in a planned community near Winnipeg’s University of Manitoba campus will heat and cool their homes with geothermal energy after the Province announced $4 million in funding yesterday. 

The news: On Wednesday, Manitoba unveiled its Net Zero Action Plan, a guiding document outlining specific actions as part of Manitoba’s Path to Net Zero planning. Included among those actions is a $4-million investment to create a “new geothermal neighbourhood” at the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus in Winnipeg. The geothermal system is planned for an 80-acre, mixed-use community development called Southwood Circle. It will be the first large-scale geothermal network in Manitoba. 

From the source: “Our hope is to transform the University of Manitoba campus into a world-leading ‘UniverCity’ that could one day welcome as many as 65,000 people,” Manitoba climate change minister Mike Moyes said in a press release yesterday.

RELATED: Manitoba looks to spur more investment with tax credit ceiling raise

The context: The community will be developed in partnership with UM Properties GP Inc., an LP controlled by a University of Manitoba trust. The project is envisioned as a mixed-use community home to both medium and high-rise housing, and up to 300,000 sq. ft. of office and commercial space, according to the Province. While still in development, the project projects that geothermal energy will power heating and cooling for as many as 1,000 new homes by 2028.

Final thought:  Rather than focusing on courting data-centre development with sometimes emissions-heavy power sources, Manitoba has focused its recent investments in a different direction. More than $350 million in provincial dollars have been earmarked for Manitoba’s Net Zero Action Plan so far, including $55 million to help business and industry transition toward decarbonization. Nationally, Canada has made developing geothermal tech a priority earlier this year with a roadmap for identifying tech and research and development opportunities. The tech is seen as one with high, underdeveloped potential for Canada, since it’s conducive for much of the country’s landmass, and harnesses skill sets used in other Canadian industries like oil and gas. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy of Unsplash.

The post Manitoba invests $4 million to develop geothermal neighbourhood first appeared on BetaKit.

Waterloo Tech Week is returning to Kitchener and Waterloo for its second year, from Sept. 12 to 17. The decentralized tech conference’s calendar lists nearly 60 events organized by students, venture capital companies, tech startups, and local tech organizations. 

The conference is run by the same team behind Hack the North, Canada’s largest student-run hackathon. Co-director Maggie Lu said the team is building on its mission to be a connector between students, companies, and working professionals.

“The overall consensus is that students are now feeling more a part of this tech community than ever before.”

Megan Chun,
Waterloo Tech Week

“I feel like there are so many strong organizations and people who are really ambitious about building things, and if we concentrate that in one place, we think a lot of really cool things can happen,” Lu said.

Last year’s conference drew more than 1,500 people to events across the region. As word spread about this year’s conference, Lu said the organizers saw an increased interest in hosting from founders, VCs, and early-stage builders.

“[It’s] definitely more so than last year, and we’re finding that people really want to build something,” Lu said. “For us, that means putting companies in direct contact with high-signal builders.”

Lu added that these connections are fostered through workshops and panels focused on early-stage building, dinners for smaller groups of builders, and mixers where founders can meet potential co-founders or collaborators.

Co-director Megan Chun added that Waterloo’s growing pool of young tech talent is driving interest in hosting and attending events.

“The overall consensus is that students are now feeling more a part of this tech community than ever before,” Chun said.

This year’s event lineup includes the return of the Velocity Pitch Competition on Sept. 12, a tech ethics panel discussion with Gender Equity Tech Waterloo Region, and a Startups and Beer mixer at Communitech on Sept. 15.

One change from last year is a move to host more Waterloo Tech Week flagship events during the week. The organizers are again hosting the conference kickoff on Sept. 11 at the Tannery Event Centre in Kitchener, and a fireside chat with Garage Capital and Inovia Capital on Sept. 13 at the Den 1880 coworking space in Waterloo.

RELATED: Student-led takeover of Tri-Cities tech continues with Waterloo Tech Week

Ian Korovinsky, co-director of Waterloo Tech Week and Hack the North, said there are also many non-traditional events that help create unique experiences for attendees, including a scavenger hunt.

“It’s good because you end up in places you didn’t expect as you’re searching for things,” Korovinsky said. “When you think about … something unique that other people aren’t putting on as often, I immediately go to the scavenger hunt.”

Lu added that many of this year’s new event hosts were inspired to participate after attending last year’s events at venues like the Accelerator Centre, Communitech, and Google’s Waterloo office.

“We have some hosts who attended events last year and are now hosting their own events, especially student clubs. For us, that really speaks to our mission of building community, connecting people, and inspiring them to dream big and build bigger,” Lu said.

Feature image courtesy Alex Kinsella for BetaKit.

The post Waterloo Tech Week returns with new flagship events first appeared on BetaKit.

Yet another AI researcher has issued a staggering warning: the cutthroat race to build ever-more-powerful AI systems could wipe out humanity.

The news: Jacob Coxon announced on Tuesday that he resigned from his role as a researcher at Anthropic because the AI company and its top rival, OpenAI, are “gambling with our lives.” He claimed neither company is acting responsibly when developing AI models, and are instead racing to create self-improving AI systems that humans could lose control of. 

BetaKit has reached out to Anthropic and OpenAI for comment on Coxon’s posts.

From the source: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon claimed, adding that this is “not a marketing stunt.” Evan Hubinger, who leads Anthropic’s AI alignment stress-testing team, admitted that the company believes AI could “kill all humans” (he put the chances at more than 10 percent in the next decade). He said Anthropic is doing its best, but doesn’t yet have a plan to solve the issue.

The context: Coxon joins a litany of other AI researchers who have called for a slowdown in AI development. Anthropic’s head of safeguards resigned earlier this year amid concerns about AI, bioweapons, and broader crises. OpenAI has also seen departures on moral grounds, with its hardware robotics lead leaving over the company’s Pentagon contracts. This summer, more than 1,000 employees of top AI companies called on the US government to pace development of the tech, and US representatives, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have introduced legislation calling for a ban on superintelligent AI development.

Recent AI-driven cybersecurity breaches—like the army of OpenAI agents that coordinated to hack Hugging Face, and potentially other websites—have thrown these fears into sharper relief. In his posts today, Coxon said he’s optimistic that this incident could make AI labs more willing to collaborate to pace development. As Canadian AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio wrote in a Time article this morning, while we’re at a turning point, it’s “not too late” to steer toward a safer path. 

The must-attend event of the fall is near!

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Global investors trust Canada and its stability enough that they want to invest more here; the problem is there aren’t enough projects to invest in, according to new reports from the CPP Investments Insights Institute. Ahead of next week’s Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, 94 percent of the report’s respondents plan to maintain or increase their Canadian exposure. Can Canada create the projects to give that money a home?

Cohere Mistral

In a recent appearance on The Times Tech Podcast, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez didn’t rule out an eventual partnership with French AI lab Mistral, the only other non-US lab working on sovereign AI. Gomez made it clear there were “no discussions” with Mistral, and that any partnership would be up to its founder. For what it’s worth, Mistral just raised three billion euros (at a much larger valuation than Cohere’s) to attack the sovereign AI market.

All eyes on Toronto

Take that, SF. CNN spoke with AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton, Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst, Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun, and more Canadian tech leaders to find out why Toronto is one of the world’s most important AI hubs.

Trump stops buying Canadian

In the latest trade war escalation, President Donald Trump declared on Tuesday that he will direct the US federal agency behind government procurement to remove all Canadian-origin products from its “awards schedules.” Will this affect your business? Tell us how.

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On the move

This week’s hires, fires, and exec shakeups:

• Oakville-based telematics firm Geotab ranked 11th on Fast Company’s annual Best Workplaces for Innovators list.
• Calgary-based Neo Financial laid off more than 100 employees.
• Femtech venture studio Antigoni Studios partnered with Sparrow Cowork to expand access to entrepreneurial resources in Edmonton.
• Calgary-based, women-led venture studio FoundHers is opening its third cohort on Friday, Sept. 11.
• The Alliance of Canadian Defence Companies appointed Dasha Cohen as executive director, according to The Ottawa Business Journal.
• Montréal-based Vention opened a new physical AI lab.
• Québec City-based healthtech Icentia appointed Sanjay Voleti as CEO.
• Mitacs and NGen struck a partnership to support 60 internships within advanced manufacturing R&D projects across Canada.
• One of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing jobs is the engineer configuring customers’ AI tools, according to Fortune.
• Around 64 percent of Canadians could imagine moving into a different career field, but are held back by age, financial uncertainty, and the idea of having to start over, according to new Indeed data shared with BetaKit.

Want to feature a hiring announcement on our list? Email partnerships@betakit.com with the subject line JOBS.

Quantum and AI: Strategic Signal or Long-Term Option

Next week, Douglas Soltys will be taking the conversation to the ALL IN stage.

Join him with the leaders closest to the action for a discussion exploring where the most credible near-term opportunities at the intersection of quantum and AI lie, how organizations can separate strategic signal from hype, and how Canada’s strengths in both fields can translate into a competitive advantage.

See it live in Montréal or virtually on September 16–17.

Explore the complete program

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Madison McLauchlan (Montréal reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Cash Macanaya.

The post Are AI labs “gambling with our lives”? first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian-founded, New York City-based go-to-market (GTM) startup Clay has closed another major financing, securing a $115-million USD ($159 million CAD) Series D round.

The news: Clay develops and sells AI software and agents designed to help other firms automate marketing, sales, and other GTM tasks. The company announced its Series D on Wednesday. It was led by Wellington, with support from Andreessen Horowitz, CapitalG, Meritech, Sequoia, and others. The round values Clay at $7.1 billion USD, more than double the $3.1-billion USD valuation it was given with its $100-million Series C in August 2025. It comes as Clay surpasses 17,000 clients, up from 10,000 a year ago, including Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Google, OpenAI, Siemens, and Stripe.

From the source: “AI is unleashing the biggest wave of company creation in history, and Clay’s goal is to be the engine those companies use to grow to their full potential,” Clay co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin said in a release. “We started by aggregating the best data for [business-to-business] companies. Then, we built the infrastructure to run any personalized campaign on top of it. Now, we’re building agents that can help grow your company for you.”

The context: Clay was launched in 2017 by McGill University graduates and repeat entrepreneurs Amin and Nicolae Rusan. Rusan (who is Canadian) has since left Clay. Amin, who is originally from Egypt, attended McGill before moving to the United States over a decade ago. There, he built a New York startup with Rusan called Frame, an e-commerce tech firm they sold to Sailthru in 2012. Clay, which also counts Canadian-founded Maple VC among its early investors, was recently featured on VC Antoine Nivard’s Dominion List, which tracks influential Canadian founders building in the US.

Final thought: Clay has invested heavily in developing “a self-learning revenue engine” featuring agents capable of autonomously finding prospective clients, monitoring their intent, drafting personalized outreach, and updating customer relationship management systems. “Just as [large language models] predict the next best word in a sentence, Clay will predict the next best action to grow your business,” Maple VC general partner Andre Charoo told BetaKit. Charoo added that he thinks Clay has the potential to become the agentic successor to Salesforce.

Feature image courtesy Clay.

The post Clay lands $115-million USD Series D at $7-billion valuation first appeared on BetaKit.

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s (TSX) annual list of top-performing public companies includes Canadian stock star Celestica and four other tech companies across aerospace, defence, and digital infrastructure.

The news: The stock exchange released its annual TSX30 list today, which ranks the top 30 companies by three-year, dividend-adjusted share performance. Toronto electronics and AI infrastructure company Celestica placed first on the list for the second year in a row, joined by aerospace and defence technology companies MDA Space, Firan Technology Group Corporation, and Telesat. 

The list also included former Bitcoin mining company Hut 8, which has previously partnered with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and now supplies data centre infrastructure. The tech-adjacent advanced materials company 5N Plus also made this year’s ranking.

From the source: Celestica saw its share price rise by a staggering 2,590 percent over the past three years, as its market capitalization rose from $1.9 billion CAD to nearly $60 billion at the end of the second quarter. In a statement, CEO Rob Mionis attributed the growth to “enabling critical AI data center infrastructure and advancing technologies in high-growth markets.” 

The context: Canadian tech companies are generally not as well-represented on the TSX30 list, compared to categories like mining, which made up 60 percent of this year’s list. Despite their relatively small representation, tech companies added $85.3 billion in market capitalization over three years, according to the TSX, the second-largest contribution of any sector featured in this year’s ranking.

Final thought: Tech companies with hardware plays were the tech sector’s only entrants, as e-commerce giant Shopify, FinTech company Propel, and software company VitalHub dropped off the list this year.  Many software companies were hit hard this year by investor fears of AI disrupting their businesses, leading to broad sell-offs. However, companies like Celestica and Hut 8, which sell the hardware to construct AI data centres and associated cloud infrastructure, saw their market caps increase significantly. 

Feature image courtesy TMX Group.

The post Celestica, MDA Space, Telesat among tech names on 2026 TSX30 first appeared on BetaKit.

Ottawa-based Shopify is acquiring Tailwind Labs, the Canadian company behind the popular, free, open-source web development framework Tailwind CSS.

The news: Tailwind announced the deal on Wednesday both on X and in a blog post. The financial terms were not disclosed. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a computer language used to control the visual layout of web pages written in HTML. Founded in 2017, Tailwind has developed a popular, utility-first CSS framework that helps developers quickly style websites.

A 2025 State of CSS Survey found that Tailwind CSS was the most popular such framework, used by 51 percent of respondents. Shopify was one of the first large companies to start building with Tailwind CSS, both internally and for clients. Tailwind founder and CEO Adam Wathan called Tailwind CSS a “very important part” of the e-commerce giant’s tech stack. 

From the source: “When I started working on Tailwind over nine years ago, my only goal was to create something that would make it easier to build beautiful interfaces for my own projects,” Wathan wrote in the company’s blog post. “Fast-forward to today and the framework is installed over 110 million times per week and is trusted by many of the world’s biggest companies to style products like ChatGPT, X, Cloudflare, Reddit, and Shopify.”

The context: As reported by DevClass, Tailwind had been facing challenges thanks to the “brutal impact” of AI. In January, Wathan revealed in GitHub posts that despite “growing faster than it ever has,” the company’s revenue was down nearly 80 percent. The CEO noted that AI had also led to developers bypassing its core marketing channel, fuelling a 40-percent dip in traffic to the company’s documents—how clients find its paid offerings—since 2023, and forcing it to lay off three employees, or three quarters of its engineering team, to ensure its sustainability. Since then, multiple AI companies have stepped up to sponsor Tailwind.

Final thought: Tailwind’s sale to Shopify gives the company both “a stable, long-term home where it will be actively maintained for the millions of people who depend on it,” and a much larger surface area and “real product” upon which to advance its tech, Wathan said. Going forward, Tailwind CSS and Tailwind’s other open-source projects will remain MIT-licensed and continue to be maintained by the Tailwind team with Shopify’s support.

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.

Feature image courtesy Shopify.

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The Government of Canada unveiled its National AI Literacy Initiative Wednesday morning, delivering on a promise outlined in Canada’s broader National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. 

The initiative was announced by federal AI Minister Evan Solomon at a launch event at Edmonton’s Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii).  

“We’re the country that helped create this technology. Now, we must, and will be, the leader in AI education and skills training.” 

AI Minister Evan Solomon

“Students need to understand, educators need to understand, workers, parents, communities, [that] they need support and literacy, because education is the best hedge against change,” Solomon said of the government’s plans to increase access to AI training.

A partnership between Amii and the federal government, the $13-million initiative will launch on Sept. 21. It will be led by Amii, which has an established track record of producing AI literacy programming upon which the federal government has modelled the national initiative. 

“Amii has shown us what practical AI education can achieve,” Solomon said. “Amii has an education course that we are building on for the entire country.”

Initiative programming will be rolled out across three streams: one for students, one for educators, and another for the Canadian public. Streams focus on providing “practical learning opportunities” around the essentials of AI that the federal government believes will help Canadians “understand AI, use AI, and, for those who choose, build with AI.” 

Programming will also look to provide learners with the skills to assess AI-generated information, identify things like misinformation, bias, or privacy concerns, and enable them to use AI technology “more confidently and responsibly,” according to statements from Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED). 

RELATED: Amii receives $9 million from feds to equip energy workers with AI skills

The initiative’s programming will be rolled out in a tiered process over the coming months. A free, three-hour course for post-secondary students, as well as the first chapter of an Essentials for Educators course are both planned to come online on Sept. 21. Five additional chapters are slated to be published through the fall. ISED expects the initiative’s programming to reach up to one million post-secondary students and more than 50,000 K-12 educators. 

Later in the year, the Essentials for Canadians programming will launch nationally, with programming being delivered through community partners. During his remarks on Wednesday, Solomon said that workers and job seekers will be able to access “short-duration” AI training through the Government of Canada’s Job Bank portal. That programming will focus on how Canadians can understand and adapt to AI as jobs, tools, and workplaces change. 

“We’re the country that helped create this technology,” Solomon said. “Now, we must, and will be, the leader in AI education and skills training.” 

Built on Amii

Much of the initiative’s programming takes its cues from Amii’s existing literacy programming, which the federal government said was foundational in building out a national program. Cam Linke, Amii’s CEO, said the national initiative will follow in the steps of programming like Amii’s AI for Everyone literacy course, which focuses basic training on AI concepts, capabilities, and information on how to make informed decisions about AI use. 

“It’s not about turning everyone into an AI expert; it’s about giving everyone the foundation they need,” Linke said. 

The development of a National AI Literacy Initiative was first introduced this summer as a component of the Canadian government’s national AI strategy. It was pitched as a program that would provide entry-level AI training accessible to all Canadians. Its unveiling now makes good on one of the government’s six AI pillars: to empower Canadians with AI training. 

During the summer rollout of the AI strategy, Solomon said Canada’s three AI research institutes, Amii, Montreal’s Mila, and Toronto’s Vector Institute, would play roles in the development and implementation of AI literacy programming. It is unclear if Mila or the Vector Institute will be involved in the rollout of the initiative at this time. 

Currently, less than a quarter of Canadians have any formal AI training. 

Changing perceptions

The delivery of this component of the AI strategy comes at a key moment for the Canadian government. Negative sentiment regarding AI data centres, and AI development more broadly, is growing. In Alberta, provincial technology minister Nate Glubish and Premier Danielle Smith came under fire for the province’s support of data centre buildouts at town halls designed to dispel concerns around the technology’s rapid integration.

Roughly half of Canadians view AI as a potential threat to humanity. As AI Strategy task force member Taylor Owen noted earlier this year, addressing those concerns through literacy training could help in sending a signal to Canadians that understanding and awareness are an important part of the government’s broader AI ambitions.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Amii.

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The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has revealed plans to raise and anchor a new, $1-billion USD ($1.4-billion CAD) fund to back scaling Canadian technology companies.

The news: RBC announced the RBCx Growth Fund on Wednesday morning. The fund will make direct equity investments in growth-stage domestic tech firms “with the potential to scale into global powerhouses,” and provide access to commercialization opportunities, strategic partnerships, and other forms of support that RBC claims are often unavailable via traditional investors. The bank plans to pour up to $300 million USD ($416 million CAD) of its own capital into this fund, and secure the remainder from third parties. 

From the source: “For decades, Canada has produced an outsized share of world-class entrepreneurs and tech talent who want to build global companies at home,” RBC president and CEO Dave McKay said in a news release. “But when they’re ready to scale, too often they get pulled elsewhere. The RBCx Growth Fund I is about changing that by putting capital and partnership behind our most promising homegrown innovators.”

The context: According to the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA), American investors play an outsized role in financing the growth of Canadian tech firms. Citing PitchBook data, RBC said that over the past decade, 33 percent of domestic growth rounds have been led by Canadian investors. That’s a far cry from the 74 percent of US growth rounds led by US investors during the same period. The CVCA (which has been calling for the federal government to concentrate its upcoming $750-million venture envelope on growth-stage firms) has argued that this dynamic creates a higher risk of those companies relocating to the US or being acquired by US businesses. A recent Council of Canadian Innovators study backs that up, determining Canadian tech firms are exiting to foreign buyers when it’s time to scale.

Final thought: With the RBCx Growth Fund, the bank hopes to keep “more of the ownership, influence and economic upside” of Canadian firms in Canada. Sid Paquette, head of RBCx, RBC’s tech and innovation banking arm, has been tasked with leading the fund, which will prioritize companies developing enterprise software (like applied AI and cybersecurity), healthtech, frontier tech (spanning aerospace, defence, and quantum computing), cleantech, and AgTech solutions. RBC reportedly intends to pitch foreign investors on the initiative at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit next week. The bank claims the fund has “already attracted significant interest” from prospective limited partners.

Feature image courtesy RBC.

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Montréal-based startup Onix has raised $5 million USD ($6.9 million CAD) for an app that offers a library of health and wellness advice, provided by AI versions of practitioners chosen by the company. 

Onix announced on Wednesday that its pre-seed convertible note round was led by Los Angeles-based AlphaEdison, with participation from Kitchener-Waterloo’s Garage Capital, New York-based Ride Home Fund, United Talent Agency co-founder Jeremy Zimmer, and Jean-Sébastien Cournoyer, the co-founder of Montréal’s Real Ventures. 

“We don’t want our users’ data. We don’t have a data bottleneck because our experts bring us all the data.”

Nicholas Nadeau, Onix

Founded in 2025 by exited founders David Bennahum and Nicholas Nadeau, Onix is a consumer-facing AI app focused on health and wellness advice, which the company calls personal intelligence. Users can pay to access chats with AI versions, or “onixes,” of health and wellness practitioners, from psychiatrists to former elite athletes and holistic nutritionists, who are working with the company. 

Onix is betting that users will pay for always-on access to personalized advice that generative AI can provide, while keeping more control over their personal chat data than consumer AI apps like ChatGPT. However, Onix does not provide medical advice, Nadeau said, and the company says it has guardrails to avoid outputs that would stray into that territory. 

Nadeau was previously the CTO of 1X—the maker of those Neo humanoid robots—and then data labelling company SmartOne, giving him a front-row seat to the datasets that large frontier labs were training their AI models on. Bennahum, a former contributing editor at WIRED and himself a serial entrepreneur, moved to Canada from the US in 2017 and met Nadeau through a mutual friend.

To the founders, Onix’s approach is the antithesis to the dominant model of big tech, where products are free, but rely on users providing vast, constant streams of data about themselves. Instead of training AI models on reams of data, the early-stage company works with wellness content creators who give permission for Onix to train chatbots on their work and advice. 

RELATED: Kodeon acquires mental wellness app Breethe in largest acquisition to date

“We don’t want our users’ data,” Nadeau said in an interview with BetaKit. “We don’t have a data bottleneck because our experts bring us all the data.” Instead, health and wellness content creators—whose fields range from addiction recovery to longevity—are invited by Onix to join the platform and contribute their work in exchange for a revenue share determined by the number of users subscribing to their AI onixes. 

The “experts,” whose credentials vary, help craft an AI version of themselves, using public appearances like podcast recordings, as well as unpublished works they share with Onix. Some of the available AI onixes include psychiatrist and author David Rabin, and family nurse practitioner Ashley Shrader. The wellness practitioners, who set the subscription fees, get 70 percent of subscription revenue from their AI chatbots while Onix takes 30 percent. AI onixes can be added into group chats with each other as well as with other humans, like friends and family, who have subscriptions.

In addition to the unique data model, Onix says it trains smaller models and prioritizes data privacy. Bennahum claimed that its inference costs are “one two hundredths” of a frontier model. All chat data is stored locally on users’ devices, and no conversation logs are kept. Since the small AI models are run locally, there is no mechanism for any data to make it back to a data centre, here or abroad, Bennahum said. 

 
“In this climate, AI is the most disliked new technology ever polled, probably since atomic weapons.”

David Bennahum, Onix

Bennahum is attuned to how widely AI is mistrusted by consumers right now.  A 2025 poll found that 83 percent of Canadians had worries about AI and privacy; another poll in May found that 46 percent of Canadians have asked an AI chatbot for medical advice, though 40 percent believed it would make Canadian healthcare worse. “In this climate, AI is the most disliked new technology ever polled, probably since atomic weapons,” he said. “And I think rightfully so, given the abuse being committed by so many of these frontier companies.” 

Onix’s stated focus on trust and data privacy is partly a response to that consumer sentiment. Building the company under Canadian privacy law, Bennahum added, has helped the brand. 

“Brand Canada has a level of trust,” Bennahum said. “And we believe trust is at the centre of the future of AI.” 

The 10-person company is hiring four more roles, mainly in GTM and sales, as it launches a paid model this week for individual users. The Onix app is available in early access for iOS users, and they hope to launch it more widely later this year. 

Feature image courtesy Onix.

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Montréal-based Vention is opening a new physical AI research lab in an effort to stay ahead of the automated manufacturing curve.  

“I think we’re actually leading in a place where a lot of people are not spending enough time right now.”

Etienne Lacroix, Vention

Vention, which offers engineering software and hardware to help manufacturing professionals design, order, and deploy automated equipment, has been working on the lab since late last year. CEO Etienne Lacroix took the company’s 400 percent increase in physical AI-related revenues over the past year as a sign to officially open the space and get rolling on new physical AI capabilities this week. 

While Lacroix did not disclose specific revenue figures or how much Vention is investing in the new effort, he said research and development (R&D) remains Vention’s largest investment area. 

“We thought it was the right time for us to have this R&D team that is more on the R than the D,” Lacroix told BetaKit in an interview. “This team works on missions that are 12 months out, as opposed to most of our team [who are] dedicated to the next quarter or the next release.”

Physical AI refers to AI systems that operate in and interact with the physical world, like robots. The new lab is led by Vention director of physical AI Jimmy Li and holds 16 of the company’s 120 R&D employees, with the small team beholden to research objectives instead of ship dates. Lacroix said the lab will be figuring out applied use cases for robotics, and has already supported the development of GRIIP, Vention’s robotic system for picking parts off the assembly line. 

Founded in 2016, Vention has roughly 330 employees, and its physical AI platform is deployed in more than 4,000 factories worldwide, including companies like Boeing, L’Oreal, and Lockheed Martin. Lacroix thinks that, once physical AI really takes off, it will pump the value of the $130-billion manufacturing automation market by up to a factor of 10. He hopes Vention’s new lab is his way of making sure that demand is captured. 

RELATED: Montréal industrial AI scaleup Vention raises $110-million USD Series D

“One thing I’ve learned over the years of managing technology teams is you don’t want to miss the fork,” Lacroix said, noting BlackBerry and Kodak as two companies that missed their proverbial fork. “We’ll let the pre-trainers of [AI] models fight it out, and eventually a technology will converge, and we’ll be ready to reap the benefit because everything else is ready.” 

Lab head Li will also get some part-time help from Joelle Pineau, the chief AI officer of Canada’s leading AI model developer Cohere. Pineau will act as Vention’s external advisor and robotics expert, helping the company set its research agenda and providing a semblance of governance over the lab, Lacroix said. Overall, Lacroix sees Vention’s new lab as a “phenomenal space for any researcher,” particularly those who want to stay in Canada and be surrounded by very expensive robotic equipment. 

“Vention’s lab is by far the biggest in Canada, by a significant margin,” Lacroix claimed. “I think we’re actually leading in a place where a lot of people are not spending enough time right now, which is deployability of the physical layer, so I think it’s just great for the country.” 

Feature image courtesy Vention.

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The University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Prince George-based solar company are receiving support from the federal government to expand their tech amid ongoing trade pressures.

The news: Open Waters Solar, which develops impact-resistant solar panels for boats and marine transportation, and a UBC program exploring drone delivery technology in BC’s north are receiving millions in funding from Pacific Economic Development Canada. UBC is receiving more than $2.8 million, while Open Waters Solar is receiving $450,000. The funding comes as part of a broader package of $11 million in PacifiCan investment to assist businesses and organizations in Northern BC to withstand disruptions from Canada’s ongoing trade dispute with the United States.

​From the source: “This funding positions us to expand our reach into European markets, and compete on a global scale,” said Tony Olynyk, the chief commercial officer with Open Waters Solar, in a press release.

​The context: UBC’s project, called the Drone Transport Initiative, is one of two tech-focused projects in a larger cohort of 10 recipients. The millions in funding it is receiving will go toward supporting the project, which partners with rural and remote communities to test drone delivery viability, advance its workforce training and skills development, and test and deploy drone technology. Two pilot programs, one with the Stellat’en First Nation and another with the Village of Fraser Lake, will both benefit from the funding.

​Investment in Open Waters Solar will help the company scale its business beyond Canada by funding automation of solar panel manufacturing and upgrading the company’s facilities. Funds have also been earmarked for employee training.

Final thought: PacifiCan’s announcement came just days before Canada implemented broad counter-tariffs against the US, following the collapse of trade negotiations between the two countries. With the trade war not showing any signs of cooling, investments like PacifiCan’s serve a dual purpose: providing padding for companies weathering tariffs while also investing in projects that could lessen Canadian consumer reliance on US services like Amazon.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtsy CjayD on Flickr. Shared under CC BY 2.0.

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Neo Financial has laid off more than 100 employees.

In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday morning, the Calgary-based FinTech company shared that it had made the decision to eliminate 102 of its employees’ roles, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the company’s team across “nearly every part of Neo.” The statement was drafted by Neo co-founder and CEO Andrew Chau, and was a verbatim copy of an internal memo circulated to the company’s remaining employee base, Jeff Adamson, the company’s chief commercial officer and other co-founder, told BetaKit in an email

In the statement, Neo said the company has grown rapidly over the years, allowing complexity to creep in and ultimately slow operations down. Adamson echoed those sentiments, telling BetaKit that Neo had been “building too many things at once.” 

“That added complexity, slowed us down, and spread people thin,” Adamson said in an email. “A smaller, more streamlined team on a singular company focus is how we get clearer and faster with less parallel work and more of our energy on daily banking, credit, savings, and the path to homeownership.”

Adamson did not elaborate on exactly which departments saw cuts, or whether Neo’s Toronto, Calgary, or Winnipeg locations were most affected, but said the company wasn’t characterizing the decision as a reaction to overhiring nor to AI-related automation. 

The company said parting ways with so many employees was a difficult decision made in the interest of serving its overarching mission. 

“Today is not about shrinking our ambition. It’s about being laser-focused on delivering what Canadians need,” the statement reads. “We’re going to operate as a simpler and faster team with the utmost clarity of direction. We’re going to build fewer things faster, and build them exceptionally well.”

Employees surprised

At least some of the former Neo employees said they were surprised by the decision. Sergio Schüler, who worked as a group product manager for financial crime with Neo, said he was laid off Tuesday morning. 

“[At] about 10 a.m. today, I got a meeting invite with the CHRO and the COO,” Schüler said. He said he was especially surprised, as he had received an internal company award just a few months ago. 

Schüler told BetaKit that he was hired as a temporary foreign worker (TFW). Schüler said he is now looking for work, but that process may be more arduous as his work visa was employer-specific. Federal government records show that Neo Financial was issued positive labour market impact assessments (LMIA), which gave it permission to hire seven temporary foreign workers in the first half of this year, and 26 last year. BetaKit has reached out to Neo for comment as to how many temporary foreign workers were impacted by the cuts, and how much of the company’s workforce is made up of TFWs.

Camilla Herrmann, whose LinkedIn lists her as a former senior product designer with Neo for the past six months, posted well wishes to others impacted by the cuts, as well as the company itself. 

“Unfortunately, I was one of the 102 professionals impacted by this decision,” her LinkedIn post reads. “So, if you are hiring, hit me up! Wishing nothing but success to Neo Financial and all the best to all affected people and their families.”

Laid off employees will receive severance pay, extended benefits coverage, and a waived equity cliff, according to Neo. The company said it will also provide career transition support for any employees who want it.

Falling valuation

Neo Financial offers consumer banking products from loyalty rewards cards, to mortgages via lending partners. The company has raised more than $650 million CAD, including debt and equity, and was valued at more than $1 billion CAD as of its Series C deal in May 2022. However, its November 2024 Series D raise—reportedly led by Chinese investor Tencent—reduced its valuation to $510 million USD post-money, according to The Globe and Mail.

Two of its largest loyalty card partnerships, with both Tim Hortons and The Hudson’s Bay Company, both ended this year. 

Today’s layoffs are not the first in Neo’s history to make headlines. In 2024, the company was the subject of an investigation by the Winnipeg Free Press over allegations of unexplained layoffs. That investigation claimed that while Neo had hired for hundreds of positions in Winnipeg as part of a provincially-backed hiring program. The province later decreased Neo’s job-creation funding.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Neo Financial.

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As discussions around making governments more efficient flourish, the City of Toronto is betting on Canadian AI solutions and the problems that technology companies want to solve. But turning that interest into an actual municipal deployment is much harder.

That is the premise behind the Smart Cities AI Challenge, run in collaboration with the City of Toronto and taking place at Canada’s largest AI and technology gathering, ALL IN 2026, in Montréal on September 16-17. The competition showcases challenges faced by cities and communities, then asks tech companies to bring forward AI-powered solutions that could address them.

“Building a globally competitive Canadian AI industry starts with creating opportunities to deploy our technology here at home.”

Isabelle Turcotte,
ALL IN

The challenge comes as municipalities across Canada are examining how AI can be used to improve municipal operations, infrastructure, and residents’ quality of life. The City of Toronto is also bringing a 40-strong delegation to ALL IN.

The Smart Cities AI Challenge is one of three AI competitions at this year’s event, up from just one in 2025. The expansion is part of ALL IN’s effort to accelerate the adoption of Canadian AI and tech, and to highlight what can happen for governments when AI technology is used to solve real and specific operational problems.

“Our AI Challenges are about connecting real-world needs with Canadian AI solutions,” said Isabelle Turcotte, Co-Founder and CEO of ALL IN. “For these companies, the opportunity to demonstrate their technology, and potentially secure a first public-sector client, can make a significant difference in their growth trajectory.”

Starting with the problem

For many startups, the public sector can be a tough market to crack. Cities have sprawling infrastructure, complex service demands, and no shortage of operational challenges. They also have procurement systems that can be both rigorous and time-intensive.

“Canadian cities have an important role to play in building a strong AI industry. By adopting Canadian AI solutions to address real operational challenges, municipalities can improve the services they deliver to citizens while also giving Canadian companies the opportunity to prove their technologies, secure important first customers, and scale. Building a globally competitive Canadian AI industry starts with creating opportunities to deploy our technology here at home,” Turcotte said.

The format of the Smart Cities AI Challenge forces competitors to connect their solution to an identifiable use case, such as urban mobility, infrastructure coordination, public safety, social services, or sustainability.

The Smart Cities Challenge has a short list of six companies working across construction, cleantech, education, business intelligence, and cybersecurity, among others. 

One of the companies is Kingston-based Lawtonica, which helps city planners, designers, and building professionals research codes, check zoning, and organize project findings with AI-assisted workflows. Another finalist is Montréal-based cybersecurity company Cyberdefence AI, an AI-native cybersecurity lab that focuses on preemptive defence against cyber threats.

The other shortlisted firms include air and odour sampling tech firm Scentroid, Vancouver-based critical operations software firm Industrio AI, Toronto-based edtech platform Readocracy, and Montréal-based asset management firm Tbmaestro.

The selected companies for the Smart Cities AI Challenge will present their solutions on stage at ALL IN 2026 for a shot at potential collaboration opportunities with cities, public organizations, and innovation partners.

“Narrowing down applicants to these six finalists was no easy task. What stood out was the quality of the Canadian solutions ready to address real challenges facing our cities today. The next step is getting those solutions deployed. We need to move beyond experimentation and create more opportunities for Canadian AI companies to prove their value, deliver measurable results, and scale their solutions across cities and communities throughout the country,” said Turcotte. 

Three challenges, 180 applications

Toronto is one of three governments participating in AI challenges at ALL IN this year. The City of Montréal is partnering with the Reinventing the Citizen Experience AI Challenge, which focuses on how residents can report issues requiring city intervention.

“There’s something exciting about seeing these companies take the stage, defend their ideas, and show what Canadian AI can do.”

The challenge asks companies to develop a system that can process reports involving potholes, graffiti, cleanliness concerns, or damaged infrastructure from a photo, potentially accompanied by a voice message or written description. The city is seeking AI solutions that can automate routine tasks involved in this process, while accelerating request processing and supporting better decision-making at the municipal level.

The AI for Real Impact Challenge is being run in partnership with Germany’s Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation and German digital network de:hub. Germany is also ALL IN’s 2026 country of honour. 

AI for Real Impact is looking for AI systems already producing measurable economic, social, environmental, security, or operational outcomes. Its scope stretches across many areas, including manufacturing, public services, healthcare, sustainability, security, and business operations.

Scaling the model

ALL IN conducted AI challenges last year through its AgriTech AI Challenge. Sollum Technologies and Miraterra won the competition after presenting AI-driven technologies addressing agricultural problems, including soil and crop management, productivity, and supply-chain efficiency. 

The two companies subsequently presented their technology at the World Food Forum at the headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. 

For the 2026 edition, ALL IN is scaling the format of its past experiments considerably. The organization expects over 7,500 business leaders from more than 40 countries at the Montréal event, where the three competitions will sit alongside the broader conference program, which includes talks from LawZero’s Yoshua Bengio, Scale AI’s Julien Billot, Cohere’s Aidan Gomez and Joelle Pineau, among many others.

“Anyone who has participated in previous years can testify to how exciting and unique this format is,” Turcotte said. “The strength of these reverse pitch competitions is that it starts with a real problem that needs to be solved. There’s something exciting about seeing these companies take the stage, defend their ideas, and show what Canadian AI can do. I can’t wait to see what this year’s finalists bring to Montréal.”

PRESENTED BY

Catch the AI Challenge track at ALL IN 2026 in Montréal on September 16 and 17. Explore the full ALL IN 2026 program and registration details.

Feature image courtsy ALL IN.

The post Smart Cities AI Challenge: Taking urban challenges to Canada’s AI startups at ALL IN first appeared on BetaKit.

Two quantum computing firms founded by Canadians have each secured $100-million USD ($138-million CAD) investments under the US CHIPS and Science Act.

The news: After signing a letter of intent back in May, BC-founded and California-headquartered D-Wave announced on Tuesday that it received a strategic investment from the US government, giving the US Department of Commerce a minority, non-controlling equity stake in the company. Berkeley, Calif.-based Rigetti Computing, which was founded by Moose Jaw, Sask.-born former CEO Chad Rigetti, received a similar deal. 

From the source: D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said in a statement that the funding will bolster US domestic quantum capabilities, strengthen the quantum supply chain, and help bring quantum systems to market. 

“The [US] Administration has made clear that US quantum leadership will require not only breakthrough research, but also the ability to scale, commercialize, and manufacture these technologies,” Baratz said. 

The context: Founded in 1999 as a spin-out from the University of British Columbia, D-Wave relocated its headquarters from Burnaby, BC, to Palo Alto in 2023, but retained a presence in both cities. 

Alongside D-Wave and Rigetti, Colorado-based Quantinuum also received a CHIPS Act investment on Tuesday. The US signalled it would use CHIPS funding to take equity stakes in quantum companies earlier this year, arguing that doing so would help build a domestic supply chain for quantum chips.

Final thought: Canada’s most recent federal budget committed $334 million CAD to the quantum industry, an amount dwarfed by the $53 billion USD in federal incentives committed by the US CHIPS Act. Julien Camirand Lemyre, CEO of Sherbrooke-based Nord Quantique, told The Globe and Mail last month that Canada’s public support for the sector may not be enough to keep his company in the country, as those US incentives are a “strong pull” that may force him to relocate.

Feature image courtesy D-Wave.

The post US government invests $200 million USD in Canadian-founded quantum firms first appeared on BetaKit.

Data centre development is ramping up in Canada, with the giant facilities meant to power AI cropping up across the country. While the US has already spent several years building out the infrastructure behind the AI revolution, Canada is just now beginning to crest the wave of the data centre expansion boom. 

While data centres aren’t new, the AI-enabling hyperscalers making daily headlines  present a new set of challenges for policymakers.

Mordor Intelligence, a market research company, pegs Canada’s data centre market at nearly $14 billion USD ($19 billion CAD). That figure is poised to more than double by 2031, particularly as Canada focuses on its digital sovereignty amid escalating tensions with the US, which has historically housed much of Canada’s data. 

While data centres aren’t new, the AI-enabling hyperscalers making daily headlines present a new set of challenges for policymakers, including grid reliability,  environmental impacts, and increased energy costs, all of which have contributed to strong public opposition in many jurisdictions.

To help us understand how these hyperscalers are being built and approved, BetaKit looked into the different ways Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments are approaching data centres. We broke the different approaches down into four categories: those that have policies aimed at attracting or simplifying data centre development; those that have no standalone data centre policy; those that have a mixed approach; and those actively disincentivizing development.

While these governments hold a lot of sway over how, when, and where these data centres are built, it’s important to note that in many cases approval is a multi-pronged process that includes buy-in from municipalities, utility operators, Indigenous stakeholder groups, environmental agencies, and, in some cases, the courts. 

Before looking at provincial approaches, however, it is important to note how the federal government is approaching data centre development.

Canada’s federal data centre framework

The feds are the latest order of government to issue a formal policy framework for data centre development. Last week, AI Minister Evan Solomon announced Ottawa’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, a set of guidelines intended to support the domestic data centre buildout being pursued by the Canadian government as part of its AI strategy, while also addressing concerns from the public around potential impacts of that buildout. 

The framework includes five pillars developers are asked to meet, including that development create lasting local benefits; that electricity costs do not fall to Canadians; that developments “minimize water use and environmental impact”; that developers are transparent about impacts; and that developments bring “strategic value” to Canada. 

The guidelines are not binding and will not be enforced by the federal government, but are instead intended to act as a framework for provinces and municipalities to set their own legislation.

The document has been supported by 23 signatories, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Bell, Telus, Amazon, Cohere, Microsoft, and Meta.

Targeted policies: Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick 

Alberta

Arguably Canada’s most AI-forward jurisdiction, Alberta began planning its official data-centre policy back in 2024—an epoch ago in AI terms—with the Artificial Intelligence Data Centres Strategy. The strategy’s goal is to “secure the province’s position as the most attractive place to build AI data centres in North America.” 

Under its framework, Alberta has sought to leverage the province’s vast natural gas reserves, cold climate, and laissez-faire regulatory environment to attract global interest, with a stated goal of bringing $100 billion in data centre investment to the province by 2030. It’s even gone so far as to create what it calls the “data centre concierge service” to streamline the application process through one provincial point of contact. 

For its trouble, Alberta will collect a two-percent levy on data centre value, with applicants also paying property taxes and royalties on natural gas. The Province is also giving preference to operators that supply their own power. 

That strategy seems to have worked: earlier this year, Alberta landed Canada’s largest data centre development deal, and AI giant Anthropic is reportedly eyeing the province for its Canadian buildout, with dozens of other projects in development. Despite its successes, there’s also been pushback from community groups, and concerns from the Alberta Energy System Operator (AESO), which oversees connections to Alberta’s grid. Most recently, a power plant to power a data centre planned for Olds. Alta., was rejected by the AESO after the utility operator said the site location didn’t meet framework standards and expressed concerns over noise, pollution, and community opposition. 

Ontario 

Last month, Ontario launched its Data Centre Playbook, a proposed framework for how large data centres are developed in the province. Under that framework, which is open for public consultation until Sept. 12, Ontario proposes charging data centres that pull more than one megawatt of electricity a premium by placing them in a new rate class, as a way to offset potential increases in electricity costs for existing customers. It also proposes “non-financial” supports like faster permitting and “white glove service” to incentivize investment. 

Framed as an early part of Ontario’s coming AI strategy, the Data Centre Playbook is built across three pillars: advancing economic development, protecting data sovereignty, and investment in communities. The playbook stipulates that Ontario will only consider projects that “accelerate economic growth” and prioritize Ontario’s interests. Additionally, applicants must ensure Canadian data is safeguarded on domestic servers, and that communities that house data centres receive financial and non-financial investment from applicants in an effort to develop public trust. 

Saskatchewan

Canada’s breadbasket announced its strategy, dubbed the Data Centre Framework, in late August. Under that framework, six key principles will guide development decisions. Data centres developed in Saskatchewan must have Canadian ownership, de facto closing the door to many of the US tech giants that have courted neighbouring Alberta. 

Other principles borrow from both Alberta and Ontario’s guidelines, including encouraging developers to invest in self-supplied power generation, the centralization of a provincial intake process, and requirements around data storage sovereignty. Saskatchewan has claimed there are more than 30 data centre projects currently being evaluated under the process. 

New Brunswick

An outlier among Maritime provinces, New Brunswick has seen more data centre interest than its neighbours, including a 390-megawatt facility planned for Lorneville, NB, spearheaded by Calgary’s Beacon Data Centres and the Texas-based VoltaGrid. That project has spawned controversy, including calls for a provincial moratorium from one MLA. New Brunswick’s government has not heeded those calls. Instead, on Sept. 1, it released a policy framework to guide development. 

New Brunswick’s framework, which the Province is seeking input from the public on until Oct. 2, follows a similar pattern to other provincial strategies, including mandating that new data centres pay for any increased utility costs. It’s also designed to minimize environmental impact and says “meaningful engagement” with local governments and Indigenous communities is required throughout development. The framework also states that the Province will assess developments on the economic benefits data centres bring to New Brunswick, including job creation and workforce training. 

To facilitate development, New Brunswick said it will apply a common approach across government departments and agencies while evaluating proposals, but stipulated that no financial support or incentives, including land transactions below fair market value, would be provided “unless authorized by government policy.” 

No standalone policies: Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland, and the Territories

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia does not currently have a standalone data centre policy, due in large part to the fact that the Maritime province is not actively pursuing data centre development, according to comments from Premier Tim Houston earlier this summer. Houston told reporters during a cabinet meeting last June that the province lacked the energy capacity to take on such projects, but said that in a hypothetical situation where development was on the table, the province wouldn’t commit to development unless Nova Scotia’s grid was safeguarded and full evaluations carried out. 

While Houston said there are no active proposals in Nova Scotia, he said any future projects would likely not be prioritized until other power-generating projects in the province are fully operational.

Prince Edward Island (PEI)

Data centres will not be sharing a home anytime soon with Anne of Green Gables. Atlantic Canada’s island province lacks the geographic space, municipal water supply, and grid capacity to develop hyperscale data centres, contributing to the lack of a formal policy to guide development. Despite this, rumours spread last June after Charlottetown Mayor Philip Brown asked a hypothetical question during a committee meeting about water capacity in the event of a data centre development. Those rumours were unsubstantiated, and Brown said the City has received no data centre-related requests.

Newfoundland & Labrador

Newfoundland and Labrador does not have a standalone provincial policy governing data centre development, instead managing potential developments through Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro on a case-by-case basis, much in the same way any large-scale industrial project would be assessed. The province is not home to any hyperscale projects yet, but Labrador is home to several smaller data centre operations, including cryptocurrency mining data centres. The Canadian lobbying organization Capital Hill Group has reported that interest in Labrador as a location for data centres could grow in the future, given its cool weather and hydroelectric capabilities. 

The Territories

Cold and sparsely populated, Canada’s vast northern territories seem an ideal location to build a hyperscale data centre—until you consider the stumbling blocks that are its lack of grid infrastructure and capacity. For most of Canada’s isolated North, energy is generated independently of the rest of Canada and dispersed through small microgrids. In Nunavut, the Qulliq Energy Corporation manages 25 separate diesel-powered microgrids, while the Yukon and Northwest Territories manage more that are fuelled by hydroelectric power and diesel. Because of their relatively small populations, vast geographies, and disconnection from the North American network, there is limited electrical capacity, meaning data centre feasibility hinges first on the development of supportive infrastructure. As such, no formal policies have been drafted by territorial governments at this time, but hypothetical deals would likely require unique partnership agreements with Indigenous stakeholders and land-rights holders.

Mixed approach: BC, Québec

British Columbia

This past summer, telecom giant Telus announced a trio of hyperscale data centres in BC’s Lower Mainland, including one in downtown Vancouver. With its abundance of hydroelectric power, the province is no stranger to data centre interest. To manage that interest, BC is using a competitive bidding process, alongside provincial utility operator BC Hydro, to “manage rising electricity demand and support balanced development.”

Enabled under the Energy Statutes Amendment Act, data centre applicants must participate in a competitive selection process that’s not required for traditional industries, such as mining or forestry, that are looking to connect to the grid. Part of BC’s Look West strategy, which names AI and quantum computing as priority development sectors for BC, the bidding process assesses projects based on price and data sovereignty, and is meant to prioritize access to BC’s electricity grid for projects the Province thinks have long-term economic, community, and environmental benefits.

Québec

Québec’s approach to data centres has undergone a period of rapid transition in recent years. During the pre-AI era, the province marketed itself as a hub for data centres due to its inexpensive hydroelectric power and robust workforce. It has in the past attracted investment from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM, with data centre applications traditionally handled by Hydro-Québec. 

But Québec’s approach has shifted under the weight of increased demands from a rapidly growing sector. In 2023, the province passed requirements that data centres drawing more than five megawatts of power require ministerial authorization. The same goes for any cryptocurrency operations drawing more than 50 megawatts. In 2025, the province went further, passing Bill 69, which expanded provincial control over electricity allocation for large-scale projects. 

Those changes have resulted in a stricter and more expensive process, including the implementation of higher tariffs directed at data centres and cryptocurrency operations specifically. The tariffs, which average out to roughly 13 cents per kilowatt hour—nearly double the rate other large-scale power users pay—have been challenged in both Québec’s superior court and through the Régie de l’énergie, Québec’s regulatory tribunal for the energy sector. 

Those challenges, which are still underway and which include a who’s who of participants including Google and a coalition of data centre stakeholders, argue that Québec overstepped its authority in directing the Régie de l’énergie to consider new pricing categories for data centre and crypto firms.

Policies disincentivizing data centres

Manitoba

Manitoba may have the most unique approach to data centres in the country. The Prairie province has actively worked to disincentivize large-scale data centre development within its borders, rejecting a hyperscale project earlier this year and citing concerns over environmental impacts and skepticism about the economic benefits.

This year, Manitoba’s legislature passed two bills to aid in this effort. Bill 20 allows Manitoba Hydro to categorize data centres and crypto mining operations in unique power categories, letting the utility put restrictions on power usage during peak times. Meanwhile, Bill 39 allows Manitoba to impose financial levies against data centres of up to 100 percent more than standard industrial users. Cabinet also has the power to veto large-scale projects on a case-by-case basis, which it utilized earlier this year to halt a hyperscale facility in Île-des-Chenes. In 2022, the province also paused all crypto mining operations from connecting to the provincial electricity grid. 

Rather than pursuing large data centre developments, Manitoba’s premier, Wab Kinew, said the Province is focused on other kinds of nation-building projects, adding that Manitoba is still open to small-scale projects.

Feature image courtesy Image courtesy Meta.

The post Here’s how every Canadian province and territory is governing data centres first appeared on BetaKit.

All right, class, take your seats. Summer’s over, school’s in, and 2027 is closer than anyone wants to admit. To prepare you for the fall, BetaKit has put together a syllabus; think of it as CliffsNotes to help you follow the top news we’ll be tracking as we head into the last quarter of the year.

Budget 2026

Remember, budgets are in the fall now, which means pre-budget consultations are open until Tuesday. Tariffs and tariff relief are likely to be top of mind for Budget 2026, as the government appears to be trying to ride out the remainder of Trump’s term. The prime minister has been meeting with Canadian business leaders (including those from OpenText and MDA), and it’s likely we’ll see the outcomes of those talks reflected in measures to shore up economic growth. We’re also expecting the budget to feature an update on stablecoin policy and changes to the tax system. 

Canada Investment Summit

Prime Minister Mark Carney is bringing some of the world’s largest investors, who collectively manage over $100 trillion in assets, to Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15 to try to convince them to bet on Canada. According to The Globe and Mail, the summit will showcase Canadian tech and feature sessions from Xanadu’s Christian Weedbrook and Cohere’s Aidan Gomez. It also coincides with the CVCA global investment forum, meaning lots of global money could be convinced to park itself in Canada sooner rather than later. 

A trio of tech bills

The House of Commons will resume sitting on Sept. 21, with three major tech bills on deck. Bill C-34 and Bill C-36 were tabled just before summer break, meaning MPs are about to debate enacting a social media ban for youth under 16, an online safety regulator, and the creation of a “digital super-regulator” to oversee private-sector privacy. The controversial Bill C-22, set to give law enforcement more power to monitor personal communications and data, was passed to the Senate just before the break, and debate on it will resume on Sept. 28. 

Canada’s largest fintech gathering returns September 14-15, 2026.

The Canada Fintech Forum brings together the industry’s leading voices for two days of collaboration, learning, and networking. Connect with decision-makers, uncover emerging opportunities, and take part in the conversations influencing the next chapter of financial innovation in Canada and beyond.

Book your spot now

Top stories from BetaKit

A non-binding blueprint

As public opinion sours on data centres, nearly two dozen AI hyperscalers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, have agreed to Canada’s new federal framework—which asks, but does not compel—companies to follow responsible data centre development guidelines.

Meissner’s mission

Toronto-based deep technology startup Meissner has raised $2.6 million USD from a slew of big-name investors to find and develop the next generation of superconducting materials—a potentially foundational component of commercial-scale quantum computers.

Ottawa’s digital facelift

The federal government has tapped former Google CFO and Inovia Capital partner Patrick Pichette to lead a new digital transformation agency that aims to modernize public service delivery. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Pichette will bring “world-class expertise” to the new agency. Hopefully, the first item on his agenda is the CRA website.

Robo command centre

BetaKit got a chance to get up close to Talos, an ultra-long-range military-style vehicle that Victoria-based InDro Robotics hopes to turn into the mainframe of Canada’s autonomous warfare capabilities.

Can Bunz make a comeback?

After six years of hard, fruitless work, Firat Eren was ready to give up and shut down Bunz, the once-popular online bartering platform. Then, he realized, maybe he’s been the problem. He hopes its new Gen Z “founding” team featuring TikTok twinfluencers will revitalize its user base.

Sponsored stories

Why the infrastructure behind AI-enabled SaaS matters to Canadian startups

Zoho is making AI adoption easier for Canadian startups by building integrated tools and local data centers that remove the guesswork around rising software costs, messy integrations, and data privacy.

How the AI era is rewriting venture capital’s old rules

TechAlliance is leading the way for local female founders to be investor-ready. In an insightful discussion with serial entrepreneur Michele Romanow, she explains how AI is lowering barriers for startup founders and creating new opportunities for women-led companies to secure funding.

Retail bots often rely on aggressive push tactics, but Dedicatted takes a different approach

Dedicatted is leading the transition from pushy retail bots to intent-driven, bilingual e-commerce AI that prioritizes customer trust. By adapting to how people actually shop online, their system drives measurable growth in order value and conversion rates for its clients.

Deals and dollars

Who cashed in, or out, this week:

• Mundo AI closed $20 million USD to expand its team as it builds “the data layer for perceptual intelligence.” (Vancouver)
• Wildfire detection startup SenseNet bought US competitor N5 Sensors to expand its presence across the border. (Vancouver)
• Emissions Reduction Alberta pumped nearly $51 million into more than a dozen projects aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions. (Alberta)
• Protein Industries Canada invested just over $2 million into two AI AgTech projects combating crop disease and protecting agricultural workers. (Regina)
• The Wellness Company closed $1.6 million to evolve from a collection of apps into a focused consumer health startup. (Toronto)
• Landjourney rebranded to Sweet Technologies and closed $7.4 million USD to expand the reach of its agriculture-focused lending software. (Montréal)
• Scopia Surgical secured $2.65 million to develop its AI-powered navigation software for robotic surgery. (Montréal)

---

Data point

7 million

The number of songs AI music platform Suno generates per day.

Canada’s largest music rights organization is suing Suno for infringing on the rights of more than 150 artists, including Avril Lavigne.

---

The refresh

Building like it’s 1999

You might think of AI as a software story. Economist Shane Greenstein says it’s actually an infrastructure one.

In a talk highlighted by the Technology Policy Institute, the Harvard Business School prof compares today’s AI buildout to the late 1990s internet boom, and traces how hyperscale data centres will define the future of AI and transform industries, geography, and the global economy.

Quantum and AI: Strategic Signal or Long-Term Option

Next week, Douglas Soltys will be taking the conversation to the ALL IN stage.

Join him with the leaders closest to the action for a discussion exploring where the most credible near-term opportunities at the intersection of quantum and AI lie, how organizations can separate strategic signal from hype, and how Canada’s strengths in both fields can translate into a competitive advantage.

See it live in Montréal or virtually on September 16–17.

Explore the complete program

BetaKit Podcast  ·  Aug 27

“My god. Every time I ask you people for questions, I instantly regret it.”

What is Canada’s most overrated tech company? How do we keep young founders in the country? Is BlackBerry making a comeback? What are Canada’s must-read business books?

In a special mailbag episode of The BetaKit Podcast, BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys answers your burning tech questions. Listen now ›

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Jason Hafso.

The post The Canadian tech stories we’re tracking this fall first appeared on BetaKit.

Saskatchewan’s first tech incubator, Co.Labs, is branching out from its tech-exclusive programming to offer training in AI adoption for small- and medium-sized businesses.

Co.Labs executive director Jonathan Lipoth announced the branch-out earlier this week in a LinkedIn post, where he told followers that Co.Labs was looking to “help non-tech companies use AI like a tech company.” 

“If we can help local businesses stay competitive, then they have more optionality and control to … stay local.”

Co.Labs is based in Saskatoon and has operated for the past nine years. The organization is designed to help early-stage tech founders grow their businesses. 

In an interview with BetaKit, Lipoth said Co.Labs felt compelled to expand its AI offerings to the broader business community after partners outside the tech industry began asking for it.

“We’ve been working on all kinds of AI adoption internally at Co.Labs, and with our startups, for a while now. It’s one of those things where it kind of just feels like market pull,” Lipoth said.

Officially launched this week, Co.Labs’ AI adoption training will cast its net across the whole province, looking to serve businesses in both Regina and Saskatoon, as well as in rural communities where the training could be offered remotely. Training is open across a variety of industries, with businesses in the accounting, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors as early participants.

Lipoth said that while the training program is intended to serve a broad spectrum of potential clients, its ideal customer profile looks like a management or executive team that’s technically savvy enough to know about AI, but is struggling to figure out how to integrate it into their business effectively.

“They’re not always certain as to how they can roll that out across their company, especially in the non-technical parts of a company,” Lipoth said. 

RELATED: PrairiesCan invests $7.9 million in funding to support Co.Labs, local AI firms

While still in the early days, Lipoth said Co.Labs is focusing on building a case study repository defining how the organization has seen AI successfully integrated in non-tech-specific ways and then offering an ad-hoc advisory role for companies seeking Co.Labs help. The technical training will be carried out by Co.Labs staff and will be priced based on the size and scope of the company. 

Lipoth said there’s also an opportunity for collaborative training. He told BetaKit that Co.Labs is planning to host free workshops on AI adoption this autumn, including at Memo Festival, a conference for creatives and designers held in Saskatoon this October. 

While the majority of Co.Lab’s focus and programming will remain on tech startups exclusively, Lipoth said he and his colleagues felt that helping non-tech companies stay up to date with emerging technology would ultimately benefit the larger Saskatchewan and Canadian tech ecosystems.

“If we can help local businesses stay competitive, then they have more optionality and control to … stay local as long as they want,” Lipoth said. “If we can really push that forward and help small businesses look at tech as a kind of opportunity, then we’re helping not only the local tech ecosystem thrive, but we’re helping a lot of other businesses to think of themselves as tech companies.” 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Jonathan Lipoth via LinkedIn.

The post Saskatchewan’s tech incubator wants to help non-tech businesses adopt AI first appeared on BetaKit.

A Regina company using AI to help manage public assets like roads, municipal buildings, and utility systems is receiving nearly $1 million in federal funding to scale its business. 

The news: On Thursday, Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) announced $980,000 in funding for ASI Engineering, a Regina engineering consultancy that helps organizations assess and maintain physical assets like buildings, roadways, and water systems. 

Funding comes through the Business Scale-up and Productivity Program, a federal initiative providing interest-free financial support for high-growth businesses looking to expand operations and commercialize innovation.

From the source: “As Canada navigates a changing global economy, we are building strength at home by supporting Canadian businesses developing the technologies … to build smarter,” Eleanor Olszewski, the minister responsible for PrairiesCan, said in a statement. “ASI Engineering’s new platform will help communities make more informed investments.”

The context: Funding will help ASI Engineering integrate AI into its proprietary asset management platform, ASI Software. That platform pieces together information about client assets through a cloud-based registry and client dashboard, providing visual summaries of asset conditions, tracking budgetary concerns, and identifying projected funding gaps or infrastructure deficits—like noting that a community centre needs preventative maintenance, or a road needs repaving. By integrating AI into its reporting, ASI Engineering claims it will be able to support continuous asset monitoring to better inform decisions on building, maintenance, and upgrading of assets. 

Final thought: ASI Engineering is growing, and it’s looking to expand into both US and European markets over the next two years. With plans to further build out the ASI Software platform with climate adaptation modelling that can help organizations prepare for climate change-induced risks like wildfires and floods, PrairesCan’s investment could have returns in both assets saved, and in positioning a Canadian-based company to succeed on an international scale. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The post ASI Engineering lands nearly $1 million to scale AI for asset management first appeared on BetaKit.

Anyone who has shopped online in the last few years knows the drill. A chat window opens before you’ve even started browsing. A scarcity banner flashes: “only two left.” A pop-up asks for your email in exchange for a discount you didn’t request.

Real people shop in fragments, preferences, half-formed ideas, and even a blend of languages.

For years, the industry has been geared toward optimizing clicks and basket size, often at the expense of understanding what customers actually want. It works, sometimes. But it’s also exhausting. Now, as privacy expectations rise and shoppers grow weary of pushy AI bots, nearly 45 percent abandon their purchases before making it to the checkout.

What if there was a better way to do business? One that prioritizes intent modelling and ethical “pull-based” design over those aggressive (and annoying) “push” triggers. Toronto-based cloud, AI, and DevOps company Dedicatted is betting on that approach. Its bilingual assistant for Kuwaiti e-commerce platform Taw9eel lifted average order value by six percent, sped up product discovery, and improved conversion rates—proof, the company states, that sales and customer trust go hand in hand.

From keywords to intent

Real people shop in fragments, preferences, half-formed ideas, and even a blend of languages. 

That messy mismatch between how shoppers actually behave and how most bots process language—is what Dedicatted set out to design around in partnership with Taw9eel, said Serhii Semenchenko, the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

Traditional chatbots run on fixed scripts, with little room to adapt. “You have specific steps, and based on that, it provides some answers,” he explained. The Taw9eel bot was built to do the opposite. It reads intent, weighs context, and pulls shoppers to their destination, rather than pushing.

 “It acts more like a proxy that helps you find what’s right for you,” he explained. 

“It acts more like a proxy that helps you find what’s right for you.”

Consider someone buying a TV. A shopper might know the room is bright in the early evening, that they sit about three metres from the screen, and that they like a certain brand or style. They might switch languages, misspell words, or change their mind halfway through a sentence. 

Traditional systems struggled with this kind of complexity, said Semenchenko. Dedicatted’s next-gen assistant, meanwhile, is designed to figure out what matters—whether, in the case of the television purchase, that’s brightness level for glare or screen size for viewing distance—and narrow from there. If the request is too vague, it follows up with questions instead of dumping a long list of items and hoping one sticks.

Under the hood, that experience is the result of semantic intent mapping, said Semenchenko. Instead of matching keywords, the system converts language into tokens and vectors, a numerical representation of meaning, to interpret the request. For the user, it feels seamless: you explain what you need, and the system works out the details.

The same architecture enables it to move smoothly across languages. Taw9eel shoppers routinely switch between Arabic and English in a single sentence. That kind of code-switching can trip up most systems. An intent-driven system reads between the lines and works out what the shopper means.

“The idea is that the specific word in Arabic and in English converts to pretty similar tokens,” Semenchenko said. “The LLM works with tokens, not with real text.”

Building trust over pressure 

Every design choice on Taw9eel comes back to the same variable: trust. Without it, no amount of intent modeling or clever UX will bring a shopper back, according to the company.

The team tested that theory on the platform, measuring the familiar pressure tactics against their absence. Removing things like urgency prompts, countdown timers, and scarcity banners barely made an impact on sales. Ratings and review counts, on the other hand, dropped site performance quickly. Shoppers rely on those verification signals to make a decision, regardless of whether they arrive at a product through the chatbot or the classic way. When those signals are missing, they’ll go looking for verification and reassurance elsewhere, “and you lose momentum,” said Semenchenko.

The same trust logic shapes how Dedicatted manages data privacy. Most companies assume they need deep personal data to deliver a personalized experience. Taw9eel’s assistant draws on anonymized patterns rather than personal data, like the broad signal that people who buy bread also tend to buy butter. That means customers wary about giving away personal information can use it without wondering what the site is storing about them, said Semenchenko.

Trust also shapes how the assistant manages its own limits. Rather than returning the wrong answer, the assistant is designed to measure its own response confidence. When that score drops below a set threshold, the conversation hands off to a human with the full context intact. Critically, the shopper doesn’t have to start over or rephrase the question, which, over time, builds further trust in the process, said Semenchenko. 

Dedicatted uses similar systems in financial workflows where documents require human review before a decision is finalized, and in internal tools where employees are navigating hundreds of pages of policy. The goal is always the same, said Semenchenko. “Not just to have AI because of AI, but to provide some real ROI and really streamline some manual processes.”

PRESENTED BY

Curious what pull-based AI looks like in practice? Read Dedicatted’s full Taw9eel case study

Feature image courtesy Dedicatted

The post How Dedicatted is taking retail AI beyond the pushy bot first appeared on BetaKit.

The Government of Canada has brought on former Google CFO and Inovia Capital partner Patrick Pichette to spearhead its newly formed digital transformation agency.

The news: The feds announced the launch of Digital Transformation Canada and Pichette’s appointment as its CEO on Thursday. The organization will absorb Shared Services Canada, the Canadian Digital Service, and select functions from other departments. Its launch comes months after the feds unveiled their new AI strategy, which Pichette also provided input for.

From the source: “Digital Transformation Canada will ensure the federal government leads by example,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a news release. “By modernizing public service delivery, reducing duplication, and supporting the growth of Canadian technology firms, we will strengthen our economy, improve outcomes for Canadians, and position Canada to lead in the digital age.” Carney added that Pichette will bring “world-class expertise in digital transformation” to the new agency.

The context: Pichette most recently spent more than eight years with Montréal venture capital firm Inovia as a partner. Inovia confirmed to BetaKit that Pichette has resigned and stepped down from all of his board seats, and that any remaining interest he holds in its funds will sit in a blind trust. Before Inovia, Pichette served as chair of American social media platform X (then Twitter) until its acquisition by Elon Musk, spent seven years as CFO of US tech behemoth Google, and held executive roles at Canadian telecom giant Bell and American consulting firm McKinsey. 

With Digital Transformation Canada, which the feds proposed last year, Pichette will focus on improving how the feds develop, buy, and use AI and other tech across government to reduce operating costs, improve service delivery, and buy more from Canadian companies. He will report to Joël Lightbound, the minister responsible for government transformation and procurement. The agency also plans to bring in private sector expertise on short-term assignments to bolster the public service’s technical capacity.

Final thought: Some tech leaders welcomed Pichette’s appointment. Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Toronto large language model maker Cohere—which counts Inovia, via Pichette, among its investors and is already working with the feds—argued in an X post that “unifying these orgs under a digital and AI mandate is exactly what’s needed and Patrick is the perfect person to lead it.”

Feature image courtesy Inovia Capital.

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Evolution is a blessing and a curse. The same natural phenomenon that gave humans opposable thumbs also threatens farmers’ crop outputs by giving pests better resistance to pesticides every year.

“If you’re getting a flu vaccine, you don’t think about what flu strain is out there; someone has thought about it in the back end, and has made the vaccine. We want to be that for the farmer.”

Zaky Hassan,
Molagri

Evolution may be the problem, but Molagri thinks it can also contribute to the solution. The Toronto-based startup is developing a way to “evolve” pesticides alongside pests, lowering the risk of resistance. The startup was founded by Zaky Hassan and Min Jin, two PhD candidates from the University of Toronto specializing in common cold coronaviruses. The two are set to pitch their idea to investors at Y Combinator’s Demo Day on Sept. 10.

“Our plan is to kick off our seed raise, raise some more money, and come back to Toronto with a war chest to hire more scientists and … eventually make products that farmers are going to love,” Hassan told BetaKit in an interview. 

The founding duo were fascinated by recent AI-driven advancements in protein design, and are now using those advancements to synthesize targeted pesticides that can actually keep up with the pace at which pests become resistant. Built on top of a non-infectious insect virus, Molagri can engineer its pesticide’s targeted proteins to “whitelist” and “blacklist” targets, and can easily tweak its formulation to stay ahead of anticipated pest resistance.

“If you’re getting a flu vaccine, you don’t think about what flu strain is out there; someone has thought about it in the back end, and has made the vaccine,” Hassan said. “We want to be that for the farmer.”

Hassan and Jin developed the concept for Molagri independent of U of T, and went searching for Canadian investors to fund it. They were ultimately unsuccessful on that front, which Hassan attributed to the risk aversion of Canadian investors. However, they did manage to court $1 million USD ($1.4 million CAD) in pre-seed funding from US-based deeptech VC Julian Capital and Y Combinator. That was enough to kickstart the company, secure lab space in MaRS Discovery District, and hire a scientist to work on the vision of evolutionary pesticides. 

RELATED: Protein Industries Canada invests more than $2 million into AI for AgTech

While still in the early stages, Molagri’s wedge product is currently aimed at tree nuts and tree fruits, because they have an “acute insecticide need,” Hassan said. This places much of Molagri’s initial focus on California, where many tree nuts and fruits are grown. Still, Hassan plans to grow the company in Canada and eventually make Molagri the pesticide producer of choice for farmers around the world. 

“I’m a big proponent of people building bio companies in Canada, in Toronto, and I feel like we have to do that to ensure that we have a strong ecosystem,” Hassan said. “I’m seeing all these brilliant postdocs [and] grad students that can do great things … it’s a crazy place for talent.” 

Feature image courtesy Zaky Hassan via LinkedIn.

The post Molagri wants to design a pesticide that evolves as quickly as pests  first appeared on BetaKit.

French quantum company Quandela has made its Canada-based photonic quantum computer available to users of the Quantum Computing Sandbox (QCS), Canada’s national program intended to accelerate quantum adoption across academia and businesses. 

The news: Quandela announced on Thursday that it signed an agreement with CMC Microsystems to join the QCS as a cloud-based computing services provider. The QCS is a research and development program that’s part of the Fabrication of Integrated Components for the Internet’s Edge (FABrIC) network, a federally funded innovation network managed by CMC to bolster Canada’s semiconductor and quantum industries.  

As part of the QCS, Quandela’s photonic quantum computing capabilities will be available to participating small businesses and researchers. Quandela claims its photonic quantum computer, established in Canada, is the first and only of its kind available on the QCS. 

From the source: “As data sovereignty in the digital realm becomes an increasingly important issue given the current global context, we are proud to be the first to include a Canada-based photonic quantum computer [in the QCS]”, Quandela co-founder Valérian Giesz said in a statement. “This will allow their work and data to be entirely hosted on Canadian soil, without having to go through a structure located in another country.”

The context: Other quantum computing cloud service providers in the sandbox include US-based firms like IonQ, Quantinuum, QuEra, and Rigetti Computing, as well as Sherbrooke, Que.-based PINQ, which operates IBM’s superconducting quantum computer. 

As part of the QCS, Quandela has agreed to provide companies and organizations with technical and practical assistance on the “high-potential projects” working on the network. 

Final thought: Quantum computers can rely on superconducting qubits or photonic qubits; the former exist on physical chips, and the latter transmit information through photons (particles of light). Giesz said algorithms used in certain projects perform better on specific computing architectures, and that integrating Quandela’s photonic computer gives participants more options when researching, prototyping, or otherwise implementing their solutions. 

Feature image courtesy Quandela. 

The post Quandela brings first photonic system to Canada’s Quantum Computing Sandbox first appeared on BetaKit.

Protein Industries Canada (PIC) is investing more than $2 million toward two AI AgTech projects as part of its broader effort to support domestic innovation.

The news: On Wednesday, PIC announced it would contribute up to $2.2 million to two AgTech projects that are leveraging AI to combat crop disease and protect agricultural workers. PIC’s funding will complement investments from the partner organizations involved in the projects. 

PIC is an industry-led, non-profit organization and one of Canada’s five Global Innovation Clusters. It brings together private enterprise, academia, and non-profit organizations to accelerate innovation into agri-food enabling technologies like genomics, information technology, and commercialization. The organization has a goal of raising Canada’s plant-based food sector to $25 billion in annual sales. 

From the source: “These projects bring together two things Canada does exceptionally well—agriculture and innovation—to give farmers practical new tools that can lower costs, improve safety and increase productivity,” Saskatchewan Secretary of State for Rural Development Buckley Belanger said in a statement. 

The context: Projects include a partnership between TerraVision360, Metos Canada, and Rocky Mountain Equipment to develop an AI-powered tool that can aid crop growers in predicting and managing the risk of Ascochyta blight—a fungal disease that can reduce crop yields. The tool will combine both crop and disease data with localized weather information to forecast blight risk on both a regional and individual level. PIC is contributing $1.1 million to an overall investment figure of $2.6 million for the project. 

The second project partners SuperGeoAi Technology with Southview Farms to develop an AI-enabled drone with LiDAR—a form of 3D radar scanning—capable of measuring grain volumes in farm stores and silos. The system is intended to reduce instances where agricultural workers need to climb and inspect grain bins, improving safety and providing auditable documentation of grain levels. That project has a price tag of $2.4 million, and PIC will contribute $1.1 million.

Final thought: Much of the public discourse around AI circles issues of data centre development, financial impact, and worker displacement. At the same time, the technology is quickly integrating into boots-on-the-ground industries and value chains like agriculture, where it’s increasingly touted for its potential to improve farm productivity, address looming food security issues, and fine-tune the backbone of Canada’s food system. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Jan Kopřiva.

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Nearly two dozen AI hyperscalers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, have agreed to the federal government’s new framework—which asks, but does not compel—companies to follow responsible development guidelines for building data centres in Canada. 

“We expect projects to pay the costs they create, protect local resources, [and] deliver lasting value to Canadians.”

AI Minister Evan Solomon

AI Minister Evan Solomon announced the framework and its signatories at an event in Markham, Ont. on Thursday morning. Canada’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles are intended to support the domestic data centre buildout the federal government is pursuing as part of its AI strategy, while addressing public concerns about higher water use, electricity bills, and other local impacts. 

In a statement, Solomon said that Canada is building the digital infrastructure needed to lead in the age of AI, grow its economy, and strengthen its sovereignty, but “how we build matters.” 

“We want companies to come to Canada and invest, and build and grow here; we want investment in this country,” Solomon said at the event. “We expect projects to pay the costs they create, protect local resources, deliver lasting value to Canadians, grow and build responsibly and transparently.”

The framework includes five expectations: 

• Data centre development should create lasting local benefits. Solomon said this can include jobs, skills training, research partnerships, and access to compute;
• Data centres should not shift electricity costs to Canadians. This means data centre operators must pay for the costs they create, protect grid reliability, and, where required,  contribute to new supply, Solomon said;
• Data centres should minimize water use and environmental impacts. Operators must protect local fresh water, and priority should be given to efficient projects, like those with closed-loop cooling systems or waste heat recovery;
• Data centre developers should be transparent about local impacts. Solomon said local approval processes must be respected, and that local residents should receive independently verifiable information about noise, emissions, and power and water use;
• Data centre developments should bring strategic value to Canada. Projects must create clear and lasting benefits to Canada, including investment, supply chain participation, and compute capacity.

At the event, Solomon reiterated that this is not a new federal review process, and that the framework doesn’t step on the toes of provincial and municipal authority over buildouts. Instead, it acts as a “tool” for local authorities to hold data centre operators to account. The framework does not come with specific, binding definitions, or any associated penalties for not following it.  

The framework has secured 23 signatories, including the largest AI companies and hyperscalers building data centres in Canada. This includes Amazon Web Services, Bell, Telus, OVHCloud, Hypertec, ThinkOn, and Beacon Data Centres. Other big tech companies that agreed included Canada’s leading LLM developer, Cohere, as well as Microsoft and Meta. Meta is already planning to build Canada’s largest data centre development in Alberta. 

When asked whether the federal government would hold those signatories to account, Solomon said the government’s intention here was just to develop a basic framework, and that provincial regulators can develop rules with “more legislative teeth.”

RELATED: Anthropic job posting suggests it’s eyeing Alberta for data centre buildout

The federal framework follows similar initiatives at the provincial level, including Ontario and Alberta, which have both put forward rules intended to require data centre projects to bear the full cost for their electricity use.

While many companies that signed on to the framework are looking to strengthen their compute capabilities in Canada—including Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI—they are having a hard time selling the buildout to the public. Angus Reid Institute polling shows more than two-thirds of Canadians oppose having data centres built near their homes. This has led to firms like Anthropic hiring data centre community engagement managers to “coordinate charitable giving, community investment, and economic development commitments” to woo the markets they hope to bring “gigawatts of compute” to. 

At the event, Solomon conceded that the public has “good questions” about the data centre buildout, particularly around how it benefits them and impacts their resources, and hopes the framework will result in more public trust in the “digital infrastructure of the future.”

“This is the choice we have as Canadians,” Solomon said. “If we don’t build the infrastructure of the future here, we will have to buy it from somewhere else; and if we don’t innovate here, we will rent that from someone else; and if we don’t make the rules here, we will have to follow someone else’s.” 

Feature image courtesy Web Summit. 

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A decade ago, launching a technology company meant raising significant capital early, hiring engineers quickly, and spending months or even years building before heading to market. AI is rapidly compressing that timeline; Founders can now test ideas faster, launch products earlier, and prove demand with smaller teams and less upfront capital.

“The time is now for women in the AI era.”

“You can literally vibe code and build something from scratch that used to take millions of dollars,” serial investor and entrepreneur Michele Romanow told BetaKit. 

For Romanow and Christina Fox, the CEO of TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario, a London-based accelerator and incubator, that shift is about more than productivity. They see an opening for women and other founders outside traditional venture capital circles to gain traction and attract more funding. 

“The time is now for women in the AI era,” said Fox. “We bring instinct, influence, empathy, real human qualities that create a distinct moat for women-led companies and women investors in Canada. It’s an obvious standout advantage for women now, more than ever.”

Who gets seen, backed, and connected

A growing body of research suggests women-led companies often outperform their peers on revenue generation and capital efficiency, despite attracting only a fraction of available venture capital. According to BCG research, startups co-founded by women generate 10 percent more cumulative revenue over five years than their counterparts, and women-led companies return 78 cents per investment dollar, more than double the 31 cents from their male-led peers. Female-led companies also outperformed all-male founding teams by 63 percent.

“If investors are looking for their greatest ROI, they should be doubling down on women-led companies,” said Fox. 

Yet the share of Canadian risk capital flowing to women founders still sits between two and three per cent. Why hasn’t the capital caught up? 

Both leaders point to underlying issues: who gets seen, backed, and connected inside Canada’s venture ecosystem.

“If you know the right people, are in the right circles, and are in the right places, you have historically been able to access capital,” said Romanow. 

She’s spent enough time in closed-door investor rooms to know the barriers are often subtler than people imagine. “There isn’t some anti-women agenda or intentional exclusion.” 

Instead, investors are often weighing risks and concerns they may not say out loud. For women founders, those assumptions can sometimes drift into personal territory, including whether they may step away from the business or how their personal life could affect perceptions of their ability to run a company.

Founders may also underestimate how much fundraising comes down to simply talking to enough investors.

“It’s not about talking to two investors, it’s about talking to 100,” explained Romanow. “You get the best results when you run the widest search.”

Fox noted that venture capital has always been built around balancing risk against the possibility of outsized returns.

“Investors are risk-averse for the right reasons,” she said. “And also, they are the biggest risk takers and are willing to invest in a sector that founders are disrupting—they’re looking for massive, category-defining outcomes.”

The new founder pipeline

If AI is lowering the barriers to building companies, Fox believes it could also reshape where Canada’s next generation of founders comes from. She sees Southwestern Ontario as increasingly positioned for that moment, especially as investors search beyond oversaturated primary markets. London ranked fourth on CBRE’s Top Emerging Tech Markets in North America, and climbed 165 spots in StartupBlink’s latest Global Startup Ecosystem Index. Nationally, the city ranked 12^th, ahead of Hamilton, Saint John, Winnipeg, and Fredericton.

 “London is known to be Canada’s test-bed market,” Fox said, adding that women-led companies in Southwestern Ontario are building capital-efficient businesses with smaller rounds.

“You can literally vibe code and build something from scratch that used to take millions of dollars.”

Michele Romanow

For TechAlliance, the focus is less on mentorship alone and more on getting women founders investor-ready earlier, like its GROW Accelerator that’s focused on building networks, sharpening fundraising strategies, and connecting with capital sooner. 

“We know that women-led companies are over-mentored and under-funded,” she said. “We’re flipping the script on that at TechAlliance.”

Both leaders believe the government has a role in unlocking more early-stage capital. Fox called for more matched funding for women-led startups at a time when Canadian seed rounds remain roughly 40 percent smaller than their US counterparts. Romanow pointed to British Columbia’s angel investor tax credits as one example of a policy designed to move more money into startups earlier.

Fundraising is also shaped by how founders learn to pitch ambition. In Silicon Valley, expectations are often far bigger than first-time founders realize, said Romanow. When she first pitched Clearco, the alternative funding platform she co-founded to extend capital to founders outside of traditional VC networks, she described it as “a bank for every contractor and founder in the United States.” The response? “It wasn’t big enough.”

That, she said, is the bigger shift founders need to embrace. “There are almost infinite reasons why someone can say no to giving you money. Your job is not to think like a beggar. It’s to position this as an opportunity and ask, ‘Do you want in?’”

PRESENTED BY

TechAlliance empowers tech companies and entrepreneurs with free coaching and advisory services to grow Canada’s vibrant tech community. Become a member.

Feature image courtesy

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Aspiring Vancouver-based commercial robotics integrator NorBot Technology has secured $1 million CAD in pre-seed funding.

The news: NorBot aims to act as “the bridge” between the world’s top robotics platforms and Canadian businesses, helping the latter source, integrate, deploy, and manage robots across their operations through its proprietary fleet-management and digital twin software. The startup announced its pre-seed financing on Thursday. It was funded by a group of undisclosed Canadian tech founders, operators, and investors. NorBot plans to use the capital to develop its platform and support its team as it pursues its first deployments next month.

The young startup was founded this June by CEO David Gratton, a digital product leader and ecosystem builder with experience in AI, Leon Ng, a repeat entrepreneur who has been working at the intersection of tech and real estate, and Douglas Lui, co-founder and managing partner of Misfit Ventures. 

From the source: “Any robot deployed directly from a foreign supplier will result in most of that data leaving your business and the country by default … We think Canadian operational data should stay under Canadian control, and we’re building the fleet layer that makes that true,” Gratton told BetaKit over email.

RELATED: A&K Robotics closes $8-million Series A round to put self-driving pods in airports

The context: Ottawa-based Dominion Dynamics has set its sights on becoming a defence tech integrator, connecting separate hardware and software into a single, working system it can sell to clients. NorBot hopes to do a version of this for the commercial robotics industry, where building robots is one challenge, and putting them to work in the real world is another entirely. According to Gratton, figuring out which robot meets your needs can be tough given the number of options available. Dealing with foreign suppliers and figuring out how to integrate different systems is also no cinch, the CEO said.

Final thought: NorBot sees an opportunity to help domestic businesses in logistics, real estate, healthcare, and hospitality choose and deploy cleaning, delivery, and security robots, while also ensuring that the data they generate stays in Canada. Gratton said NorBot has already closed supplier and partnership agreements with four top robotics manufacturers and paid pilots with one of Canada’s largest commercial landlords and HME, BC’s largest medical and healthcare equipment distributor. The company said it’s also in conversation with First Nations to bring its tech to more regions across the country.

Feature image courtesy NorBot Technology.

The post NorBot closes $1 million to establish a commercial robotics integrator first appeared on BetaKit.

After seven years in media and venture capital (VC) with Jason Calacanis’ Launch in Silicon Valley, Presh Dineshkumar has returned to Toronto to build a consumer healthtech business.

Dineshkumar left Launch in 2024 and teamed up with childhood friend and software developer Dray Williams to found The Wellness Company (TWC) as a product studio that develops health applications. Since 2025, TWC has rolled out four mobile apps designed to help people live healthier lives; collectively, they have attracted tens of thousands of users, over 10,000 paying customers, and more than six figures in annual recurring revenue.

“[Jason] took a bet on me early in my career, and I’m eternally grateful that his support has continued into this next chapter with The Wellness Company.”

TWC’s first three apps focus on very specific use cases: cold plunge- and sauna-tracking (GoPolar), daily sunlight exposure monitoring (SunSeek), and posture and mobility improvement (Posture AI). 

But Dineshkumar is betting that the startup’s fourth and most recent—an AI companion called Tempo to help users create personalized plans to achieve specific health goals like losing weight, completing a marathon, or sleeping better—will be TWC’s most impactful.

The TWC CEO announced in an exclusive interview with BetaKit that TWC has closed nearly $1.6 million CAD in seed funding to support its evolution from a collection of individual apps into a more focused consumer health startup, with Tempo as its central operating system.

TWC plans to use this funding to grow its three-person team, as well as invest in AI and the rollout of Tempo, which users can interact with directly through iMessage. The app uses AI to help clients gather and synthesize data from TWC’s other apps, their wearables, and diet, habit, and lab information inputs. Tempo leverages this data to help customers track their progress and recommend practical steps towards achieving their health targets.

The round, which closed in August and was raised via simple agreements for future equity, was led by BDC Capital’s Seed Venture Fund, with support from Toronto’s BKR Capital, Launch, and undisclosed angel investors Dineshkumar met during his time at Launch. It brings the startup’s total funding to more than $2 million.

From Ontario to SF and back

Nearly a decade ago, Dineshkumar dropped out of Ontario Tech University to join Launch, a San Francisco-based early-stage tech startup accelerator and VC firm founded and led by Calacanis, a prolific US entrepreneur-turned-angel-investor.

At Launch, Dineshkumar started on the media side, helping with marketing for the This Week In Startups and All-In podcasts and events. He later moved to the company’s VC team, where he supported early-stage tech entrepreneurs as co-director of its Founder University program and rose to chief of staff.

“Presh was my right hand at the Launch fund doing anything I needed, from technical work to working with founders, finding new investments, and helping me run Launch Accelerator,” Calacanis told BetaKit over email.

Dineshkumar had long focused on living a healthy lifestyle and always wanted to build a company of his own. He began developing his own health-focused side projects during his time at Launch, including an iMessage gratitude journal and a meditation product.

RELATED: Kodeon acquires mental wellness app Breethe in largest acquisition to date

“Without good health, you just can’t perform well, or you can’t be there for other people and do the things that you actually want to do,” Dineshkumar said.

This led him to start TWC, which Launch incubated and became the first investor in, alongside Fahd Ananta’s Roach Capital. 

“Selfishly, I would have liked to keep Presh at the firm, but one of the consequences of working at an early-stage venture firm is that your people get inspired to start their own companies and sometimes even their own funds,” Calacanis said. “When people do make that decision, I try to be magnanimous and do the next best thing, which is to seed their new projects.”

Dineshkumar credited Calacanis for giving him his “first real opportunity in startups,” adding, “I didn’t know anyone in tech, but I listened to his podcast … and eventually DM’d him on Twitter trying to get a job. He took a bet on me early in my career, and I’m eternally grateful that his support has continued into this next chapter with [TWC].”

Feature image courtesy The Wellness Company.

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1996 was a big year for tech: Dolly the Sheep, Internet Explorer 3.0, and the launch of the app currently at the heart of Canada’s digital sovereignty battle.

The news: Following US President Donald Trump’s trade tirade, Google Maps and Apple Maps have renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America for US users, prompting an exodus from the popular navigation apps. The backlash prompted many, including this reporter, to transition to an old staple, MapQuest, helping it become the most-downloaded app in the Apple App Store in Canada, and the number two navigation app in the US. 

MapQuest, which predates today’s popular mapping apps, holds up pretty well in 2026. Gone are the days of paper print-outs, but MapQuest delivers on Web 2.0 charm, replacing stuffy blue navigation icons with pixelated sprites (I chose the wizard).

From the source: “Google’s decision is more consequential than the theatre of the name change. It’s deliberate epistemic collapse,” wrote Canadian Shield Institute managing director Vass Bednar in a Globe and Mail op-ed. 

The context: The backlash might mark a turning point in the desire for alternatives to US big tech hegemony. Lists like the Canadian Shield’s or Paris Marx’s guide to decoupling from US tech have seen a spike in traffic. However, as those guides outline, not all decouplings are as easy as switching mapping apps. Is this finally Canada’s “elbows up” moment? Only time (or more name changes) will tell.

Canada’s largest fintech gathering returns September 14-15, 2026.

The Canada Fintech Forum brings together the industry’s leading voices for two days of collaboration, learning, and networking. Connect with decision-makers, uncover emerging opportunities, and take part in the conversations influencing the next chapter of financial innovation in Canada and beyond.

Book your spot now

Latest news across tech

Hands off AI

The United States is asking G20 members to take a hands-off approach to AI regulation, according to Reuters, as part of a two-day meeting on tech in North Carolina that continued today. Countries that sign on agree to avoid AI regulation and focus only on rules for “novel” situations involving the technology.

Build baby build

The data center boom is reshaping where private equity dollars are flowing, according to PitchBook, which found that data center construction spending jumped 46 percent in Q2 2026, up from the same time last year.

Salesforce says speed up

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Salesforce’s Canadian chief Dave Borrelli said Canada’s traditionally conservative business culture could have consequences in the AI era, and warned that the country’s AI adoption gap has the “potential to leave us too far behind.”

Lessons in digital sovereignty

An excerpt from Cecilia Rikap’s new book, The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud, featured in Rest of World, shows how other countries have not-so-successfully approached ditching big tech. While China builds its own tech ecosystem off the back of US work, India and Brazil are leaning further into public-private partnerships that still rely on US infrastructure. As Canada tries to cultivate its own digital sovereignty, perhaps it should take notes.

Tumbler Ridge fallout continues

Thirty new lawsuits are set to be filed against OpenAI in the wake of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, according to CBC News. The suits allege that the AI giant’s leadership “ignored its own safety staff and refused to alert police” after it banned the perpetrator for using ChatGPT “in furtherance of violent activities.”

One of the goals of the lawsuits, according to the firm representing the plaintiffs, is to have the perpetrator’s chat logs released. OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon has publicly denied the allegations, which are yet to be tested in court.

Stay out of my lane, says lottery

Shortly after Canadian regulators said prediction markets shouldn’t offer sports or entertainment bets, the Canadian Lottery Coalition says they aren’t going far enough. The group wants provinces to enact stronger regulatory safeguards on prediction contracts, arguing they still function like gambling and divert revenue from regulated channels like the lottery.

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On the move

This week’s hires, fires, and exec shakeups:

• Surrey, BC-based data workflow platform Safe Software said it’s adding more than 60 roles across the UK, the US, and Canada.
• UFCW 1518, the union representing Uber drivers in Victoria, said it has expanded its collective agreement to cover drivers in the BC interior, including Kelowna and Kamloops. Speaking of Uber, the company is cutting 10 percent of its global workforce.
• Calgary-based CoolIT Systems is hiring nearly 300 employees this year in anticipation of the data centre boom, the Calgary Herald reported.
• Doug Guzman, the head of the Feds’ fast-tracking Defence Investment Agency, will step down after just one year due to frustrations with the slow pace of bureaucracy, according to The Globe and Mail.
• Prime Minister Mark Carney has replaced the leadership behind Invest in Canada, naming Dominic Barton as chair, just two weeks before its flagship summit in Toronto.
• Operational management platform Simpro said it will create up to 100 jobs over the next two years with its new Montréal R&D centre.
• Montréal luxury e-commerce platform Ssense is opening a new US fulfillment center to lessen the impact of tariffs.
• The Globe and Mail published everything you need to know about how to land the hottest new job: AI enablement manager.

Want to feature a hiring announcement on our list? Email partnerships@betakit.com with the subject line JOBS.

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Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Jesse Cole (Prairies reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Featured image courtesy MapQuest

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Vancouver-based Mundo AI has closed $20 million USD ($28 million CAD) in Series A funding to build “the data layer for perceptual intelligence.” 

The news: Mundo develops the data, evaluations, and applied research that other AI labs and companies need to train systems capable of processing sensory information (or what it calls “perceptual intelligence”). The startup announced this financing last week, alongside a previously undisclosed $4-million USD seed round that brings its total funding to $24 million. Mundo’s Series A was led by GreatPoint Ventures, with support from fellow Silicon Valley-based investors Y Combinator (YC) and E12 Ventures, as well as Montana’s Next Frontier Capital. Mundo plans to use this funding to expand its team with hires in research, engineering, and operations.

From the source: In its blog post, Mundo described perception as both “the missing half” and “the next frontier” in AI. The startup highlighted that existing AI models trained on data pulled from the internet “are becoming remarkably capable at reasoning over structured information” to write software, solve math problems, answer complex questions, and complete difficult tasks. But Mundo said another key challenge remains: understanding the physical world, which largely “remains unstructured.”

The context: Mundo aims to help address this problem by providing the datasets and evaluations AI labs need to build the next generation of multimodal systems for audio, video, and more. According to its YC profile, the 30-person AI startup, which was founded in 2024 by CEO Jason Liao, COO Naijide Anwaer, CPO Garreth Lee, and CTO Kenneth Wu, initially set out to build “the world’s largest and highest-quality multilingual data library” to make up for the lack of AI training data beyond the English language.

Final thought: These days, Mundo is betting that continued AI advances will require not only more powerful perceptual intelligence models, but “a continuous feedback loop” featuring new and increasingly better datasets and benchmarks. 

Feature image courtesy Y Combinator via LinkedIn.

The post Mundo announces $24 million USD to help tackle AI’s “next frontier” first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based medical technology startup Scopia Surgical has closed $2.65 million CAD in pre-seed funding to develop its AI-powered navigation software for robotic surgery.

The news: Scopia is building a platform designed to help surgeons better navigate minimally invasive soft-tissue robotic surgeries in real time. The company announced its pre-seed financing on Tuesday. It was co-led by Anges Québec and life sciences-focused, Québec City-based Linearis Ventures. Investissement Québec’s Fonds Impulsion, Toronto-based physician angel group HaloHealth, Intelerad co-founder Richard Rubin, and MyHealth Centre co-founder Suresh Madan supported the convertible note round, which closed last month and brings the startup’s total funding to over $3 million. Scopia plans to use the money to accelerate product development and grow its seven-person team with hires in clinical and engineering roles. It will also pursue the first clinical validation of its software as it looks to execute its first feasibility studies and pilots at the CHUM and the Jewish General Hospital in Montréal, and Charleston’s Medical University of South Carolina.

From the source: “We strongly believe we’re transitioning to a world where autonomous robotic surgery will be a game-changer to deliver and democratize standardized high-quality surgery,” Scopia co-founder and CEO Gabriel Rivest told BetaKit over email. “The industry has built the body and the arms (the robot); now it’s time to build the brain.”

The context: While surgeons typically plan procedures using detailed CT and MRI scans, that anatomical insight is no longer visible once surgery begins, Scopia claims on its website. According to Rivest, misidentification and localization of patient anatomy is “one of the leading causes of complications in minimally invasive soft-tissue surgery.” The startup’s patented software aims to bridge this gap for gynecological, urologic, and colorectal procedures. Founded in 2024 by Rivest and CTO Sébastien Delorme, Scopia uses spatial intelligence and digital twins to help clinicians visualize patient anatomy both pre-operatively and alongside the live surgical view, “acting like a GPS.” The company’s investors were attracted to its potential to improve operating outcomes while remaining compatible with existing systems. Scopia hopes to obtain 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration as a Class 2 medical product within the next 24 months.

Final thought: While robotic surgeries have been around for decades, recent advances in AI and computer vision are transforming the process and accelerating the possibilities. Having worked in surgical robotics for a decade and secured support from folks who have previously built and scaled life sciences companies like Rubin and Madan, Rivest believes he and Scopia are well-positioned to help surgeons take advantage of these advancements.

Feature image courtesy Scopia Surgical.

The post Scopia Surgical raises $2.65 million to build a GPS for robotic surgery first appeared on BetaKit.

SOCAN, Canada’s non-profit music rights organization, is suing AI music generation platform Suno, accusing it of infringing on the rights of more than 150 Canadian artists without their consent or providing proper compensation.

SOCAN says the lawsuit is necessary “to ensure that human music creation is valued, respected, and compensated.”

“SOCAN has a responsibility to act when the rights of music creators and publishers are put at risk. The evidence shows that the Suno platform has generated and streamed outputs that copy works in our repertoire, and that cannot go unchallenged,” SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown said in a press release on Wednesday. “Innovation can’t come at the expense of human creativity. The future of music must belong to the people who make it.”

The release also said that the legal action is a “necessary and proactive step to ensure that human music creation is valued, respected, and compensated.” The organization added that it expects more violations to come to light as litigation moves forward. 

Alongside the lawsuit, which was filed in Canadian federal court on Wednesday, SOCAN has launched a website comparing Suno outputs to songs by Canadian artists like Tom Cochrane and Avril Lavigne. The Suno clips play nearly note-for-note and word-for-word replicas of popular songs like “Life is a Highway.” The lawsuit’s claims have yet to be proven in court. BetaKit has reached out to Suno for comment.

SOCAN’s website notes that it supports AI innovation when it is lawful and transparent, and is not used to replace human creativity. The organization is asking for Suno to comply with copyright law and stop making available songs that infringe on that law.

SOCAN wants Suno to pay damages, and is asking for a portion of the profits Suno made from the songs SOCAN says were copied from its artists, or statutory damages of up to $20,000 for each song. It’s also asking for punitive damages to deter Suno and other AI companies from misappropriating copyright-protected works in the future.

The lawsuit notes that Suno, which is headquartered in Massachusetts, is valued at $5.4 billion USD ($7.5 billion CAD), has more than two million paid users, and generates seven million songs per day. The company, which was founded in 2022, is the leading music platform of its kind. 

RELATED: OpenAI pushes for Canadian publishers’ copyright lawsuit to be heard in the US

Suno is also facing legal action from multiple US labels and other music rights groups abroad. Last week, it lost a case to SOCAN’s German equivalent, GEMA. Suno was found to have violated German copyright law; the company is reportedly looking to find a pathway to overturn the decision. Another ongoing lawsuit, filed by a group of US musicians, compares Suno to the Star Trek villains the Borg, framing Suno as an identity-subsuming monolith. Suno has previously argued that it was allowed to use copyrighted works to train its models under fair use. 

SOCAN, which collects licence fees and matches and distributes them to rights holders, has been working to address the rise of AI-generated works in the industry. In June, SOCAN collaborated with Musical AI, which is a Canadian tech company that offers rights management tools, to support efforts to attribute AI music output for the purpose of compensating musicians and publishers. Earlier this year, it launched a national campaign arguing that copyright exceptions should not be granted to allow creative works to be used for AI training.

Feature image courtesy Pixaby.

The post Canada’s music rights defender sues AI song generator Suno first appeared on BetaKit.

Across Canada, businesses are being encouraged to embrace AI, with no shortage of tools promising to make work faster, easier, and cheaper.

LSP says obstacles to AI adoption have less to do with AI itself and more with “fragmented systems, lack of integration, and governance maturity” within companies.

But before committing to something new, there are important questions to consider, said Chandrashekar Lalapet Srinivas Prasanna, known as LSP, managing director of Zoho Canada, the Canadian arm of the global software firm Zoho Corporation.

Where will company and customer data be processed? Will the tool work with the software your business already uses? Who will be allowed to access the information it draws on? And will that price still make sense when hundreds of employees rely on it every day?

For LSP, the answers get at what it really takes to put AI to work—and depend on both the SaaS provider and the business adopting the tool. The provider’s choices can determine where information is processed and how much the service costs as more people use it. The business, meanwhile, needs connected systems and clear rules governing its data.

So, what needs to happen inside the company, and what should founders expect from the tools they buy?

Inside the business

Many of the obstacles LSP sees have little to do with the AI itself. Instead, he points to “fragmented systems, lack of integration, and governance maturity” within companies.

Fragmented systems leave information spread across tools that don’t necessarily communicate, giving AI only part of the picture it needs to do its job, while weak governance blurs who can access data and for how long. Those breakdowns often surface once a tool moves from testing (a few prompts, a sandbox dataset, or maybe a demo workflow) to daily use.

For example, when a sales team pilots an AI assistant to summarize calls, it can work in trial mode. But in daily use, the assistant needs to pull customer data from the CRM, push notes into ticketing, respect role-based access, and comply with retention policies, said LSP. 

Layering AI onto a setup that isn’t properly integrated can create problems once the tool begins handling real work, including “data leakage,” “shadow AI,” and “hallucination-driven errors.” That can mean exposing sensitive customer information, employees turning to unapproved tools, or confident but inaccurate answers making their way into company decisions. 

He also warned of data “non-compliance” when information is handled in ways that breach regulatory requirements, and “high failure rates” when weak data and disconnected systems prevent AI projects from working reliably or expanding beyond a trial. 

Zoho’s own approach offers an example of how a provider can reduce integration problems. The company offers a cloud suite of more than 60 business software tools, and builds its AI into the broader platform, rather than as a separate product. That enables the technology to work across connected applications, data, and permissions.

Choosing a provider

How an AI system is built determines whether it becomes a strategic advantage or “a recurring operational headache,” said LSP. AI built on third-party models or rented infrastructure can inherit costs and be passed on to customers. Architecture also dictates exposure: “A vertically integrated provider reduces the number of external dependencies, which reduces the attack surface and improves security and reliability.”

“Additionally, a vendor that doesn’t control its own compute means scaling can be subject to someone else’s capacity,” he said. “That’s why some AI tools slow down or degrade quality as usage grows.”

Zoho’s strategy has been to bring more of those pieces in-house. It develops its own applications and AI models, and operates the platforms and data centres that run them, giving it more control over costs and performance as usage grows.

LSP’s checklist for choosing a SaaS provider:

• Follow the data. Where will it be stored, can it leave Canada, and will it be used to train the provider’s models? Look for answers in contracts, technical evidence, and certifications. 
• Test the price at scale. Is AI included, charged per request, or tied to computing use? An inexpensive trial may become expensive as usage grows. Instead, look for vendors who own their tech stack or have long-term cost guarantees.
• Check who owns what. Who supplies the models, servers, and other technology? Outside dependencies can affect how much control the provider has over security, reliability, performance, and pricing.
• Confirm the fit. Will the tool connect to existing systems and follow access rules? It’s easier to address gaps before a trial expands.

The latest addition is Nathu La, an in-house server developed with Intel to support virtualization, high-performance computing, storage, and AI inference (the computing required each time an AI model responds to a request). It draws on principles from the Open Compute Project, with parts that are easier to maintain or replace, and cooling intended to reduce energy use. According to the company, Nathu La performs comparably to similar servers, while using 12 to 18 percent less power and costing 20 to 30 percent less to own and operate. 

Those savings, in turn, can reduce AI inference costs—which can be relatively minor when a handful of employees are testing a feature but add up quickly once the same tool is adopted across a company.

Zoho also works to control the cost by matching the model to the job, using smaller models for specific tasks rather than turning to a much larger model for every request. The company builds AI “with usefulness in mind,” said LSP.

When choosing a provider, LSP advises customers to ask if pricing is tied to tokens, API calls, or compute spikes. “If the answer is ‘it depends,’ expect pricing challenges,” he said.

Where will your data live?

In 2023, Zoho opened data centres in Toronto and Montréal, giving customers the option to keep their data storage and processing in the country. LSP said the company offers “region-locked processing” and “explicit residency guarantees,” backed by contracts and certifications. He added that Zoho’s general AI models are “not trained on consumer data and do not retain customer information.”

Those details matter because selling software in Canada doesn’t necessarily mean the information entered will stay here. LSP recommends potential buyers request a data-flow diagram showing where their data will be stored, processed, cached, and backed up. If any component sits outside the claimed region, “residency is not guaranteed,” he said.

LSP believes that as more companies adopt AI, they will expect clearer answers about who controls the tools, where their information is kept, and how the technology fits into their existing work.

“Canadian organizations will want trusted, sovereign, workflow-embedded AI,” he said.

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Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Adi Goldstein.

The post Why the infrastructure behind AI-enabled SaaS matters to Canadian startups first appeared on BetaKit.

Executives from OpenText, MDA Space, and La Caisse joined a group of 23 businesses and organizations that met with Prime Minister Mark Carney for a closed-door economic update meeting Monday. 

The news: The Prime Minister’s Office notified the media of the meeting Monday evening, saying Carney convened the group of business leaders to discuss developments in the Canada-US trade relationship, share the government’s economic growth priorities, and invite attendees to share their thoughts with the Prime Minister on behalf of their industries. 

The 23 companies at the meeting represented different major sectors of the economy, including energy, banking, consumer goods, telecommunications, tech, and more. MDA Space confirmed its CEO, Mike Greenley, was in attendance, but told BetaKit it was unable to share further details given the meeting’s sensitivity. La Caisse also declined to comment. 

From the source: “There’s a positive opportunity that has always existed with the United States for a mutually beneficial trade deal that respects Canadian sovereignty,” Carnrey told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday morning. “When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious … we can have those discussions.” 

The context: Trade talks between Canada and the United States have been on pause for almost two weeks after Canada left the negotiating table, leading the US to enact sweeping 50 percent tariffs on many Canadian goods. Carney said on Tuesday that US negotiators took the position that core Canadian industries would have to become subsidiaries to US counterparts or be “wiped out.” 

Final thought: The Prime Minister’s meeting with key Canadian business leaders comes just a few weeks before the first-ever Canada Investment Summit. Spearheaded by Carney, the summit looks to bring some of the world’s largest investors, who collectively manage almost $120 trillion, to Toronto to help attract new investment into Canada. 

Feature image courtesy Mark Carney via X. 

The post OpenText, MDA Space among execs who joined Prime Minister’s trade meeting first appeared on BetaKit.

Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), the provincial public agency responsible for investing in clean technology, has pumped nearly $51 million into more than a dozen projects it says could lower greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100,000 tonnes by 2030. 

The news: On Monday, ERA announced it was investing just shy of $51 million in funding to 16 Alberta innovation projects intended to “cut emissions and grow the economy.” Those 16 projects, which are worth an estimated $180 million in prospective value, aim to green Alberta’s traditional resource-based industries, and include oil and gas, agriculture, construction, transportation, waste, electricity generation, mineral, chemical, and fertilizer development, and more. Funded projects include FulcrumAir out of Calgary which develops unmanned drones for use in transmission line installation tasks, as well as Mangrove Lithium for its work replacing emissions-heavy cement ingredients with lower-carbon lithium byproducts. 

From the source: According to ERA, the 16 projects, if successful, will account for emissions reductions equivalent to 117,700 tonnes of CO2 by 2030—the equivalent of taking more than 39,000 cars off the road. ERA also reports that the combined projects will create roughly 1,556 person-years of employment, a term used to measure the total amount of labour contributed to a project (which does not mean these projects will create 1,556 individual jobs).

RELATED: Alberta invests $37 million into advanced drilling technology 

The context: Funding for the various projects, which includes $5 million for the development of the Brooks Newell Hydrogen Hub and $7 million for a Svante Technologies carbon capture project in Peace River, Alta., comes from Alberta’s industry-funded Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) Fund. It adds to more than a billion dollars worth of investment delivered through ERA to 368 projects since 2009. 

Final thought: The estimated emissions reductions are entirely dependent on the success of each project going forward and is not guaranteed. In some instances, like the Blackspring Ridge 1 wind project, which received ERA funding to the tune of $10 million, projects have met or exceeded emissions reductions forecasts. Others, like the $1.5 million ERA-funded Rotoliptic project developing specialized oilfield pump technology, have fallen short of initial forecasts. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The post Emissions Reduction Alberta doles out nearly $51 million in slew of innovation investments first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal and Boulder, Colorado-based Landjourney has rebranded to Sweet Technologies and closed $7.4 million USD ($10.3 million CAD) to expand the reach of its agriculture-focused lending software.

The news: Sweet announced the seed financing Monday. It was led by Montréal’s Diagram, San Francisco-based Builders VC, and Illinois’ Cooperative Ventures. The all-primary capital round, which consisted of a combination of equity funding and simple agreements for future equity, closed during the second quarter. Sweet plans to use it to expand the reach of its flagship FinTech platform, SweetAg, which aims to modernize how other financial institutions originate and service loans to farmers and agribusinesses using AI. Sweet co-founder and CPO Jeremie Bedard told BetaKit over email that the startup also intends to start serving firms doing other forms of commercial lending beyond agriculture.

From the source: As farms contend with soaring diesel and fertilizer costs thanks to global instability, farmers’ need for easy, speedy, and flexible loan options has increased, Sweet said in its news release. The company sees room to help agriculture lenders spend less time on paperwork and focus more of their efforts on managing client relationships better than legacy solutions. For his part, Bedard claimed in the release that SweetAg can help lenders complete previously “weeks-long processes” in “a matter of days.”

The context: Founded in 2024 by Bedard and CEO Luke Johnson, Sweet got its start focusing on agriculture loan origination and servicing, which Bedard called “one of the harder forms of commercial credit to digitize” given its complexity. Today, approximately $10 billion in loan volume runs through Sweet, which claims to work with some of the largest agricultural lenders and cooperatives in the US. With this funding, Sweet plans to move into serving banks, credit unions, and other firms that do complex commercial lending that is too specialized to fit neatly into legacy loan origination systems.

Final thought: Sweet was founded in Montréal, nine of its 12 employees—including its entire tech team, which it plans to grow—are located in Canada, and the company has had the capacity to serve Canadian clients from day one. But to date, like many other Canadian tech startups, the company has seen far greater pull for SweetAg from the US market, where it counts AgAmerica, CHS Capital, and Growmark among its customers. Bedard said he would love to see more Canadian financial institutions follow suit, and said this round gives it the capacity to support such conversations and implementations over the coming years.

Feature image courtesy Sweet Technologies.

The post Landjourney rebrands to Sweet, secures $7.4 million USD to simplify commercial lending beyond agriculture first appeared on BetaKit.

Tariffs were one of the factors that contributed to Ssense’s insolvency last year. Now, as the Montréal luxury e-commerce platform hopes to mount a comeback, it plans to open a new warehouse in the United States to avoid those charges to its largest customer base. 

The news: The embattled fashion company told The New York Times last week that it plans to ease the hit of US tariff policy by opening a large fulfillment center in the Northeastern part of the United States early next year. An Ssense spokesperson confirmed the company’s intentions in an email to BetaKit.

A third-party logistics company will run the new fulfillment centre, according to the report, which will import items from around the world to be sent to its US-based customers. Ssense will still keep its Montréal fulfillment centre to service customers outside of the United States, and its headquarters will remain in Canada. The main motivator for the move was the Trump administration’s removal of the de minimis exception last year, which previously waived duties on imports under $800 in value. 

From the source: Right now, a customer from the United States would pay $97 in duties for a $990 cardigan shipped in from Ssense. However, if Ssense first imported the cardigan to a US warehouse at a hypothetical wholesale price of $300, the tariff would instead be around $30—shifting the cost calculation to a different step in its supply chain. 

The context: Ssense is attempting to recover from a restructuring plan it drew up under insolvency proceedings last year, which staved off a quick sale by its lenders. The family of co-founders Rami Atallah, Bassel Atallah, and Firas Atallah managed to buy the brand back earlier this year and went on to cut more than 200 jobs to help stay afloat. 

Final thought: The trade war between the United States and Canada intensified a couple of weeks ago after Canada bowed out of trade negotiations, and the US enacted sweeping 50 percent tariffs on many goods. The Canadian government responded by putting together an aid package intended to ride out the remainder of Trump’s term. Meanwhile, Trump has called for all Canadian companies doing business with the US to move their headquarters south. As the countries dig in for a fight, Ssense’s move shows the company preparing for the long haul.

Feature image courtesy Ssense.

The post Ssense to open US warehouse to avoid tariffs on its largest market first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based deep technology startup Meissner wants to find and develop the next generation of superconducting materials.

Meissner announced $2.6 million USD ($3.6 million CAD) in pre-seed financing on Tuesday to build what it describes as “the discovery engine” for superconductors, using a combination of machine learning (ML), computation, and experimental validation.

Superconductors are “definitely the picks and shovels to unlocking high-growth, high-tech industries.” 

Olivia Leng, Meissner

Superconductors are materials that are capable of conducting electricity without any resistance or energy loss, making them far more efficient than normal conductors. They are already being used in MRI machines and high-speed magnetic-levitation train systems. Many tech firms are betting that superconductors will become foundational components of commercial-scale quantum computers and play an important role in realizing the promise of fusion power. 

“They’re definitely the picks and shovels to unlocking high-growth, high-tech industries,” Meissner founder and CEO Olivia Leng told BetaKit in an interview.

Leng said existing superconductors can be costly to deploy, as they often require expensive cooling infrastructure, and are prone to sudden, localized hotspots that can melt system components when electricity briefly encounters resistance. Meissner aims to develop and sell new, optimized superconductors that can operate at significantly higher temperatures for specialized uses.

Meissner’s investors include BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund and several big-name angels, including Canadian tech veterans like Andrew Talpash, Anthony Lacavera, Christian Weedbrook, Daniel Debow, Dennis Bennie, Eliot Pence, Greg Twinney, and Michael and Richard Hyatt.

“These are names that I’ve looked up to for many, many years … so it’s kind of surreal to have them actually on my cap table,” Leng said.

RELATED: “From soup to qubits”: Xanadu to open advanced photonics hub in old Campbell’s factory

In an interview with BetaKit, Michael Hyatt said Meissner reminds him of his early investment in Toronto-based quantum computer maker Xanadu, a company that many of the other investors behind Meissner have also backed (or, in the case of Weedbrook, founded and currently leads).

“If you believe quantum is going to be a reality by 2030, companies like Meissner will be really important in that process,” Hyatt said. “It’s a derivative bet on quantum.” The successful tech-entrepreneur-turned-investor called Leng “an impressive young woman who is extremely motivated,” and said he was also attracted to the idea that “you can’t vibe code” a competitor.

Meissner is not Leng’s first tech startup. She previously built Toronto-based InkTank to help artists visualize how their tattoos would look on clients’ bodies as they age by converting two-dimensional images into three-dimensional mesh. Leng pulled the plug on that business after learning that tattoo artists were not willing to pay for its platform, as they thought it might drive away their customers.

Leng wanted her next company to be a moonshot, and soon landed on superconductors—an area of interest from her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, where she specialized in materials science chemistry. She said she spent a lot of time in the lab working with superconductors and running chemical and electrical simulations on them.

“[I] had a good idea of what needed to be done,” Leng said. She formed Meissner 12 months ago, deriving its name from the Meissner effect, when a superconductor expels a magnetic field as it enters a superconducting state, and paused her studies to focus on the company.

“If you believe quantum is going to be a reality by 2030, companies like Meissner will be really important in that process.”

Michael Hyatt

Leng says her now four-person startup has made a lot of progress on the computational side of the equation, building a proprietary ML model that identifies new aerometallic materials with the potential to become superconductors and running quantum simulations on them. 

This month, Meissner plans to start testing its top-performing candidates at the University of Waterloo’s Quantum-Nano Fabrication and Characterization Facility.

“We finally get to take our materials that we’ve run very high-fidelity quantum simulations on, that have shown very promising results, out into the lab to see how well those lab results correlate,” Leng said.

Feature image courtesy Meissner.

The post BDC, other Xanadu investors back Meissner’s “discovery engine” for superconductors first appeared on BetaKit.

Right now, in Ottawa, there’s a vehicle sitting in a garage that can make the trip from Vancouver to Halifax and still have gas to spare. That vehicle could be many things: an ambulance, a personnel transport, perhaps a delivery truck. And, once Victoria-based InDro Robotics is finished working on it, it will be able to make that drive autonomously. 

The vehicle is called Talos, a military-grade truck designed by former Formula 1 engineers from UK defence firm Fering. It looks like the lovechild of a Hummer and a dune buggy, hauls around four batteries and a diesel generator to fuel its extreme long-range driving capabilities, and also happens to look cool as hell. Its all-terrain wheels are roughly three feet high, which makes standing in front of the towering chassis a bit intimidating, even without the attached machine guns.

“[Talos] can actually power a 50-bed field hospital for 10 days on the power that it’s got on board.”

Philip Reece, Indro Robotics

Fering intended its vehicle platform to be more than a run-of-the-mill military truck, while InDro Robotics was looking for a mobile launch pad for the drones in its steadily increasing number of defence contracts. Fortunately, Fering chief commercial officer Gareth Reece and InDro founder and CEO Philip Reece are cousins; after chatting about their work, they realized they could help each other out.

“We took the bones of it, and took the designs of it, and brought it over here to Canada to build the Talos, to build one that was similar but more suited for the Canadian environment,” Philip told BetaKit in an interview. The Talos had to be improved to operate in colder temperatures, arctic conditions, and be remotely controlled or autonomously driven.

“Not just drive itself like a Tesla would, but drive itself without GPS, without communications, [and] to be able to assess on-road and off-road situations,” Philip stipulated. 

If InDro is successful, the Talos could become the mainframe for Canada’s autonomous warfare capabilities. 

BetaKit got an exclusive look at Talos and the work InDro Robotics is doing to turn it into a robot during a July site tour of the company’s offices and operations at Ottawa’s Area X.O. While the company is based in Victoria, Ottawa is “where the magic happens,” InDro’s head of R&D sales Luke Corbeth said while guiding BetaKit around the facility. 

Area X.O is a nearly 2,000-acre research and development test site located in Ottawa’s west end. It sports advanced communications infrastructure and real-world urban and rural mobility infrastructure along 16km of test track, and plenty of other resources for robot testing. Corbeth likened it to “a skate park, but for robots.” As professional robot makers, Area X.O and InDro are a perfect match.

InDro has been making robots, particularly drones, since 2015. Philip wanted to stay in the industry after selling his small Vancouver-based airline, so he launched InDro as an “airline for drones.” The company slowly moved into developing the software side of robotics itself, started landing big clients like Nokia, Rogers, and Google, and then expanded into ground robots, which now make up 50 percent of its business. Today, you might see the 42-person company’s handiwork in the robot “dogs” roaming around Ottawa’s Science and Technology Museum, its robots monitoring utility stations, or its drones in the Canadian Armed Forces.

A mobile command centre

Talos is a strong vehicle on its own. But if InDro can turn it into a robot, that means it will take fewer resources to perform military operations or complete other kinds of missions. Its modular construction will make it easy to go on long hauls without putting soldiers’ or others’ lives at risk. 

Imagine a forward-operating base needs supplies; just take out the seats, send Talos out packed with goods, keep an eye on it with your drone escort, and give it orders over the radio. For a search-and-rescue mission in a dangerous area, maybe the Arctic, instead of risking more lives and taking up room for survivors, send out an unmanned Talos to bring back as many people as possible. Even if Talos is manned, that’s an extra pair of eyes on its surroundings, instead of the road, and a pair of hands that can still take the wheel if needed. 

All of this functionality will be built into InDro’s robotics interface, which keeps track of connected robots and allows for easy remote control. To demonstrate, Corbeth pulled out his laptop and an Xbox controller from a backpack, signed in, and started controlling one of InDro’s other robots out in the “skate park.” The whole process took only about a minute. While not a giant truck, weaving the medium-sized wheeled robot through the maze wasn’t difficult for a reporter with hundreds of Need for Speed hours under his belt.

And Talos can drive really far. Philip admitted that its 7,000-km range is probably “overkill,” but all that energy it’s hauling isn’t just for driving. The Talos is intended to act as a mobile command centre for a fleet of similar autonomous vehicles, as well as a giant mobile battery. That means other robots can live on the Talos, like an unmanned sidekick that can drive ahead to do recon, or a drone that flies above it to help it navigate difficult terrain without GPS. It can even power stationary operations when other options aren’t available. 

“We can drive 1,000 kilometres, plug a mobile hospital, or whatever it turns out to be, into the Talos, and it can actually power a 50-bed field hospital for 10 days on the power that it’s got on board,” Philip said. “It’s like carrying this power plant around with you, which is super important to Canadian sovereignty, because it’s obviously so vast and there’s so few facilities [in the North].”

Those are lofty expectations, and InDro’s team in Ottawa has only been working on automating its prototype for about six months. On the tour, InDro engineering manager Joel Koscielski said they were still figuring out the drive-by-wire system, which essentially means the ability to replicate every kind of control input a human driver could make, but remotely. Having worked with InDro for a few years now, Koscielski has extensive experience with many ground-based vehicles, quadrupeds, and humanoid robotics, but the sheer size of Talos makes it a “bit of a different beast.”

“You need to be able to make sure that that vehicle knows how big it is, how to move it around the space, [and] what it can and can’t do,” Koscielski said. “Obviously, obstacle avoidance is a different challenge for something that large; it needs to know that it is that wide.”

Its size made Talos a popular visit during the CANSEC military trade show earlier this year, according to Koscielski, who said a “ton of people” wanted to sit in the cab when they saw it. Koscielski and Philip both attributed it to a familiarity with analogues like Hummers or Teslas, which become more interesting when confronted with its size and potential capabilities. 

“[When] you’re up in the driving seat there, it sort of feels rough and tough, of course,” Philip said. “It’s definitely not a luxury vehicle, but you can imagine driving that across the dunes or across the Arctic.”

A new defence tech landscape

It’s become a different world for InDro since Canada started pushing more investment into defence in the name of securing its sovereignty. Last year, the government budgeted nearly $82 billion in commitments over five years, including provisions for the Defence Industrial Strategy to help wean the nation’s reliance on typical suppliers like the United States. 

Philip has felt the difference. He said the company got its first defence contract around six years ago, which was a “slow and painful” process. Over the past two years, it’s changed completely. On Tuesday, InDro was selected as a qualified supplier under the Government of Canada’s new Defence Drone Initiative Marketplace, pre-approving the company for purchases from the Canadian Armed Forces.

“Sovereignty is not just owning the equipment; it’s about controlling the technology, the supply chain, the software, giving us the ability to evolve this technology as a whole for the market.”

Philip Reece,
Indro Robotics

“Before, what was taking three or four years, and you’re never sure whether it’s going to happen, is down to months now,” Philip said. “Defence budgets have got bigger, access to that funding has got quicker, and, what I really think is super valuable is we’re speaking to the end user now … we have meetings with operators who go out into the field [and] know what they need.” 

As the military tries out Talos, its feedback will be fed right back into the vehicle’s development. According to Koscielski, Talos’s operational prototype will be ready by the end of the year; however, Philip said InDro has another, parallel version of the vehicle that’s about to undergo trials with the Canadian Armed Forces. 

By taking this UK-made vehicle and giving it new life as a robot, Philip said InDro has been able to sell the Talos back to the UK, meaning his company has developed both a Canadian technology and an export story that’s generating value both for the military and the economy. 

“Sovereignty is not just owning the equipment; it’s about controlling the technology, the supply chain, the software, giving us the ability to evolve this technology as a whole for the market,” Philip said. “We don’t want to be waiting for our allies to decide that they want to give us this ability; we want … to be able to make our own decision to move forward and build the things that we need.”

Feature image courtesy InDro Robotics.

The post How InDro Robotics is turning a giant truck into a mobile, autonomous command centre first appeared on BetaKit.

This year’s Elevate Festival will feature a star-studded lineup of guest speakers, including Kyle Lowry, who is not only widely considered to be the greatest Toronto Raptor of all time, but is the CEO of his own tech-focused venture firm.

The news: Returning to Toronto on Sept. 22, Elevate Festival announced a stacked lineup of guest speakers Monday morning, including former Toronto Raptors’ point guard and investor in the Toronto Tempo, Kyle Lowry, Cohere’s Michael Pelosi, Reddit’s Adam Collins, Clio founder and CEO Jack Newton, and Bumble’s Vivek Sagi, among others. The tech conference, which is celebrating its ninth anniversary, is also introducing new programming focused on sovereignty, dual-use tech, and cybersecurity, which was created in collaboration with DMZ and BDC. 

From the source: “This year marks an important chapter for the festival, and we’re bringing together the people and ideas that can help shape what comes next,” said Lisa Zarzeczny, the CEO and co-founder of Elevate, in a press release. “The stakes only continue to get higher, which is why conversations around AI and sovereignty are at the forefront of this year’s programming.” 

The context: Across this year’s three days of programming, Elevate Festival is looking to leverage its high-profile roster of speakers to discuss what it calls some of “the most pressing conversations facing Canada’s innovation economy.” Those conversations include discussions with Collins, Reddit’s chief communications officer, on the role human perspectives play amid a rash of AI-generated internet content. There will also be conversations with Build Canada, Dominion Dynamics, Sentinel R&D, and Coveo on how Canada can own the dual-use technologies of the future; panels with Coinbase Canada on the role stablecoins are playing in the Canadian financial system; and Elevate’s Fast Forward track, which will spotlight “emerging ideas poised to become tomorrow’s competitive advantage.”

Final thought: Like others in the Canadian innovation space, Elevate Festival is putting sovereignty front and centre this year. The festival, which over its tenure has drawn upwards of 87,000 attendees, is attuning itself to the topic at a moment when the national mood is preoccupied with Canada’s security, both physical and economic.

Image courtesy Elevate. Photo by Brandon Ferguson Media.

The post Kyle Lowry, Cohere and Reddit leaders, and more to headline Elevate Festival 2026 first appeared on BetaKit.

Back in 2015, Firat Eren put his money into a neat little online bartering platform that grew out of a Facebook group called Bunz. In 2020, following a controversial pivot to a cryptocurrency model that led to a ‘Bunxit’ of users and top leadership, he went from a mere first investor to the brand’s sole leader; the only one left to pick up the pieces. 

“Bunz is special. The only question is: am I good enough to make this value known by other people?”

Firat Eren, Bunz

After all the work he’s put in over the last six years, the platform that once exceeded 120,000 members only had 200 daily active users (DAU) in June, mostly in Toronto. Now, Eren admits, he might not have done the best job picking up those pieces. Perhaps, he thinks, Bunz needs a younger face or two.

“The problem is not Bunz,” Eren told BetaKit in a Thursday interview. “The problem is me.”

Eren did try to bring a platform he believed in back to its core principles: “no cash, no discrimination, and no spamming.” His first big attempt came in 2022 with a “half-cooked” app update that brought usability issues, further hurting the user base. It wasn’t until December 2025 that he managed to bring the app up to his standard. 

It now uses a new version of BTZ, the formerly controversial cryptocurrency that’s now a “universal trade item” to support bartering. It also added a “mountains” system, which rewards consistent users and item traders with more features. Eren has just one problem with the overhaul: the users still don’t like him. 

Here’s an example: “Fırat, you are defensive and refuse to hear people, even though we are the people you are trying to convince to use this platform. And we DID use this platform before the unnecessary overhaul & the mountain climbing bs. Maybe engage in self reflection? This is really embarrassing,” reads just one comment on a Bunz post attempting to galvanize Bunz’s small number of loyal users to grow the platform. 

In the post, Eren told users he would have to shut the site down if Bunz couldn’t reach 1,000 DAU in any one city by September 1st. Despite getting into comment section disputes with users who “don’t like me that much,” Eren said he respects and loves them, just as he does the platform. Still, Bunz isn’t anywhere near its goal, and Eren was getting ready to pull the plug when he had his epiphany.

“Bunz is special,” Eren said. “The only question is: am I good enough to make this value known by other people?” 

That’s why he reached out to Martin and Josip Kristo, better known as @twinpranks on TikTok. They’re a pair of 25-year-old twin brothers from Oakville, Ont., who have amassed millions of social media followers by filming videos and skits pranking each other. The twins originally connected with Eren in July to post sponsored videos about Bunz to help increase its user base. Eren could barely contain his glee while recounting a skit where Josip lists all the items he would trade his brother for on Bunz. 

“That was cool, man,” Eren said through his laughter. “They’re really nice kids.”

Instead of a new skit, this time Eren asked if the twins would like to join Bunz as co-founders in exchange for “sweat equity,” alongside four of Bunz’s most dedicated volunteers. He’ll sign over some of his stake to a new, younger founding team that’s reinvigorated his faith that Bunz can rebound and once again become the app of choice for bartering. 

“They’re Gen Z … I don’t even understand their jokes; they’re goofy jokes, but people like them,” the 54-year-old Eren said, adding that the new team will better understand the user base. “Bunz is gonna grow. I’m expecting that—without ego, without my heart—I’m saying as an engineer, that’s what I’m expecting.”

Martin told BetaKit in a phone call that he and his brother truly believe in the app, and that he uses Bunz often, having traded things like phone cases, PS5 controllers, and duffel bags. 

RELATED: Bunz locks down employee BTZ wallets as former admins lead mass exodus

“I want to use my skill set to help contribute towards Bunz, and I truly think that my brother and I having this co-founding position is a chance for us to be able to showcase what we can do in terms of bringing new people to the app,” Martin said. “In today’s world, it just makes sense to trade for something you don’t need for something you do need.”

While the twins can bring Bunz viral exposure through their three million combined followers on TikTok and Instagram, it’s the work they put into creating that following that Eren sees value in. 

“It’s not easy to attract people with something that you create,” Eren said. “I’m not after their followers, but their experience is key.” 

Eren said he’ll still be the “leader” behind Bunz, but that he’ll be whatever the business needs him to be. He said he understands that making a business go from “zero to one” is an art he doesn’t seem to be able to grasp. Now that he’s working with artists, “we’re able to create something out of nothing.” With his original shutdown deadline of Sept. 1 fast approaching, the once-sole steward of Bunz is ready to give it yet another overhaul. 

“Our mission is to create another instrument interdependent with money, and this is a very ambitious move,” Eren said. “Either we’re stupid, which is possible, or we’re very visionary; this is also possible.” 

Feature image courtesy Bunz. 

The post “The problem is me”: Bunz owner brings in Gen Z pranksters to save dying platform first appeared on BetaKit.

Patronscan, the Calgary-based company behind a multinational network used to verify ID documents, is once again facing questions over how it collects, stores, and handles private data.

The news: Earlier this month, the CBC reported that a Canadian woman was labelled a “public safety concern” by Patronscan’s platform, which uses proprietary technology to scan and verify IDs. According to the report, the woman had been asked to leave a bar after becoming ill. Unbeknownst to her, she was given the “safety concern” label, which was later shared with other Patronscan network members, resulting in her being barred from the Calgary Stampede. The report comes on the heels of reporting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US,  where some had expressed concern over the use of Patronscan to track LGBTQ+ bargoers, prompting some establishments to stop using the service.

From the source: Founded in 2005, Patronscan operates across 300 cities in four countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. As the largest such company in North America, Patronscan bills itself as a way for nightlife businesses to protect property, guests, and business license compliance. 

The context: Patronscan uses optical character recognition and barcode scanner technology to compare a piece of ID against a database and verify its authenticity. The platform collects data like names, dates of birth, photos, gender, postal codes, and expiry dates, which are then stored by the platform for anywhere between 24 hours to up to 30 days depending on jurisdiction. Data can also be used to track patron demographics or determine capacity. 

The company also operates a “flag network” that allows establishments to flag patrons for behaviours including incidents of violence, property damage, sexual assault, theft, and fraud. Flags can be limited to the ownership group that placed them, or network-wide flags shared between Patronscan-enabled businesses. Flags can be stored for anywhere between one year in networked cases, or five years in non-networked cases. 

Final thought: This is not the first time Patronscan has received criticism and questions over its data practices. In an emailed statement to BetaKit, Patronscan said it takes seriously the company’s role in making sure that its platform is used responsibly, adding that it understands the concerns people may have about technology and privacy. In its statement, Patronscan said conversations around privacy are important and that the company is committed to helping people understand what information is collected and how it is used, and reiterated that the public can file disclosure requests to access collected data, as well as appeal potential flags through Patronscan’s flag-dispute process. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Photo courtesy of Patronscan via Facebook.

The post ID-scanning firm Patronscan faces renewed scrutiny over data privacy first appeared on BetaKit.

A Canadian wildfire-detection startup is buying a US competitor’s business amid disastrous wildfires on both sides of the border. 

Vancouver-based SenseNet is acquiring the wildfire technology business of US company N5 Sensors, as the Canadian startup aims to grow its US presence. As part of the deal, all of N5’s wildfire division team will join SenseNet, as will its specialized fire sensors and client base. The deal’s financial details were not disclosed. The transaction closed in August.

“We wanted to enter the [US] market strong,” SenseNet founder and CEO Hamed Noori said in an interview with BetaKit. “We wanted to improve our technology to make sure that [it] stayed the best on the market.” 

By buying a US-owned company division, SenseNet is bucking a trend in Canadian tech of domestic companies getting scooped up.

A graduate of TiE Vancouver’s Incubation Lab, SenseNet was founded in 2019, initially offering a sensor network to quickly and effectively detect the start and spread of wildfires. Since then, Noori said, it has grown into more of a comprehensive platform, with predictive analytics about how fires might behave, long-range AI-powered cameras to capture activity, satellite and drone connections, and recommendations to help manage fire spread.   

Its customer base is 65 percent in the private sector—including heavy industries like construction and mining, as well as telcos like Rogers—and 35 percent in the public sector. Noori told BetaKit that the company is generating roughly $10 million CAD in annual revenue. 

Rockville, Md.-based N5 Sensors has built sensor hardware that it says can detect hazardous chemicals—with applications in military situations, public safety, and transportation infrastructure, according to its website. In 2022, N5 launched its wildfire sensor network N5SHIELD, which aims to detect and track wildfire locations. 

In addition to fire departments in California, N5’s wildfire business has contracted with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to deploy its fire detection sensors. However, a DHS report from April 2026 found that the company’s sensors did not consistently detect fires or provide early fire warnings, due to technological limitations and environmental factors like wind impacts.

In response to BetaKit’s query about this report, Noori said the company was aware, and it had “no impact on our decision” to buy N5’s wildfire business. “We’re confident all of N5’s existing customers will have the world’s most advanced wildfire detection platform after upgrading to our full suite,” Noori wrote. 

RELATED: The Kelowna company helping map your way out of a wildfire

With its acquisition of N5’s wildfire division, Noori hopes to create a “full-service” wildfire mitigation business. This year’s wildfire season is set to be Canada’s fourth-worst on record. According to Public Safety Canada, more than 4.1 million hectares had burned across 4,793 fires by Aug. 18. This includes the largest wildfire in Ontario’s history in Thunder Bay, which destroyed entire communities, including Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, and the Summerland, BC wildfire that forced thousands to evacuate and left one woman dead. On its website, SenseNet says its sensors and cameras are actively monitoring more than 300 million acres of land for fires.

By buying a US-owned company division, SenseNet is bucking a recent trend in Canadian tech of domestic companies getting scooped up. In this case, the Vancouver company’s experience in dealing with worsening blazes up north has allowed it to help regions of the US that aren’t accustomed to battling wildfires.

Noori said that SenseNet is targeting states such as Tennessee, which he said have fewer fire-detection solutions, as well as states that are more accustomed to fire risk, like Colorado and parts of California. It also plans to open an office in the US.

SenseNet, which currently has just over 50 employees, says it will count 100 employees by the end of this year, including the acquisition. 

Feature image courtesy SenseNet. 

The post Wildfire detection startup SenseNet buys US competitor first appeared on BetaKit.

“Somebody should do something about all the problems.” That’s a classic headline from The Onion, satirizing the sentiment of expressing concern while expecting an abstract somebody to sweep in and somehow fix it.

That headline was top of mind on Thursday when OpenAI issued a call for “collective action” in the wake of its AI agents’ massive, autonomous hack of Hugging Face. The letter, co-signed by companies like Anthropic, Google, 1Password, and Shopify, called on “leaders across industry and government” to bring the full weight of their resources to an effort to protect critical infrastructure. But it didn’t commit any of those resources, or any money, or make any direct promises to gate agents from doing harm.

The open letter came a day after OpenAI released a full investigative report into how its agents autonomously hacked into open-source AI platform Hugging Face. Its report, as well as an independent investigation published by threat research non-profit METR, detailed how the attack involved 1,200 agents—agents that OpenAI had left unsecured—that spun up tens of thousands of messages before undertaking the hack, without being explicitly directed to do so, and then attempted to hide the evidence. Because the scale of the mess was so large and OpenAI only granted access to its full dataset for two days, METR was forced to rely on “often-unreliable AI agents” to analyze the data, leading to findings that METR noted were coloured by the AI models’ biases and hallucinations.

OpenAI called the incident a “warning shot” that underscores how “powerful” its models are—language that some online have read as negligence, and others have read as marketing. Either way, yes, it will be implementing “more” safeguards, and yes, it will no longer let models go unobserved for months (early signs of this incident were first observed, but not actioned, in May). “Companies that build AI systems will need to ensure that their systems always remain under meaningful human control, and that meaningful safeguards constrain their ability to cause harm,” the company noted in its statement. Some company should really do something.

Sarah Rieger,
Managing Editor

The Canada Fintech Forum returns to Montréal on September 14-15, 2026.

Join financial institutions, fintechs, investors, regulators, and innovators for two days of networking, industry insights, and strategic discussions. Explore the trends shaping the future of financial services, discover new business opportunities, and build meaningful connections with the leaders driving Canada’s fintech ecosystem forward.

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Top stories from BetaKit

Wildfire wayfinder

If a wildfire blocked your usual highway route out of town, would you know your back roads well enough to get to safety? Kelowna, BC-based BackRoadIntel is mapping the conditions on tenuous service roads so people know what to expect on evacuation routes.

“Chipflation” gets worse

AI demand was already driving up hardware prices; now tariffs are expected to make things even worse. In a sit-down with BetaKit, Quoted Tech co-founder Kevin Jia discusses how Canada’s businesses and consumers should navigate the new era of “chipflation.”

Record-breaking rocketry

A group of students from the University of Waterloo broke a world record at the Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins, Ont., last week. Their liquid rocket soared past 63,000 feet, surpassing the previous amateur world record of 56,590 feet.

“From soup to qubits”

Toronto-based quantum computing firm Xanadu has secured a $195-million federal loan to open an advanced photonics research, development, and manufacturing hub inside Etobicoke’s old brick Campbell’s Soup factory.

Brain gain

Canada has convinced 64 international academics, mostly from the United States, to bring their talents to Canadian universities. Experts from institutions like Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and MIT have found new homes at places like the University of British Columbia, the University of Ottawa, and the University of Toronto.

Sponsored stories

How GM Canada is Steering a Global Mobility Strategy from Ontario

As a global leader in automobile innovation, transitioned its lab research and research hubs to develop, test, and globally deploy the next generation of autonomous vehicle deployments.

Deals and dollars

Who cashed in, or out, this week:

• The federal government committed $31 million to help Kardium manufacture its medical device that treats irregular heartbeats. (Burnaby)
  
  
• The feds topped up the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network with $50 million to launch new AgTech programming. (Edmonton)
  
  
• The federal government dispensed nearly $15 million to nine organizations supporting Black-led businesses and entrepreneurs. (Southern Ontario)
  
  
• MDA Space launched a venture program to help Canadian space and defence tech startups meet sovereign defence priorities. (Brampton)
  
  
• VC firm Timia Capital expanded its B2B tech lending capacity by $60 million with funding from SAF Group. (Toronto)
  
  
• BlackTech Capital launched a $2-million fund to back underrepresented cleantech founders. (Toronto)
  
  
• BenchSci partnered with Google Cloud to run its AI drug discovery platform. (Toronto)
  
  
• Financial intelligence platform Orbit raised $2.5 million, according to CEO Ujwal Arkalgud. (Toronto)
  
  
• Calian is “more focused” on defence and space after selling its US IT business and acquiring Galaxy Broadband, the Ottawa Business Journal reported. (Ottawa)
  
  
• Osedea acquired fellow tech consultancy Ventriloc to add capabilities that can help it take on larger competitors. (Montréal/Sherbrooke)
  
  
• The feds, Newfoundland, and NordSpace injected $10 million into the Atlantic Spaceport Complex, CBC News reported. (St. Lawrence, NL / Markham)
  

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Data point

20

US states have sued prediction market operators, arguing they operate more like sports gambling.

Where does Canada sit?

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The refresh

No, AI is not autonomously hacking

Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize AI, with even researchers at METR describing agents as “misleading” or “colluding” in their report on the OpenAI hack of Hugging Face. On Better Offline, AI critic Ed Zitron chats with computer science prof Cal Newport about why it’s important to understand how these programs actually operate, how serious this incident was, and where human responsibility comes in.

The future of AI is built through ideas, connections and collaboration.

On Sept. 16-17, 7,500 decision-makers, tech experts, startups and researchers from over 40 countries will come together in Montréal.

Join the conversation on the future of AI & tech.

Register now for ALL IN 2026

BetaKit Podcast  ·  Aug 27

“My god. Every time I ask you people for questions, I instantly regret it.”

What is Canada’s most overrated tech company? How do we keep young founders in the country? Is BlackBerry making a comeback? What are Canada’s must-read business books?

In a special mailbag episode of The BetaKit Podcast, BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys answers your burning tech questions. Listen now ›

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy TechCrunch under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

The post How did 1,200 OpenAI agents go rogue? first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto is working with Canadian company Clariti to try to speed up its building permit approval process with AI. 

The news: On Thursday, the City of Toronto launched a new building permit application pre-check service, which uses AI to help flag potential issues in a user’s application before it’s submitted. Vancouver-based startup Clariti is providing the software, called CivCheck, for the one-year pilot program. 

From the source: The city says that it reviews more than 36,000 building permit applications every year, which evens out to more than 140 per working day. According to local company Konstruction Group Inc., it takes roughly 12 to 24 weeks to get a permit fully approved in Toronto. 

“Incomplete applications are among the most common causes of delay, and every round of corrections adds weeks to projects,” Clariti CEO Cyrus Symoom wrote in an email to BetaKit. 

The context: Like many other urban hubs in Canada, Toronto needs more housing units to meet demand. Developers have called for faster municipal approvals, arguing that waiting for months and sometimes years hikes development costs. Industry group Building Industry and Land Development Association calculated that each month of delay costs between $2,673 and $5,576 CAD for developers, depending on location and housing type. 

Symoom claimed that in Honolulu, residential applications using CivCheck reached a decision 55 percent more quickly than those that didn’t. For now, CivCheck is available for permit applications for a narrow set of construction types, like residential buildings with two units or fewer.

Final thought: Toronto has been integrating AI tools into different city functions, from smart traffic signals to 911 call screening (powered by the recently exited startup Hyper), as well as the more controversial use of AI-powered surveillance cameras. In its release for CivCheck, the City of Toronto was clear that use of the tool is voluntary and doesn’t autonomously review permits or replace the work of its staff. 

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Akshay Chauhan.

The post How Toronto is using Clariti’s AI to speed up building permit approvals first appeared on BetaKit.

Quantum computing firm Xanadu announced today that it is opening an advanced photonics research, development, and manufacturing hub in Toronto with financial support from the Government of Canada.

Toronto-based Xanadu has inked a definitive agreement for the feds to loan it $195 million CAD in funding—half of the up to $390 million the company has been seeking from the federal and Ontario governments as part of Project OPTIMISM—to establish and operate this facility over the next five years. Project OPTIMISM is expected to cost $893 million in total and create 275 new highly-skilled jobs.

“The [feds] just don’t hand out nearly $200 million to anyone in any sector. Quantum is the future, and they’re recognizing this.”

In an interview with BetaKit, Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook claimed that this is the largest quantum manufacturing investment in Canadian history. The repayable contribution comes through Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada’s Strategic Response Fund, which replaced the Strategic Innovation Fund, and requires a significant level of coinvestment on Xanadu’s part.

The new, 158,000-square-foot photonics hub, named Inception after the popular Christopher Nolan film, will be located in Etobicoke at the old brick Campbell’s Soup factory. Campbell’s vacated the building in 2019, and it was restored to its original Art Deco style by QuadReal Property Group. Xanadu is taking over the entire building.

Weedbrook appreciates the site’s heritage, and joked that Xanadu is considering creating company T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “from soup to qubits.” 

The modern-looking building currently has no old signs or other clear nods to its predecessor Campbell’s, beyond the brick facade covering a small portion of its exterior. Weedbrook said Xanadu will look to incorporate something when the site is up and running, suggesting a print of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans series near the entrance.

The CEO said this photonics hub will accelerate Xanadu’s quantum computing development efforts and build the components it needs to power future quantum data centres, the first of which it aims to establish by 2029.

Weedbrook said the investment reflects the company’s longstanding relationship with the federal government, from which it has already garnered $78 million to date. That includes $40 million from the feds through the Strategic Innovation Fund, and Xanadu is also due to land up to $23 million through the first phase of the Canadian Quantum Champions Program (CQCP).

“The [feds] just don’t hand out nearly $200 million to anyone in any sector,” Weedbrook said. “Quantum is the future, and they’re recognizing this, so it’s great to see.”

Canada’s Minister of AI and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon said in a news release that quantum “will be one of the foundational technologies of the 21st century,” noting that the government hopes the commitment will help ensure Canada remains a leader in this space.

When “you go from soup cans to qubits, you’re looking at the future and you’re telling the country, this is what we see,” Solomon said during today’s announcement.

“Buildings like this are the shell for what will be the most advanced technology, the best pure science, the best innovation, and some of the best products in the world,” Solomon added. “I feel like we’re here at the launch of Starship Enterprise.”

Weedbrook expressed hope that additional funding from the Ontario government would follow, but said he had no firm updates to share on the status of those discussions at this time. 

RELATED: Xanadu visits the White House for quantum summit

Since 2016, TSX- and Nasdaq-listed Xanadu has been working to use photonics-based quantum computing to perform exceptionally fast and complex computations at room temperature, quicker than traditional computers. Weedbrook has said that quantum computers, which have yet to prove viable at a commercially useful scale, could eventually be applied to help discover new drugs or create more powerful electric vehicle batteries. 

Inception will be complementary to the $10-million advanced photonics packaging facility Xanadu opened at its Bay and College headquarters, which the company plans to maintain.

Xanadu claimed the facility will also help it develop capabilities beyond just quantum, including in packaging, heterogeneous integration, and wafer-level test infrastructure, which are also useful in telecommunications, AI hardware, and sensing technologies.

Weedbrook said Xanadu has previously outsourced most of these tasks to third-party firms in other countries. Inception will help the company execute them domestically and in-house, and move faster, he added.

RELATED: Canada launches its own quantum research program to rival DARPA initiative

He cited packaging—the process of housing, protecting, and connecting photonic quantum chips to outside components—as an example. Packaging takes Xanadu’s partner as much as three months to complete. With Inception, he said Xanadu can start doing it in eight hours, which could prove invaluable as the company races to build a large-scale quantum computer.

Weedbrook anticipates that Xanadu will begin using the facility early next year, and said the company will be growing its 320-person team to staff Inception, with hires in advanced manufacturing, engineering, and science.

“This obviously isn’t happening in isolation,” Weedbrook said during today’s announcement. “Countries around the world are investing heavily in quantum.”

Canada has a long history of losing its tech talent, research, and companies to the United States and other countries, including in AI. Weedbrook argued CQCP and Project OPTIMISM demonstrate that the Canadian government “doesn’t want to repeat past mistakes.”

“This is really the government putting their money where their mouth is,” Weedbrook said.

Feature image courtesy Josh Scott for BetaKit.

The post “From soup to qubits”: Xanadu to open advanced photonics hub in old Campbell’s factory first appeared on BetaKit.

Burnaby, BC-based medical technology company Kardium will receive up to $31.25 million from the Government of Canada to bolster its manufacturing capabilities in the province.

“The Government of Canada’s investment is an important step in our continued growth.”

Kevin Chaplin,
Kardium

The funding was one of two new commitments announced Thursday by Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada through its Strategic Response Fund (SRF). Kardium, which makes a device to treat atrial fibrillation (AF), will use the funding to support a $125-million project aimed at expanding from producing 500 annual units to 30,000. The initiative is expected to create 1,000 skilled jobs in BC, and help Kardium keep its intellectual property in Canada. 

The Canadian arm of German chemical giant Evonik is also getting up to $68 million through the SRF. That money will support Evonik Canada’s $150-million push to build and operate a Nucleic Acid Competence Centre in BC to make the next generation of mRNA vaccines and therapies, which is expected to create 260 jobs. 

“Kardium is proud to be developing and manufacturing our innovative medical technology here in British Columbia,” Kardium CEO Kevin Chaplin said in a news release. “The Government of Canada’s investment is an important step in our continued growth and will help us expand our manufacturing capabilities as we bring our technology to more physicians and patients around the world.”

RELATED: Kardium closes $340 million CAD to secure regulatory approval, expand manufacturing for atrial fibrillation heart device

Kardium has been working on a heart device for AF since it was founded in 2007. AF is an irregular heartbeat disorder that affects more than 59 million people globally, putting them at a higher risk for serious complications such as heart failure. Kardium’s solution is a sophisticated catheter that maps the inside of the heart and zaps problem cells.

Kardium closed $340 million CAD last July to bring that device to market. Shortly thereafter, Kardium obtained regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to sell it, and earlier this month, Health Canada gave it the green light north of the border. According to The Globe and Mail, the 700-person company could go public as soon as the second half of 2027.

Feature image courtesy Kardium.

The post Feds commit $31 million to help Kardium manufacture its heart device in BC first appeared on BetaKit.

Regulated prediction markets in Canada shouldn’t be able to offer sports or entertainment contracts as securities, according to a statement issued by the nation’s securities regulators. 

The news: The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) published a joint notice on Thursday saying that contracts relating to sports and entertainment events should not be regulated as securities or derivatives, and that CIRO won’t allow its members to offer these types of contracts. 

In Canada, regulated contract dealers (currently Wealthsimple and Interactive Brokers) under CIRO can offer event contracts related to economic indicators, climate-related events, and financial markets.CSA and CIRO said in their joint release that other types of event contracts are still being assessed.

From the source: “I definitely understand CIRO’s logic here: sports and entertainment outcomes are hard to regulate and look much more like gaming than securities,” Noah Billick, a partner at Montréal law firm Renno & Co, wrote in a LinkedIn post. “My concern is this: given the interconnected world we live in, and the ease with which Canadian residents can access prediction markets that are not regulated in Canada, is this simply going to push Canadians into less-regulated, shadowy corners of the prediction markets space?”

The context: The statement from regulators comes shortly after Wealthsimple, which launched a prediction markets app this summer, argued in a whitepaper that dividing up the regulatory oversight of derivatives instruments by subject matter is the “wrong approach” for regulators. For instance, Wealthsimple’s paper said, putting sports outcomes under gaming regulation while financial outcomes are treated as securities would be “unworkable.” In response to a request for comment on CSA and CIRO’s statement today, Wealthsimple referred BetaKit to the whitepaper. 

Final thought: While sports and entertainment event contracts won’t be permitted by CIRO for now, Wealthsimple is still teasing the offering: its app displays some of these markets, such as trades on Academy Award nominations, with a feature to notify the user once it becomes available in Canada. 

Regulation for these markets is up in the air elsewhere, too. More than 20 US states have sued prediction market operators like Kalshi and Polymarket over whether they should be subject to state laws on sports gambling.

Disclosure: Wealthsimple vice-president of payments strategy and chief compliance officer, Hanna Zaidi, sits on BetaKit’s board of directors.

Feature image courtesy Wealthsimple.

The post Canadian platforms shouldn’t offer sports or entertainment prediction market bets, regulators say first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada has convinced 64 international academics, mostly from the United States, to bring their work to Canadian universities through its new talent-attraction program. 

The news: Industry minister Mélanie Joly announced the first round of academics coming to Canada as part of the $1.7-billion Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative on Thursday. The program will give these 64 experts—who operate in areas like health, the environment, and AI—$504 million over eight years to bolster institutions like the University of British Columbia, the University of Ottawa, and the University of Toronto. 

These new research chairs come from 13 different countries, but an overwhelming 48 of them hail from the United States, including institutions like Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and MIT. Four researchers come from the United Kingdom, two from China, and the remaining countries, like Germany, India, and Japan, each gave up one.

From the source: “These exceptional researchers are tackling complex challenges and generating knowledge that will help strengthen communities, inform decision-making, and improve the lives of people across Canada,” Normand Labrie, chair of the Canada Research Coordinating Committee, said in a statement. “I have no doubt [the research chairs] will help cement Canada’s place as a world leader in key research fields—from AI to biotechnology and beyond.”

The context: The talent attraction initiative was earmarked in the 2025 budget to try to attract 100 researchers to Canada. Many countries are taking advantage of the US brain drain sparked by the Trump administration’s cuts to billions in funding from academic institutions, as well as its restrictions on what scholars could study.

Final thought: While Canada has a brain drain problem of its own, many of its top minds came to Canada from other countries, including AI pioneers like UK-born Geoffrey Hinton and US-born Richard Sutton. The government said bringing in this new talent will lead to the discovery of new technologies and practices, as well as train the next generation of research leaders to build out Canada’s research and innovation capacity.

Feature image courtesy Mélanie Joly via LinkedIn.

The post Canada poaches 64 global scholars in bid to bolster domestic talent pipeline first appeared on BetaKit.

Brampton-based MDA Space wants to help other Canadian space and defence technology companies scale their solutions with a new venture funding program.

The news: The new strategic program is focused on identifying and making equity investments in domestic small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are developing promising space and defence technologies.. Through MDA Space LaunchPad Ventures, the Canadarm maker and Canadian space industry veteran hopes to help startups build capabilities that meet the needs of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and allied militaries. MDA has outlined 25 focus areas aligned to Canada’s sovereign priorities, ranging from satellite and autonomous systems to air navigation and orbital signal-jamming technology. 

From the source: “The biggest barrier for most Canadian defence SMBs isn’t talent or technology, it’s access to customers, to networks, and revenue opportunities,” MDA senior director of corporate development Shawn Roy, who is leading this program, told BetaKit over email. “MDA Space has spent 55 years building those relationships. MDA Space LaunchPad Ventures is how we open them up to Canadian SMBs that we can work with to deliver the capabilities our customers and the market need.”

The context: MDA initially spun up LaunchPad in 2018 as an entry point for innovative Canadian SMBs and academic research groups looking to collaborate with the company. With LaunchPad Ventures, which marks an extension of that continuing program, MDA plans to put its own capital into portfolio companies and give them access to its engineering expertise, its recently launched defence subsidiary 49North, and a government contract pipeline. For MDA, which has already backed companies like Halifax-based Maritime Launch Services, Roy called LaunchPad Ventures “a natural evolution and expansion” of its business that gives it early access to emerging tech. Roy, who declined to disclose the program value, said MDA aims to collaborate with other investors as part of the initiative.

Final thought: LaunchPad Ventures arrives as the Government of Canada prepares to pour billions of dollars into reducing the country’s dependence on the US and build a “robust” Canadian defence industry after decades of underinvestment. SMBs are expected to play a key role in this push, but many are still struggling to break into the sector. Established players like MDA and Ottawa defence contractor Calian could bridge the gap. 

Calian has already launched Calian Ventures, a $100-million CAD platform to help firms with existing defence solutions test, validate, and sell to the CAF using some of its own cash. Given where the Canadian defence winds are blowing, these programs are unlikely to be the last of their kind.

UPDATE (08/28/26): This story has been updated to include commentary and additional information shared by MDA Space senior director of corporate development Shawn Roy.

Feature image courtesy MDA Space.

The post MDA Space launches venture program to back Canadian space and defence tech startups first appeared on BetaKit.

Sometimes, you get what you asked for.

Honouring the podcasting ways of old, we put out a call for your burning questions on Canadian tech and tech from a Canadian perspective to produce a summer mailbag episode. Boy howdy did you deliver.

“My god. Every time I ask you people for questions, I instantly regret it.” 

The submitted questions from The BetaKit Podcast audience (along with a few friends of the pod) were pointed, to say the least. What is Canada’s most overrated tech company? How do we keep young founders in the country? Can longstanding access to capital problems be solved? Is a vibrant Canadian tech ecosystem even possible?

And oh so many questions about AI.

It’s an eclectic query mix that, taken as a whole, accurately reflects the current state of tech. It’s also a veritable gauntlet for one lone podcast host to navigate, leading me to swear off mailbag episodes entirely… until the next one.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

My handwringing is just a delaying tactic to distract you from the big question: was I able to supply any useful answers to your burning tech questions?

I’ll leave that for you to decide. Let’s dig in.

Related links:

• Canadian tech firms are selling to foreign buyers when it’s time to scale, CCI says
• Rogers v. Rogers is Canada’s real-life Succession story
• Minister Evan Solomon on Canada’s AI strategy, sovereignty, and social media
• Did the Anthropic model ban prove Cohere is right about sovereign AI?
• Can Wealthsimple build Canada’s largest financial institution?
• It’s “Valley or Bust” for Canada’s young entrepreneurs
• Physical AI and economic nationalism at BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall​
• BetaKit Most Ambitious 2026

PRESENTED BY

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by BetaKit Most Ambitious.

Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear: Canada’s moment to build is now.

Presented by Uber Canada, DMZ, and National Bank of Canada, BetaKit Most Ambitious is back, telling stories of nearly 100 Canadian innovators strengthening our nation’s autonomy, security, and prosperity.

Read BetaKit Most Ambitious now.

Recorded and edited by Toronto Podcasts.

The post Answering your burning tech questions first appeared on BetaKit.

Al Vigier is the founder and CEO of Vancouver-based AI company Caseway. 

Something changed in our sales calls over the past year. Buyers who used to open with questions about features and pricing now open with questions about jurisdiction. 

“Where is the company incorporated? Who owns it? Where does the data live? Which foreign government could order you to do something, and what happens to us if one does?”

Three years ago, nobody asked those questions. Now, it comes up even before the demo.

“This is a product opportunity, yet most Canadian startups are treating it as a paint job.”

Al Vigier, Caseway

The trade war did that. When the United States enacted 50-percent tariffs on $28 billion of Canadian goods over a single weekend, every buyer who wants to mitigate risk naturally started asking what can be switched off from Washington. Software dependency is high on that list. Vendor nationality has become a procurement variable in software, just as exposure to China became a variable for hardware over the past five years, first through the Huawei security bans and then the pandemic supply shocks.

The demand side has moved fast. The federal Buy Canadian Policy, in force since December 2025, directs departments and agencies to prioritize Canadian suppliers and Canadian content for major purchases, and it extends to grant programs and, where possible, Crown corporations. Provinces and cities are writing their own versions. Enterprise boards are running the same logic privately: the questionnaire that once asked about SOC 2 compliance now asks about ownership, control, and governing law.

This is a product opportunity, yet most Canadian startups are treating it as a paint job.

Sovereignty, specified properly, is a feature set. It should include data residency in Canadian regions with contractual guarantees, rather than best efforts; Canadian ownership and control, documented, so a procurement officer does not have to guess; a clear map of subprocessors and which foreign statutes reach them; governing law and dispute resolution in Canada; continuity commitments that describe exactly what happens to a customer’s deployment if a foreign platform provider cuts access or a border closes. 

RELATED: Canada’s early-stage investment gap “now a sovereignty issue,” BDC says

Each of those involves engineering and legal work. Each of those is something a buyer under pressure will pay for.

Sovereignty can’t be just maple-washing. Do the work. A flag on the pricing page and a .ca domain is marketing, and it won’t stand up to procurement due diligence.  If the stack underneath a product is entirely built on American cloud infrastructure, a competent procurement team will find that out in one architecture review—the credibility loss is worse than never having made the claim. Sovereignty claims are now verified the way security claims are. 

There are three moves for founders who want to sell sovereignty the right way.

“Sovereignty claims are now verified the way security claims are.”

Al Vigier, Caseway

First, write a sovereignty spec sheet and make it a standard sales document. One page: incorporation, ownership, data residency, subprocessors, applicable foreign statutes, governing law, continuity plan. Hand it over before being asked. The vendor who answers the jurisdiction questions unprompted sets the bar the rest of the shortlist gets measured against.

Second, get into the systems that reward domestic firms. Buy Canadian only helps suppliers who exist in the procurement machinery: federal supplier registration, provincial portals, municipal bid lists. The policy tailwind is real, but it blows through channels, and most early-stage companies have never registered for them. It’s boring work that takes days, but it’s the difference between being eligible for those policies and sitting on the sidelines.

Third, price it. If sovereign deployment costs you real engineering, sell it as such: a premium tier for buyers whose risk registers demand it. Giving it away signals you do not believe sovereignty is worth anything. The market is telling you it is. Capital is scarce right now; seed and pre-seed funding fell to $297.2 million across 133 deals in the first half of 2025, down 16 percent year over year. In that market, a differentiator with a national policy actively pushing buyers toward it is about the cheapest growth lever available.

The trade war will end eventually. The procurement rules, the board questions, and the diligence habits it created will outlive it, because risk registers only grow. 

The founders who productize sovereignty now, honestly and in the stack rather than on the landing page, will own that shelf, even when the shooting stops.

The opinions and analysis expressed in the above article are those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of BetaKit or its editorial staff. It has been edited for clarity, length, and style.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by sebastiaan stam.

The post Sovereignty is now a feature, and Canadian founders are shipping it for free first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based Timia Capital has bolstered its lending capacity by $60 million CAD, giving it the ability to provide larger loans to more business-to-business (B2B) technology companies.

The news: Timia provides debt to B2B tech firms across Canada and the United States, focusing on B2B software-as-a-service and software-enabled companies with product-market fit, with between $2 million and $20 million in annual recurring revenue and gross margins of 50 percent or more. The lender announced on Tuesday that it has expanded its ability to lend to startups that fit this profile by $60 million, thanks to a $25-million credit facility from Calgary-based alternative investment and private credit firm SAF Group.

From the source: In a blog post, Timia CEO Michael Wallace said many tech founders “are deliberately combining equity and debt to reduce dilution and maintain control” amid uncertain venture capital market conditions. He said Timia has identified “a strong pipeline” of companies building sustainable businesses and seeking flexible capital to fuel their growth. “This facility allows us to support more of those founders with larger investments,” he said.

The context: Founded in 2015, Timia’s website claims the firm has provided more than $200 million worth of loans to 80 portfolio companies to date, making this expansion a significant one for the growing tech lender, whose current investments include Toronto-based digital marketing startup Webware AI and Mississauga telematics software company BrightOrder. Timia counts Vancouver-based permitting software provider Clariti, Calgary payroll tech company Wagepoint, and FinTech firm Beanworks among its exits. Toronto venture capital firm Round13 Capital acquired Timia in 2024 to round out its suite of financing options.

Final thought: The private credit industry is booming, and small but growing Canadian players like Timia and larger Vancouver-based peer Vistara Growth—which is raising a new fund of its own—are scaling up to meet demand from tech entrepreneurs.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Romain Dancre.

The post Timia Capital expands B2B tech lending capacity with funding from SAF Group first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada’s trade war with the US has intensified, and tech leaders say we need to hold fast and make deliberate choices now that the stakes are raised.

The news: On Saturday, the US imposed sweeping, 50-percent tariffs on everything from aluminum to dairy and electronics, and Canada has responded with dollar-for-dollar retaliatory measures. It’s the latest escalation of the 19-month trade war between the two nations after talks collapsed. As CFIB and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce have noted, the impacts won’t be “abstract,” and businesses will likely feel them immediately.

From the source: Prime Minister Mark Carney told Canadians, “We can’t control the storm that blows in from Washington.” Instead, he said Canada can build stronger trade relationships with, and court greater investment from, other countries. CVCA CEO Benjamin Bergen aims to help with the latter at an investor gathering coinciding with Carney’s summit next month. Bergen told BetaKit that Canada would also do well to mobilize domestic capital and retain entrepreneurs by quickly launching its VGCCI fund-of-funds and aligning its taxation approach with the US QSBS regime.

The context: As BetaKit has reported, tech was not the primary target, but “digital trade alignment”—a front where Canada conceded in the initial CUSMA—was mentioned shortly before these latest negotiations broke down. Canadian Shield Institute managing director Vass Bednar told BetaKit Canada needs to stay strong and avoid making the same types of concessions if it hopes to stay “sovereign in any sense that matters.”

The Canada Fintech Forum returns to Montréal on September 14-15, 2026.

Join financial institutions, fintechs, investors, regulators, and innovators for two days of networking, industry insights, and strategic discussions. Explore the trends shaping the future of financial services, discover new business opportunities, and build meaningful connections with the leaders driving Canada’s fintech ecosystem forward.

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Latest news across tech

Meta settles

Meta has agreed to make sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram as part of a nearly $18-billion USD settlement for its social media addiction lawsuit. The settlement will profoundly change how the apps work for youth, including an option for a non-algorithmic feed, usage limits, hidden likes, and limiting “extreme makeup filters.” Now, if only they’d stop the ability to doomscroll for the rest of us.

Sorry, how much?

As Anthropic gears up to go public, the AI developer is expected to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities exceed $30 trillion (yes, with a t), according to The Wall Street Journal. The forecast rockets past SpaceX, which just held the largest IPO in history on a $28.5 trillion revenue estimate.

Is the AI race opening up?

This week, Toronto-based Thomson Reuters unveiled its first AI model Thomson-1, built on top of Alibaba’s Qwen3.5. Like Harvey and Cursor, Thomson Reuters is the latest to turn to an open-source Chinese model, as companies seek lower-cost alternatives to US heavyweights like Claude.

Big tech opens its wallet

OpenRouter to Stripe, Cursor to SpaceX; it’s starting to feel like startups are getting drafted to the big leagues via acquisitions. The Information breaks down how cheap capital and the current political environment have big tech suddenly lining up for startup bidding wars.

AI op-eds

US billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller said he writes “everything” using AI, including a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. The publication stood behind the decision to publish the editorial, which has sparked debate over the value of AI-assisted writing. Is it worth the read if it wasn’t worth the write?

Sponsored stories

What Quantum Week’s keynote lineup says about the tech in 2026

IEEE Quantum Week is coming to Toronto from Sep 13-18, bringing together global leaders from computing, academia, and government to highlight how quantum science is converging with technologies such as GenAI to drive practical commercial applications.

On the move

This week’s hires, fires, and exec shakeups:

• Casetext co-founder Pablo Arredondo joined BC-based legaltech Clio to lead its expansion into the judiciary market, reported LawSites.
• Ottawa-based data platform Solace appointed former Qlik CEO Mike Capone to its board of directors.
• Montréal-based VC Amiral Ventures added former Aptum CEO Ian Rae as a founding investor.
• Vancouver-based Integrated Quantum Technologies has appointed former HSBC global engineering head Husam Fezzani as CEO.
• Fifty-four percent of Canadians are reconsidering their educational or career plans because of AI, according to a survey by Ten Thousand Coffees.
• Reuters detailed how Meta’s plans to cut some of its teams by up to 60 percent in a push to become AI-native plummeted employee morale.
• The Trump administration has proposed more visa restrictions, deterring international AI talent from building companies in the US, reports Rest of World.

Want to feature a hiring announcement on our list? Email partnerships@betakit.com with the subject line JOBS.

ALL IN 2026: Help shape the future of AI & tech

Join 7,500 leaders, decision-makers, tech providers, researchers, and startups at ALL IN on Sept. 16-17.

Discover real-world AI applications, forge global partnerships, and help drive the future of Canada’s economy.

Explore the full program.

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Josh Scott (Toronto reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor-in-chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Mark Carney via X.

The post How to stay sovereign first appeared on BetaKit.

Coinbase Canada’s new country director and CEO Eric Richmond thinks that Canadian cryptocurrency companies and watchdogs could use more “all-encompassing” regulation.

In an interview with BetaKit last month, Richmond noted that Canada’s patchwork of provincial and territorial securities regulators has largely governed crypto firms via staff notices and exemption orders, a fragmented approach he claimed has made operating more difficult for both businesses and authorities alike. 

“We want Coinbase to be the platform that Canadians choose.”

Exemption orders in particular, Richmond said, not only make compliance very expensive for entrepreneurs building in the space, but are “hard on the regulators because they’ve got to do the same thing for each of the platforms.”

As a securities lawyer with experience navigating this path with his previous employers, Coinsquare, Shakepay, and Tetra Trust, Richmond knows the regulatory landscape well. So does Coinbase: in 2024, the US crypto giant became the first international crypto exchange to secure a restricted dealer licence in Canada with the Canadian Securities Administrators. Richmond said Coinbase Canada has already submitted its application to become regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization in a process the firm hopes to complete by early next year.

As leader of Coinbase Canada, Richmond said he plans to advocate for “more all-encompassing acts” that “codify” the rules Canada already has in place, citing jurisdictions like the European Union and Singapore as inspiration for how the country might achieve this. 

His ask for a more harmonized digital asset framework is something that Canada’s crypto sector has been requesting for years.

Richmond also thinks Canada needs to establish clear “rules of the road” for people looking to establish businesses in the sector if it hopes to keep them here.

The CEO’s vision doesn’t end there: Richmond also has big plans for Coinbase in Canada, where the company already has 300 employees and has made 18 investments. North of the border, Coinbase operates as a crypto exchange for institutional and retail customers. Richmond joined the company in June as it gears up to bring more of the services it provides abroad—which include traditional equities, derivatives, prediction markets, blockchain-based lending and borrowing, and its Visa debit card—to the Canadian market.

“[We’re] looking to bring some of the best products that we have to offer globally to Canadians,” Richmond said. He hopes to “bring the everything exchange to Canadians”: a single platform for managing all sorts of financial assets beyond just crypto, while also pushing for the regulatory clarity both it and the industry need to thrive.

Coinbase Canada is plotting this expansion amid a crypto market slump, as it looks to compete against a smaller pool of dedicated domestic players, such as Netcoins, and more traditional trading platforms following WonderFi’s acquisition spree and subsequent purchase by US exchange Robinhood, which has officially entered Canada.

RELATED: Coinbase becomes first international crypto exchange to secure restricted dealer licence in Canada

“We want Coinbase to be the platform that Canadians choose,” Richmond said.

Richmond previously co-founded Calgary-based crypto custodian Tetra Trust and led Toronto-based digital asset trading platform Coinsquare, most recently serving as general counsel and head of business development at Montréal crypto firm Shakepay.

“I’ve been in the crypto space for a long time—10-plus years—typically working at companies that are [achieving] regulatory firsts,” he said. He wants to help his new employer secure more firsts, starting with crypto derivatives.

Richmond’s predecessor at Coinbase Canada, Lucas Matheson, who left late last year, has argued that Canada needs to regulate stablecoins (a form of crypto whose value is pegged to a more stable asset like the Canadian or US dollar) as a payment type rather than securities. 

Some expect stablecoins to play an important role in how Canadian institutions settle transactions going forward. Richmond thinks it is “just a matter of time” until stablecoins become more embedded in traditional Canadian payments infrastructure.

At the Blockchain Futurist Conference last month, industry leaders argued that a lack of regulatory clarity on stablecoins was still hampering domestic innovation. With the Stablecoin Act on the way, Richmond expressed hope Canada would permit the ability to pay rewards on stablecoins and provide more guidance on the role of bank issuers and securities regulators.

Feature image courtesy Coinbase via LinkedIn.

The post Coinbase Canada’s Eric Richmond thinks “all-encompassing” crypto regulation could lighten the load first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto’s BlackTech Capital (BTC) has officially launched its Catalyst fund, which will back early-stage cleantech companies led by founders who have traditionally been underrepresented in the tech sector.

On Wednesday, the firm announced that it held a $500,000 first close of a target $2-million CAD fund, which it aims to close before the end of the year. Its anchor investors are Ontario-based impact investing family office Dragonfly Ventures, Canada’s largest Black-led VC fund BKR Capital, and a handful of high-net-worth individuals. BTC told BetaKit it’s starting with a micro venture fund in part to chase the outsized returns that can come with smaller funds, and to bring in investors at a more accessible minimum cheque size amid a tough fundraising environment for emerging managers. 

“We’re seeing more investors come to the table saying, ‘if we can get in for as little as $10,000, let’s give this a try.’”

“The purpose [is] explicitly to make venture fund returns, but with a focus on the founders who are constantly overlooked, despite them bringing excellent teams, excellent technology, original IP to the table,” BTC co-managing partner Keyona Meeks said in an interview with BetaKit. “We thought with this Catalyst vehicle, we could lead the market and show them through example.” 

Founded in 2021, BTC set out to close a funding gap for Black founders and other underrepresented groups, but itself faced challenges raising a fund. The 2025 Black Startup Funding Report, released by BKR and Rep Matters, found that only 0.15 percent of all VC deployed in Canada last year went to Black founders. The BTC team recently went through BKR Capital’s Launch Readiness Program, a mentoring program for Black-led fund managers.  

RELATED: BKR Capital secures initial $20 million for second Black Innovation Fund

The fund is run through Equivesto Canada, an angel investment and online equity crowdfunding platform. Meeks said this allows BTC to raise money through minimum cheque sizes of $10,000, allowing for a more accessible entry point for individual investors.

“There’s still a lot of reluctance in venture investing in early-stage companies,” co-managing partner Bryan Duarte told BetaKit. “We’re seeing more investors come to the table saying, ‘if we can get in for as little as $10,000, let’s give this a try.’”

So far, BTC has already invested in four cleantech companies, including Serenity Power, which is creating low-emission power with solid oxide fuel cells, and Kiwi Charge, which makes an electric vehicle charging robot. The plan is to invest in two more before the end of the year, and to keep half of its portfolio woman-founded.  

Feature image courtesy BlackTech Capital.

The post BlackTech Capital launches $2-million fund to back underrepresented cleantech founders first appeared on BetaKit.

Businesses and IT leaders have a limited understanding of what sovereign AI means or what opportunities it may offer, according to a new study sponsored by Toronto-based AI developer Cohere. 

The news: The study, performed by analyst firm IDC on behalf of Cohere, found that more than half of executive leaders believe sovereign AI is a priority, but there was little agreement on its definition. According to the report, one in three respondents had difficulty describing sovereign AI in their own words, and only 13 percent said it’s widely understood across their organizations. 

From the source: IDC defined sovereign AI as “the ability to have free choice and control over the design, development, deployment, accessibility, operation, maintenance, and governance of AI systems and applications, as well as the underlying technology foundations they depend on.”

The report found that Canadian organizations understand the concept of sovereign AI the least, with only 10 percent reporting a high awareness while 89 percent reported a low awareness.

The context: For the report, IDC surveyed 508 IT and business decision-makers behind their organization’s AI purchasing decisions. The respondents represented large enterprises with over $1 billion USD ($1.4 billion CAD) in annual revenue across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. 

While Canadian organizations lagged in awareness, they still identified it as a potential business benefit. Thirty-five percent of Canadian respondents said the competitive advantage was their primary driver for pursuing sovereign AI, leading all other countries, including the US at 28 percent and Germany at 23 percent. 

Final thought: Sovereignty is not just one of Cohere’s key selling points, but a broader concern of Canadian governments and businesses in light of ongoing geopolitical disputes with the US. However, policymakers have sometimes struggled to articulate its definition or how it may be achieved.

By commissioning this study, Cohere said it wanted to see how enterprise AI decision-makers think about data ownership, governance, security, and operational control. Based on the results, the company concluded that there’s “a clear need” for C-suite leaders to have shared definitions, training, and actionable strategies around sovereign AI.

Feature image courtesy of World Economic Forum on Flickr. Shared under CC license BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The post Most Canadian execs say sovereign AI is important. Few know what it actually means first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada was thrust into a trade war again this weekend. After the US reportedly tried to change deal terms at the last minute, Canada backed out of a proposed trade agreement. The US then imposed a broad set of tariffs on $28 billion of goods on Saturday, with Canada announcing dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs set to take effect on Sept. 8. It threw businesses into a new wave of uncertainty, and the feds have introduced a $7.5-billion package of new measures to support domestic industries. 

Electronics and electrical equipment exports are set to be hit the hardest by tariffs among Canadian industries, according to The Globe and Mail, with Canada exporting roughly $4.4 billion USD ($6.1 billion CAD) worth of products last year. However, there’s a twin cost issue that may hurt the broader industry worse than tariffs. Tech giants pouring billions into AI compute infrastructure have contributed to a shortage in computer memory, driving up random-access memory (RAM) and other hardware prices. 

Kevin Jia, the co-founder of Canadian PC maker Quoted Tech Computers, has a front-row seat to both electronics duties and skyrocketing hardware costs. BetaKit spoke to Jia about how Canada’s businesses and consumers should navigate juggling “chipflation” with potential new tariffs.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

How might the collapse of this weekend’s trade talks, and the imposition of fresh tariffs and counter-tariffs, impact AI hardware buyers in Canada?

Any time tariffs come into place, it immediately puts everybody on edge. Everyone gets a little bit more nervous about how the supply chains will work. 

But it really comes down to the country of origin for these AI hardware products. While many tech companies are headquartered in the US, like Nvidia and Intel, they don’t manufacture the actual silicon in the device. Sometimes they do some final assembly. Sometimes they don’t. 

For example, US Customs and Border Protection treats Quoted Tech’s products as Vietnamese in origin, even though the vast majority of the final product is done in Canada. They will say the identifying factor of a desktop computer is the central processing unit, which is of Vietnamese origin. 

Now, why do they do that? I have a suspicion they’re probably trying to play to the tariff code, and that they see Vietnam as kind of a tariff-free zone. That’s purely me speculating.

So how are tariffs really impacting the computing industry?

The tariff code is exceptionally complicated and long, and there are a lot of carve-outs for separate industries. Anybody who has tried to do any major brokerage between the two countries since Donald Trump first imposed new tariffs knows how complicated this is. And getting a definitive answer on anything is like finding a needle in a haystack.

When I saw the 50-percent tariffs and people said the price of computers is going up, I said, “Whoa, in what circumstance?” I also saw that they’re going to tariff Canadian video game consoles. To my knowledge, there are no consoles that are manufactured wholly in Canada. If there is a CPU—and every gaming console has a CPU and a graphics card—those components would be designated as most likely Taiwanese or Vietnamese in origin. When I read that, I was very confused.

The US and Canada base it on a country of origin; who made the original “product” gives it its defining characteristic feature. It doesn’t matter where the final assembly happens; they’re going to find one component that is the designating factor of that product and say, okay, well it happens here.

The new tariffs come alongside computer hardware costs already rising, potentially creating a double impact for consumers. How is the RAM price hike affecting Canadian companies and buyers—both at the hardware level, and then downstream costs of AI in general? 

If you’re one of the hyperscalers, the price increases are, truthfully, relatively muted. They are investing billions upon billions of dollars into data center infrastructure. So, for them, a 15- or 20-percent price hike won’t hurt them. They’ve got big contracts that would have been signed way before the price hike. 

For the rest of us who are just consuming off the shelf, that’s going to affect everything that you purchase. For a regular Canadian, that means your smartphones, your computers, your tablets—all that’s going to go up. In business, if you’re buying laptops, workstations, servers, all of that is going to be felt at the door. If they’re more RAM- and GPU-heavy, they’re going to feel it worse.

What kind of broad impact does chipflation have on Canada’s startup and tech sector?

The Canadian startup sector is a lot tougher than what they have in the United States and Silicon Valley. There’s just a lot less attention; it’s a lot harder to get funding, and there’s a lot more scrutiny over the projects.

For a lot of these startups that are in AI, that are in deep technology, that are building software, that need access to high-density compute, it’s going to increase their startup costs. Startups are no different than any other business looking to procure hardware. They have a limited budget, and so it’s going to hurt every business trying to get into this space.

How should companies prepare for chipflation and tariff uncertainty? How can they avoid overspending?

The sad reality is that there isn’t a whole lot, truthfully. When it comes down to computer chips, there isn’t a massive market of free-flowing products somewhere else in the world. It’s obviously why Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world. 

When customers are shocked by the prices, I say “look, just don’t try to time the market. Buy a computer if you need a computer. You could be waiting until the end of 2027, most likely, before we see a resumption of normality.” 

Feature image courtesy Christian Wiediger via Unsplash.

The post Q&A: The AI costs that could hurt Canadian tech more than a trade war first appeared on BetaKit.

Following its historic satellite launch earlier this year, Kepler Communications says it has brought online the first commercial space data relay service, effectively creating orbital data centres.

The news: The Toronto-based company announced on Monday that its satellite constellation is now delivering real-time, space-based computing to its commercial and government customers. With this, Kepler said it has brought the first low-Earth orbit satellite system based on an optical relay network online, meaning a Canadian company has beaten out similar projects from big names like Amazon and Starlink.

From the source: “The ‘data centre in the sky’ has moved from fiction to reality!” John Ruffolo, managing partner at Maverix Private Equity and a Kepler investor, wrote in a LinkedIn post.  

In his own post, Kepler co-founder and CEO Mina Mitry said the feat felt “surreal.” 

“Many have tried to build this before us,” Mitry said. “We’re proud to be the first to make it a commercial reality.”

The context: Each satellite in Kepler’s network is equipped with a minimum of four optical terminals, enabling laser links between space, air, and ground assets. As Mitry described to BetaKit earlier this year, Kepler is essentially pointing a laser at an object the size of a baseball 6,500 kilometres away, and holding it steady while moving at 7.5 kilometres per second. 

This relay network allows data to be processed and analyzed directly in space, rather than waiting for a downlink to Earth, effectively turning the satellites into an orbital data centre for space missions. Kepler says this reduces latency, enables the use of AI, and supports autonomous space operations.

Final thought: As demand for compute increases, companies like Google, Starlink, and Amazon are looking to launch orbital data centres to take advantage of solar power and the cold space environment. However, some experts warn the pursuit could pollute the Earth’s atmosphere, while others argue it’s simply impractical. Still, Kepler said it’s set to expand its global optical data relay network in 2028 with a new tranche of spacecraft to support customer demand and data rates up to 100 Gbps.

Feature image courtesy Kepler Communications.

The post Kepler Communications’ space-based data centres come online first appeared on BetaKit.

Anyone who has shared a vehicle knows it involves a little compromise. One driver shifts the seat up, while the other moves the mirrors and drops the steering wheel. It can get frustrating, fast.

For engineers at GM Canada, easing that handoff was a technological challenge worth taking on. Within weeks, the Ontario-based team developed code that uses individual key fobs to identify who has unlocked the vehicle and automatically load that person’s profile, including seat and steering wheel positions, favourite music, and saved destinations. After testing the feature for security, privacy, and other requirements, GM rolled it out across a much larger number of vehicles, wherever they are in the world. 

“Canada stands at a very enviable point compared with many parts of the world.”

“We have a communication mechanism across our ecosystem to understand customers’ needs, and our teams are continuously working on identifying, innovating, and rolling out solutions,” said Jack Uppal, GM Canada president and managing director, in an interview with Betakit.  

Uppal sees the feature as one small example of a broader transformation underway across the automotive industry. Automakers are becoming more like tech companies, using AI and software to expand what vehicles can do and rethink how they’re designed, driven, and improved over time.

Having led teams in China, India, Singapore, and the Middle East, Uppal has watched technology and mobility evolve at different speeds around the world. From that vantage point, he believes Canada has the talent and research strengths to help lead the next era of software-defined vehicles. That potential is backed by considerable industry investment, with automakers’ in-house R&D spending in Canada reaching $898 million in 2024, quadruple the amount spent a decade earlier.

“Canadian engineering talent is absolutely world-class,” he said, pointing to the country’s technical depth, strong academic foundation, and ability to take ideas beyond the lab and apply them to real-world problems at scale. 

“Canada stands at a very enviable point compared with many parts of the world,” he said.

From Ontario to the world

More than 1,100 engineers work across GM Canada’s three Ontario campuses. Teams at the Canadian Technical Centres (CTCs) in Markham and Oshawa develop software and run simulations, while the 55-acre McLaughlin Advanced Technology Track allows them to test systems in real vehicles.

But Uppal is clear that they aren’t building solely for the Canadian market. Depending on the project, engineers here may lead testing or simulation, develop a particular layer of technology, or write code from beginning to end. Those innovations can then be incorporated into vehicles across GM’s wider global operations.

Super Cruise offers an example of how far that work can travel.

The hands-free driving technology—considered to be next-gen cruise control—relies on a combination of real-time cameras, radar, GPS, and precision LiDAR-scanned maps to help equipped vehicles steer, adjust their speed, and change lanes on compatible roads. The process was pioneered by engineers in Markham and has now been used to drive more than 1.6 billion kilometres throughout Canada and the US, according to the company. The same mapping approach is now being adapted for Europe, the Middle East, and South Korea, with the needs of each market considered from the start.

“Before we scale it or even pass it on to a single customer, that product would be built to comply with both the regulatory and customer needs in the markets where we want to sell that feature,” noted Uppal. 

The Super Cruise system has also continued to evolve as engineers identify new ways drivers want to use it. Uppal pointed to towing as an example of a need that was particularly visible close to home.

“A lot of people, both in Western Canada and just from a lifestyle perspective, are pulling boats and trailers,” he said.

The original technology didn’t account for a trailer’s additional size, weight, and turning radius. Canadian engineers responded by developing a hands-free towing capability, taking it from “identifying the problem, writing the code, testing the code on the roads, and then being able to deploy it across millions of vehicles in North America.”

While Uppal described trailering as “perhaps more of a North American-relevant question,” he said the solution has been “very well received in many other parts of the world.”

Predictive technology and the future of mobility 

Developing new features is one thing. Getting them into millions of vehicles quickly and conveniently is another. Over-the-air updates have changed that, allowing automakers to add or improve features after a vehicle is already on the road. GM reports that more than 4.5 million of its vehicles can currently receive these updates, with that number growing by roughly two million each year.

That can save drivers a trip to the service centre. For Uppal, however, it reflects GM’s broader goal of using software to improve both vehicle performance and the experience behind the wheel.

“Moving billions of people around the world is what we’ve done for the last 100 years. It makes me very confident that we’re going to be a company that’s going to move people for another 100 years.”

“We continue to enhance our advanced driver-assistance systems capability,” he said. “For customers, it’s a driving experience that becomes progressively safer, more intuitive, less stressful.”

Looking ahead, Uppal expects vehicles to move beyond simply responding to information in real time.

“We will be moving from a level of real-time computing and really starting to use AI as our footprint into predictive modelling,” he said.

By recognizing patterns and anticipating driving conditions, these systems could help vehicles perform better in snow, stop faster, and respond more effectively in complex traffic. Uppal also sees the potential to save drivers time and reduce congestion. GM’s near-term plans include deeper use of AI, including Gemini, as well as new technology in the next Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. 

That future won’t be limited to electric vehicles, he added, noting GM will continue investing in both EVs and traditional, internal-combustion vehicles as preferences and technologies evolve.

“We’ll be able to meet the customer and meet their needs where they are, and deliver what they need,” he said.

Through those shifts, Uppal expects Canada—which he described as a “big anchor” in GM’s North American software operations—to remain central to the work. For him, the industry may be changing, but the next era builds on what GM has spent the past century doing.

“Moving billions of people around the world is what we’ve done for the last 100 years,” he said. “It makes me very confident that we’re going to be a company that’s going to move people for another 100 years.”

PRESENTED BY

Explore GM Canada’s technology leadership—and discover why the future of mobility is being built right here in Canada: General Motors Canada: Pushing the Limits of Transportation & Technology

Feature image courtesy GM.

The post How GM Canada is Steering a Global Mobility Strategy from Ontario first appeared on BetaKit.

A group of students at the University of Waterloo broke a world record for their amateur liquid rocket launch.

The news: At the 2026 Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins, Ont. last week, the University of Waterloo Rocketry Team—which has roughly 100 student members—successfully launched its liquid bi-propellant rocket Polaris to an altitude of 63,497 feet, surpassing the previous amateur world record of 56,590 feet. 

This type of rocket, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, uses both fuel and oxidizer in separate tanks to create combustion. That’s different, and typically more complex, than a solid-fuel rocket engine, which has a solid core of both fuel and oxidizer (like the Space Shuttle’s boosters). 

From the source: “The moments before launch were the most stressful of my life, but witnessing Polaris soar into the air, hearing the callout confirming we broke the world record, and watching the parachutes deploy with the entire team cheering was unforgettable,” second-year mechanical engineering student Niva Patel, who is part of the rocketry team, told Waterloo News.

The context: The Launch Canada Challenge is the country’s largest student rocketry competition, where teams from different post-secondary institutions compete to launch rockets as high as they can. In 2024, the UWaterloo team was the first to launch a liquid bi-propellant rocket into the skies in Canada, according to the university.

Last year, Polytechnique Montréal beat UWaterloo in the advanced launch challenge category. 

According to the UWaterloo news article, its rocket made it to 38,000 feet, but the flight data was lost. This year, however, the rocket descended without a hitch, allowing the students to analyze data from the rocket’s sensors.

Final thought: The competition comes as Canada is trying to build up sovereign space launch capacity. Right now, it is the only country in the G7 without it. Startups such as NordSpace and Canada Rocket Company are working to build light and medium-lift vehicles to serve a domestic base of companies that make space satellites. Student rocketry teams from UWaterloo and other competitors at Launch Canada likely serve as a local talent pool for these companies as more investment flows into the industry.

Feature image courtesy University of Waterloo.

The post UWaterloo students break amateur world record with liquid rocket launch first appeared on BetaKit.

Osedea has acquired fellow Québec-based tech consultancy Ventriloc to add capabilities that can help it take on larger competitors. 

The news: Osedea announced on Monday morning that it had acquired Ventriloc for an undisclosed amount, but told BetaKit in an email that the deal was financed entirely through its own capital and resources. Osedea specializes in developing custom software for AI, software engineering, and robotics applications, while Ventriloc’s specialty lies in data and business intelligence.

By combining, Osedea and Ventriloc said they aim to build a world-class organization that can compete with the largest consulting firms while keeping intellectual property, jobs, and expertise locally anchored.

From the source: “Together, we’ll unite artificial intelligence, software engineering, product design, and robotics under one roof,” Osedea founder and president Martin Coulombe wrote in a LinkedIn post, which BetaKit has translated from French. We can assist our clients with more comprehensive projects — from data to deployment — with one team responsible for the whole solution.”

The context: According to Osedea’s website, the company develops software for the manufacturing, health, mining, finance, and agri-food industries. Some of its projects include work with firms like Autodesk on its mobile development, Ubisoft on its web platform, and building an AI and robotics solution for Québec aluminum manufacturer Aluminerie Alouette. For its part, Ventriloc helps companies with their data management and visualization, AI integration, and UI/UX design.  

The acquisition adds 25 employees to Osedea, bringing the firm’s headcount to more than 100 people. This includes the addition of Ventriloc founders Jean-François Laberge and Paul-Alexandre Viger, who are now partners at Osedea. 

Final thought: Osedea said its workforce is almost exclusively based in Québec, with teams across Montréal, Québec City, and Sherbrooke. The company said it intends to continue hiring in Québec, and hopes by doing so it can attract large-scale projects from local and international markets.

Feature image courtesy Osedea.

The post Osedea expands consulting footprint with Ventriloc acquisition first appeared on BetaKit.

There’s a wildfire moving toward your home. It’s blocked your usual highway route out of town. Do you know your back roads well enough to get to safety?

“We like to say in our organization that an unpaved road is one bad storm and 10 logging trucks away from looking completely different than it did before.”

Chris Stewart, IntelliMass

Like many in Western Canada, IntelliMass founders Ryan Gallagher and Chris Stewart don’t have to imagine that stress. They’ve been forced down those back roads before, and even as recently as this month. To them, the biggest issue isn’t that the route could be filled with potholes, debris, and narrow passes; it’s that evacuees simply don’t know what to expect at all.

“We like to say in our organization that an unpaved road is one bad storm and 10 logging trucks away from looking completely different than it did before,” Stewart told BetaKit in a recent interview he and Gallagher sat for.

That unpredictability is why they made their first product, BackRoadIntel—a crowdsourced mapping platform that picks up where Google Maps leaves off. Using kinetic sensors in tandem with other vehicle data-collecting devices like dashcams, emergency and local authorities use the platform to catalogue back road conditions to inform evacuation routes.

“You drive a lot of kilometres of back roads; you encounter problems like rock slides, downed trees, a dead animal on the road, washout, or very rough road conditions. And now it’s up to you to do something about it when you get back,” Gallagher said. “That doesn’t always happen, right? And if it does, it’s often uncoordinated.”

With BackRoadIntel, drivers can narrate their back-road journey, commenting on every pothole and dusty area they come across. Once the driver is back in service, the data from the kinetic sensor, dashcam, and their commentary are automatically synced into a fulsome report on the road’s drivability.

“My main focus has been like, ‘this has to be really easy,’” Gallagher said. “This has to be so easy that it just works.”

“A clear need”

The Kelowna, BC-based company has been engaged as a consultant to help plan evacuation routes. It also rents its equipment out to municipal and regional governments to do the same. Right now, local officials can request a BackRoadIntel community evacuation route assessment for just under $5,000, according to its website. 

The startup is also looking to provide its services to Indigenous communities, getting its start by sponsoring its own pilot project with the Lytton-area First Nations. The area already has a tragic history with wildfires: back in 2021, Lytton almost entirely burned down in one of Canada’s worst wildfires, killing two people. The local First Nations community is made up of 12 bands and, according to Stewart, around a quarter of those bands only have one road out of their homes in the event of a wildfire.

“Even if there is only one option, you really want to understand what that road is capable of, how it’s holding up, [and] how it’s being deteriorated even by BC wildfire suppression efforts,” Stewart said, adding that the community often doesn’t have the data to prove how much their roads are eroding from wildfire countermeasures.

Wildfires in recent years have burned more Canadian land than ever before. The Canadian National Fire Database reports that more than 34 million hectares of land have burned since 2020; over half of which occurred in 2023. That is double the area burned in the preceding six years. Indigenous populations are being disproportionately affected by this increased burning. In 2023, 42 percent of wildfire evacuations were from communities where more than half the population was Indigenous, according to Statistics Canada.

“There’s a clear need by these groups, and while there are markets that may be more lucrative for us, we can’t see a market that’s more important at this point in time,” Stewart said.

Gallagher said BackRoadIntel is in discussion with “several large brands” in BC to sponsor its efforts to get its equipment into more Indigenous communities, with the hope of creating a “network effect” and increasing the number of back roads authorities have visibility on.

RELATED: Alberta researchers are studying the living organisms lurking in wildfire smoke

So far, the founders say their platform covers “well over” 20,000 km, with coverage in areas around Kelowna and Vancouver, as well as some of Vancouver Island, and parts of Alberta. Gallagher said he drove thousands of kilometres on BC back roads himself just to get the dataset started.

All of this has been done bootstrapped, but the founders are now cautiously courting investors to help them scale. Gallagher said they’re trying to raise as little as possible because they feel there is enough demand to scale organically and gain good traction in Canada before raising significant funds. Both he and Gallagher are mindful of finding the right, ideally Canadian, investors to help them scale the product at their pace.

“I think a VC would be like ‘get to enterprise, get to B2B, and get your … product fully fleshed all the way to the biggest fish,’” Stewart added. “We’re cognizant of that path, and we are on that path, [but] building out where our product is making a lot of human interest good, not just profit, is an important place to start our brand.” 

A community resource 

Just a few weeks after those words left Stewart’s mouth, wildfires forced him to evacuate his home in Summerland. The following day, he used BackRoadIntel to map his route on Forest Service Road 201, and shared the resource in community Facebook groups. In an email after the fact, Gallagher told BetaKit that Stewart received “good feedback and engagement” from the groups. 

“I think that our data will begin to show that … what gets measured gets managed. It’s time these roads got managed a bit better.”

While BackRoadIntel is usually in the hands of emergency officials, Stewart’s use of the platform as a communal resource is a preview for what’s next. The company is working with potential sponsors to launch a public-facing community map feature this summer, hopefully in August. The new feature will allow people to collaborate and share road hazards on their routes, potentially increasing the available data on back roads. 

“I think people will realize, ‘oh my God, I can have that visibility on my options,’ and it’s going to get their heads turning as to how they [can] get involved,” Stewart said in the interview. 

The duo hope that, within the next year, BackRoadIntel will be deployed across Western Canada, but Gallagher said he sees no reason why all of Canada can’t be covered. Stewart also said he has his eyes on at-risk communities in the United States and all over the world that could use this kind of insight on their service roads. 

The usefulness of the product doesn’t start and end with the wildfire season, either. Stewart and Gallagher see plenty of utility in the data they’re gathering. Perhaps it could help build a model of how an unpaved road ages, or even contribute to new developments in how back roads are built. 

“They’re treated as second-class networks, and we believe they have a lot more value than that,” Stewart said. “I think that our data will begin to show that, as we know, what gets measured gets managed. It’s time these roads got managed a bit better.”

Feature image courtesy Intelllimass. 

The post The Kelowna company helping map your way out of a wildfire first appeared on BetaKit.

Ilya Sutskever, Garrett Camp, Michelle Zatlyn, Ivan Zhao. All leading names in Silicon Valley, and all Canadian. They are just a few of the people you’ll find on the Dominion List, a database created by VC Antoine Nivard earlier this year. It catalogues the value generated by Canadians building in the US, value the list implies could have stayed at home: 552 companies, 53 unicorns, that have raised more than $600 billion USD.

While Nivard’s methodology notes that the list isn’t exhaustive—for one, it defines a Canadian connection through citizenship, birthplace, or education—it’s supported by data showing a lack of capital in Canada. BDC called Canada’s early-stage funding gap an “economic sovereignty” issue in May; this month, CCI found Canadian startups too often sell to foreign buyers when it’s time to scale; and CFIN found there’s barely any Canadian capital in foodtech beyond the seed stage.

Nivard, who himself spent time in Montréal before moving to San Francisco, told me he started the database when Y Combinator briefly removed Canada from its list of accepted incorporation countries, stoking outrage about a phenomenon BetaKit has tracked for years.

The discourse hit a fever pitch this week when Jesse Rodgers of Builders Club reshared stats from the list, calling it a “damning” portrait of where Canada underdelivers. Build Canada CEO Lucy Hargreaves called it a “five-alarm fire for policymakers.”

In Nivard’s opinion, the policy conversation shouldn’t focus on how to stop the drain. “Venture outcomes at this scale [are] one of Canada’s great exports, and it should be a point of pride rather than a grievance,” he wrote in an email. Rather, it’s a chance for Canada to uplift ambitious founders who want to move here, and those who want to stay, he said.

Either way, policymakers have reportedly taken note. We’ll be watching to see how the fall budget will aim to keep the next class of those founders here at home.

Madison McLachlan,
Montréal reporter

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Top stories from BetaKit

BDC’s yearly checkup

The Business Development Bank of Canada, the Crown corp that runs Canada’s largest VC firm, reported its fiscal 2026 results this week. Its VC arm saw a net revenue loss of $70.9 million, but net income ultimately grew as the value of its investments rose by more than $400 million.

Vibe-code your hardware

A16z speedrun-backed Toronto startup Blueprint has raised $1.4 million to build the “Lovable for hardware,” helping anyone turn their AI prompts into prototypes. Go ahead, make your own MP3 player.

Moneyball, in Canadian dollars

How did the Blue Jays make the World Series? They spent their capital smartly, according to Graphite Ventures managing director Aaron Bast, who argues in an op-ed for BetaKit that Canada should do the same in its fight against US tariffs.

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It’s getting harder to spot smart camera glasses like Ray-Ban Meta. Ottawa-based product designer Marcos Rezende has made a way to detect them with NearLens, giving users a way to know if they’re potentially being discreetly recorded.

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Deals and dollars

Who cashed in, or out, this week:

• Helcim secured a $53-million Series C as it looks to fill a new vacuum within Canada’s payments infrastructure. (Calgary)
• Peripheral secured another $8.7 million USD to bring spatial intelligence tech to sports. (Toronto)
• Magic Potion Games raised an undisclosed Series A as its Club Penguin successor, Imagine Island, exits beta. (Kelowna)
• NLPatent rebranded to Clerq alongside an agentic AI overhaul of its patent automation platform. (Toronto)
• A16z speedrun-backed Space raised $2.4 million USD to build a more seamless version of Dropbox and Google Drive. (Toronto)
• Brdg secured $850,000 to simplify construction loan management with AI. (Montréal)
• Aerospace software StratosX landed a partnership with Air Transat to help minimize flight disruptions. (Montréal)
• AI market research platform Boundless Discovery secured $2 million USD, the company told BetaKit. (Halifax)

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Main character

“Our conviction is that this will become the critical infrastructure layer for all areas of robotics.”

—Ex-Nvidia lab leader Sanja Fidler on world models, the focus of her new startup.

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The refresh

What lawn-mowing can teach you about computer science

Can you mow this lawn as efficiently as a machine? The Pudding used this mini-game to collect data on human behaviour to better understand one of the most famous path-planning problems in computer science.

ALL IN 2026: Help shape the future of AI & tech

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Explore the full program.

BetaKit Podcast  ·  Aug 14

“When we talk about sovereignty, we’re talking about strategic capacity. Can you govern yourself with the tools that you have?”

What would happen if, overnight, Canada suddenly lost all access to American tech? Canadian Shield Institute managing director Vass Bednar joins to answer that question before discussing how Canada can bootstrap digital self-reliance in the face of weaponized integration. Listen now ›

¹ Direct sync available for supported accounting systems: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, and Sage Intacct.

² This percentage is an estimate, not a guarantee. More details at ramp.com/canada.

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Madison McLauchlan (Montréal reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Pexels. Photo by Brian Forsyth.

The post The list tracking Canada’s tech exodus first appeared on BetaKit.

Calgary-based Helcim raised fresh financing and reported more than $150 million CAD in annual revenue as it looks to fill a new vacuum within Canada’s payments infrastructure.

The news: The Calgary-based payments processor announced on Friday that it has raised a $53-million CAD Series C round led by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)’s Growth Venture Fund. Credit union-backed Curql Collective, Los Angeles-based Gold House Ventures, and returning backers Headline, Aquiline, Information Venture Partners, Vesey Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, and Alberta Accelerate Fund also participated. 

The round valued Helcim, which mainly powers payments for small and medium-sized businesses, at $250 million CAD, up from $97 million as of its Series B round two years ago.  

From the source: “There’s huge momentum in the business right now, and the market shifted in our favour at the same time. It felt like the right moment to raise and put capital behind what’s already working,” Helcim CEO Nicolas Beique wrote in an email to BetaKit. 

The context: The market shift is part of a changing landscape for payments in Canada, as the Big Five banks have gradually sold off their payment processing divisions. Last year, TD sold part of its merchant solutions business to Fiserv, and this month, BMO- and RBC-owned Moneris announced its sale to a US private equity firm. 

Beique said the Moneris sale and related worries about sovereignty coincided with a boost in inbound calls for Helcim. But it was already growing quickly before then: the company said it crossed $150 million in annual recurring revenue last year. 

Final thought: Helcim has been banging the drum about “walled-off” payment systems, which is when a platform or ecosystem restricts access to external payment workflows, promoting its built-in services as the only option. With the new funding, Helcim said it will build on its payment extension add-on, which the company says will give merchants more flexibility and, ideally, reduce costs.   

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Helcim.

The post Helcim raises $53 million amid shakeup in Canadian payments first appeared on BetaKit.

Could an experimental drug compound once studied as a diabetes treatment also fight deadly superbugs? In 2020, an AI model gave researchers a promising answer to that question, identifying halicin’s ability to kill bacteria, including strains resistant to other antibiotics.

“You can’t know it all yourself. You’ve got to know people who can help you with your decision-making.”

The technologies available to researchers have advanced considerably since then. Today, generative AI can already search for and design new drug candidates, while quantum computing is on the brink of revealing how their molecules behave and why they work. Combined, they’re poised to deliver a powerful one-two punch in the search for medical breakthroughs.

For Hausi Müller, a computer science professor at the University of Victoria and co-founder and general chair of IEEE Quantum Week 2026, drug discovery is just one example of what’s possible when areas of expertise are brought together to tackle problems too complex for any one field to solve alone. 

“On the quantum side, you generate molecular data, and on the GenAI side, you brainstorm,” he told Betakit. “You try to see what they have in common and why it works.”

That’s what IEEE Quantum Week is all about. Held from Sept. 13 to 18 in Toronto, the conference brings together researchers, engineers, scientists, educators, businesses, and government labs from around the world to exchange knowledge and make connections as advances in quantum begin to find more practical and commercial applications.

This year’s keynote speakers are global leaders in quantum computing and engineering from major quantum technology companies, startups, universities, and government laboratories. The mix reflects the varied skills involved in moving quantum forward, from advancing the science and building the computers to developing commercial applications and the expertise needed to put them to work.

“It amazes me every time how all these people work together,” said Müller. “Everybody feels part of the ecosystem. They are eager to interact and learn from each other. They are enthusiastic about sharing their latest work and development.”

Quantum science is moving quickly

This year, organizers expect about 2,000 delegates from between 50 and 60 countries, up from more than 1,750 attendees in 2025. Across six days, they can choose from 10 keynotes, 48 tutorials, 47 workshops, 372 technical papers, 22 panels, nearly 195 posters, a career fair, student mentorship, and a major exhibits showcase.

The keynote speakers include Krysta Svore of Nvidia, Matthias Troyer of Microsoft, Ali Javadi-Abhari of IBM Research, Travis Humble of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Alán Aspuru-Guzik of the University of Toronto, Christian Weedbrook of Xanadu, Rajeeb Hazra of Quantinuum, Lisa Lambert and Mihir Bhaskar of IonQ, Niels Bultink of Qblox, and Gilad Ben-Shach of Quantum Machines. 

“All of our keynote speakers are absolutely world-class,” said Müller.

Quantum science is moving quickly. Müller noted that commercially viable quantum computers are already available from various companies, including IBM, D-Wave, Quantinuum, IonQ, Rigetti, Pasqal, IQM, Xanadu, QuEra, and Atom Computing, but the industry hasn’t yet settled on a single way to build them. Superconducting, trapped-ion, photonic, neutral atoms, silicon, and other designs are all being developed, leaving companies to determine which may be best suited to their needs and where to begin gaining experience. Access to Google’s own hardware is still restricted to approved groups. Microsoft and AWS are primarily quantum cloud/platform and ecosystem companies.

The choices extend beyond the computers themselves. Researchers are also working to build networks capable of carrying quantum information. Interest in quantum networking and quantum internet is rising sharply, with submissions on the topic growing from roughly 20 or 30 papers during the conference’s early years to about 150 this year, said Müller.

For networking equipment makers and telecommunications providers, those advances make timing critical. Moving too early could mean committing to hardware that is quickly overtaken, while waiting too long could leave them catching up after customers and competitors have moved on.

“It’s tricky to make the right move at the right time,” he said.

Building quantum champions

Quantum’s progress will also depend on building a sufficiently large talent base with the skills to engineer the quantum hardware/software stack, develop quantum algorithms and software, and create applications in areas such as simulation, optimization, and machine learning.

“Workforce capacity is now a critical foundation for quantum progress,” said Müller.

That demand is one reason companies attend IEEE Quantum Week to recruit, while its tutorials and workshops help students, researchers, and engineers develop skills and build relationships. Expertise will also be needed within end-user industries—such as mining, health care, and telecommunications—to build the capacity to evaluate, adopt, and pull quantum technologies into real-world applications.

“Everybody feels part of the ecosystem. They are eager to interact and learn from each other. They are enthusiastic about sharing their latest work and development.”

As with AI, organizations will need employees who understand both their existing operations and can identify problems that quantum computing may eventually help solve. A mining operation, for example, could explore the technology for difficult optimization challenges, but only if someone can connect its industry knowledge with outside quantum expertise.

“You need to build what we call ‘quantum champions’ in these companies,” said Müller.

Interest in using quantum computing to solve real-world problems across industries is growing rapidly. He noted that quantum applications and quantum end-to-end hybrid case studies attracted close to 200 paper submissions this year. 

The opportunity to build relationships also keeps some senior speakers at the conference well beyond their time on stage. Müller said technology executives often attend for several days, giving them time to join the wider discussions and connect with researchers, founders, and students outside the formal sessions. 

With quantum advancing along so many paths, building those connections and forming quantum ecosystems matters more than ever, said Müller.

“You can’t know it all yourself. You’ve got to know people who can help you with your decision-making, wherever you are.”

PRESENTED BY

IEEE Quantum Week 2026 runs Sept. 13 to 18 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Learn more and register.

Feature image courtesy IEEE Quantum Week.

The post What Quantum Week’s keynote lineup says about the tech in 2026 first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal-based Élisa Interactive has raised an $875,000 pre-seed round to create entirely new worlds … in the video game Roblox. 

“People go [on Roblox] to get together and have fun online, and that’s what we’re betting on.”

Founded by father-son duo François and Julien Bélanger, Élisa Interactive’s AI-powered level design tool makes creating video game worlds easier. A user can tell the tool what they want in their video game world, such as a castle or village, and it will make it right before their eyes.

The tool, called Me-Z-Scene, doesn’t generate assets to create the world; it’s more like putting existing pieces down on the table. Those pieces can then be modified by hand or by Me-Z-Scene to fulfill the user’s vision. In an interview with BetaKit, François compared the tool to a Playmobil toy set.

“You can follow the instructions and make what is in the box but, most of the time, what you want to do is create your own world,” François said.

The tool was originally created to eliminate the “drudge work” of making a 3D scene for game studios and professional developers, François said. Despite ample interest, it quickly became clear that route meant making a specialized version of the technology for each studio Élisa worked with. That’s when they realized the potential of enabling game development for a non-professional audience. 

Enter Roblox, one of gaming’s largest phenomena, with over 151 million daily active users. The game is built almost entirely around user-generated content (UGC), with seven million different “experiences” to choose from. Naturally, a Roblox player might want to try out creating a world of their own, but not know how. 

“That’s something you can’t do in Roblox without … a lot of developer skills,” François said.

Thanks to Roblox’s open nature, Élisa Interactive’s Me-Z-Scene can easily plug in and help amateurs create their own experiences for the game. François noted there’s also potential for Élisa to eventually expand into other UGC-forward games, such as Minecraft or Fortnite.  

RELATED: How a Métis game developer is using Roblox to keep his language alive

The pivot got a vote of confidence from Élisa’s pre-seed backers, including AQC Capital, Anges Québec, Investissement Québec’s Eurêka Fund, and a group of angel investors.

Right now, Me-Z-Scene is being tested by just under 100 users, with a “full-fledged” launch planned for the fall. On launch, Élisa will charge users based on credit usage, though the exact pricing model is yet to be worked out. Still, François thinks its target audience will have no problem paying to become worldbuilders.

“People go [on Roblox] to get together and have fun online, and that’s what we’re betting on,”  François said. “We’re not promising them that they’re going to make tons of money and everything; we’re promising them [they will] have fun with their friends in their own custom environment.”

Feature image courtesy Élisa Interactive. 

The post Father-son founders raise $875,000 to help anyone build worlds in Roblox first appeared on BetaKit.

A group of developers known for their work on the popular children’s video game Club Penguin have raised an undisclosed amount of funding to build its spiritual successor. 

The news: Kelowna, BC-based game studio Magic Potion Games announced on Thursday that it has secured a Series A round, just as its child-friendly game Imagine Island exited its beta-testing phase. 

Magic Potion was founded by veteran Canadian game developers Stephen MacDonald, Karin Johnson, and Sascha Williams, who all met while working on Club Penguin. Imagine Island is meant to be a safe online experience for Gen Alpha children to do quests, decorate digital homes, and socialize, much like Club Penguin was for older generations.

The studio said Imagine Island reached more than one million players during beta testing.

From the source: “As both game developers and parents, we’ve always believed Gen Alpha shouldn’t have to choose between fun and safety online,” MacDonald said in a statement. “Reaching one million players organically tells us that vision is resonating with families around the world [and] we’re excited to continue expanding Imagine Island while staying true to the values that brought us here.”

The context: In addition to its founders, Magic Potion’s advisory team is filled with industry experience, including Alex Seropian, the founder of Halo creator Bungie, and Lane Merrifield, the co-founder of Club Penguin. Merrifield, a Canadian, is also known for his stint as an investor on Dragons’ Den. 

Magic Potion said it’s preparing a significant expansion of Imagine Island later this year that will include several “major entertainment partnerships,” new gameplay experiences, and a membership monetization model. 

Final thought: Since the shutdown of Club Penguin in 2017, Roblox has become a game of choice for kids around the world. Despite its popularity with children, Roblox has been scrutinized for its apparent lack of, or weak, safeguards. Magic Potion says its game is specifically designed for children between the ages of six and 13, and uses live moderation and COPPA-compliant privacy protections to create a trusted online environment for kids. 

Feature image courtesy Magic Potion Games. 

The post Magic Potion Games raises Series A as its Club Penguin successor exits beta  first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada’s largest VC firm saw a net revenue drop in fiscal 2026, but ultimately grew its net income as the value of its VC investments rose by more than $400 million CAD.  

On Wednesday, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) released its annual report for the year ended March 31, 2026. Amid income of more than $1 billion for the Crown corporation overall, net income for VC activity was $217.8 million. While BDC recorded net revenue losses of $70.9 million and foreign exchange losses of nearly $50 million for the year, this was offset by a $401.5-million increase in unrealized appreciation of investments (paper gains in portfolio companies’ value before they’re sold). The fair value of BDC’s VC portfolio hit $3.68 billion, compared to $3.2 billion in 2022. 

Over the year, BDC says it made 848 portfolio investments into Canadian companies and investment firms—30 percent more than the year before.

The overall net income gain marks a turnaround from last year’s net loss of nearly $58 million. The $400-million hike in portfolio value was driven by its direct equity investments, particularly “valuation step-ups” in segments like AI and quantum computing, the report said. Toronto quantum portfolio company Xanadu went public in a special purpose acquisition company deal at the end of March, valuing the startup at a projected market capitalization of $3.6 billion USD.

In its annual report, the Crown corporation attributed the net revenue drop to higher write-offs (when a portfolio company is no longer worth anything), compared to net realized gains of $7.1 million the year before. 

BDC Capital is Canada’s largest and most active VC investor, with a portfolio totalling roughly $30 million in debt investments, $1.74 billion in direct equity investments, and $1.68 billion in investments in other funds.

Over the year, BDC says it made 848 portfolio investments into Canadian companies and investment firms—30 percent more than the year before. It invested $282.1 million directly into 70 companies, and $261.7 million into 18 funds, which then invest in companies, a rough split of direct versus indirect activity. 

In June, CEO Isabelle Hudon told BetaKit that BDC Capital set the goal of shifting its split to 60 percent direct and 40 percent indirect, and that this year it had an opportunity to rapidly increase its indirect funding. In its report, BDC said the split reflected investment in the lower mid-market private equity and healthcare sectors, and “a strategic focus to better support emerging venture capital fund managers.” At the same time, BDC Capital spun up two new funds to directly invest in Canadian startups: the defence-focused BDC StrongNorth Fund and a new life sciences fund worth $150 million. 

RELATED: BDC extends Isabelle Hudon’s mandate as CEO through 2030

This comes as the calendar year of 2025 was the worst year for total dollars raised for VC funds since 2016. It also saw the fewest funds closed in Canada since 2018, according to an RBCx report. 

The federal government has leaned on BDC to deliver the financing to complement some of its strategic priorities, including defence and AI adoption. BDC announced a $6-billion defence platform this year, as well as the $500-million loan program to help small businesses adopt AI. 

The Crown corporation, which has an extensive lending business for entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized businesses, brought in more than $1 billion in net income and deployed $11.6 billion in financing solutions, notching an adjusted return on equity of 9.7 percent overall.

Feature image courtesy BDC.

The post BDC’s VC revenue loss offset by hike in portfolio value in fiscal 2026 first appeared on BetaKit.

New job postings suggest Anthropic is looking to significantly increase its data centre footprint in Canada, with a particular focus on Alberta. 

The news: The US-based AI giant created multiple job postings for new Canadian roles that will be in charge of getting more data centres built in the country. One posting is for a Canadian compute lead to manage the company’s data centre build-out strategy in the country, while another posting is looking for a data centre community engagement manager based in Alberta. 

Anthropic confirmed the job postings to BetaKit, but did not elaborate on its Canadian data centre strategy or why it’s specifically targeting Alberta. 

From the source: The compute country lead “will be ultimately responsible for bringing gigawatts of compute online in Canada,” according to the job posting. The position is responsible for selecting, leasing, and financing data centre sites, as well as other logistical and government relations work. 

Meanwhile, the community engagement manager will “coordinate charitable giving, community investment, and economic development commitments” in their data centre markets. 

The context: The postings show Anthropic continuing to add to its Canadian roster after hiring Amazon’s former head of Canadian public policy, Jacob Glick, in the same role earlier this month. 

Anthropic is joining multiple AI companies looking to strengthen its much-needed compute capabilities in Canada. Alberta has positioned itself as a friendly jurisdiction for that upcoming buildout. Last month, Meta announced a $13-billion investment to build Canada’s largest data centre northeast of Edmonton. 

Final thought: AI companies are increasingly finding a need for community engagement managers as communities push back on data centres. Angus Reid Institute polling shows more than two-thirds of Canadians oppose having data centres built near where they live. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei acknowledged the negative public view of AI in an X post this week, and said his company is ramping up efforts to win back trust and deliver on its world-benefiting promises. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy TechCrunch via Flickr, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The post Anthropic job posting suggests it’s eyeing Alberta for data centre buildout first appeared on BetaKit.

Aaron Bast is managing director at Graphite Ventures. 

Last fall, the Toronto Blue Jays took the Los Angeles Dodgers to seven games in the World Series. The Jays did it without the biggest payroll in baseball, the deepest farm system, or the home-field advantage. They did it the way Michael Lewis’ Moneyball described two decades ago: they stopped trying to outspend the dominant market and started hunting smarter for what the market gets wrong.

“The capital exists, and the founders are building. The real danger isn’t writing the cheques, but not writing the cheques and expecting to win.”

Canadian venture capital faces the same challenge on a very different stage. We cannot outspend Silicon Valley. American venture firms have the most capital, and they spend it chasing a home run every time at bat. The Canadian opportunity is different. Our opportunity is to become first-conviction investors for talented, innovative, and driven founders building durable, globally competitive businesses from coast to coast—before the rest of the world fully understands what they are building.

For the past two decades, that view was a contrarian position in Canadian VC. Today, it is becoming the strategic centre. Last month, Washington announced 50 percent tariffs on a broad list of Canadian goods—hockey sticks included. Prime Minister Mark Carney responded that Canada is ready for those tariffs “because we have been focusing on what we can control.” What we can control is capital. 

The federal AI strategy, the push toward Canadian-controlled investment, the economic sovereignty agenda, and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System’s (OMERS) commitment to add at least $10 billion in new investment in Canada over five years have all helped to shift us from focusing on whether Canada should bet on itself to how the bet should be made.

That bet is possible. Since Graphite Ventures (where I am managing director) was formed in 2021, our portfolio has grown to more than 140 Canadian-based companies. According to our own data, the impact for Canada over five years has been more than 1,350 new jobs, $800 million in follow-on capital attracted, and more than $10 billion in new enterprise value created. Our most recent fund is a Canadian-focused, $120-million seed fund that’s anchored by $25 million each from the Province of Ontario and OMERS. This is amplified by another $25 million from Canadian founders, and more from committed institutions and corporates.

RELATED: Canada’s early-stage startup funding is in a sustained decline, RBCx finds

The “valley of death,” the financing gap that often rests between $5 million and $25 million, is a real bottleneck for Canadian companies. Just as real is the failure that too often comes before it  at the seed stage.

The companies that get funded become Canadian employers, pay Canadian taxes, and recycle their wealth and experience into the next generation of Canadian founders. The companies that do not get funded either disappear, get acquired before they reach scale, or move south for American capital and take the jobs and the intellectual property. The Canadian pension funds that the Senate banking committee identified as an underused source of capital are the same funds that lose when those companies leave.

Canada has the founders. 

Last year, Graphite portfolio company Nicoya Lifesciences acquired Applied Photophysics, a British scientific instruments company. The Canadian company became the acquirer. The British company became Nicoya’s European hub. 

A decade ago, three Russian immigrants started StackAdapt (also a Graphite portfolio company) in Toronto with $750,000 of seed capital. They never raised significant outside money again until many years later. They are now valued at more than $3.5-billion, yet almost nobody outside the industry has heard of them. 

RELATED: How StackAdapt quietly built an adtech giant

Carol Leaman, who built Axonify into a global enterprise software company before selling, is now one of the founders investing her own money alongside Graphite in the next generation of Canadian builders.

Canada is finally choosing to be a market maker, not a market taker. The capital exists, and the founders are building. The real danger isn’t writing the cheques, but not writing the cheques and expecting to win. And the timing couldn’t be more urgent, as the investment behemoth to the south indicates a growing appetite for companies, talent, and intellectual property. The tariffs apply the same pressure by other means.

The goal isn’t to stop Canadian companies from competing globally, itis to help them remain distinctly Canadian as they scale. Canadian venture capital has the same opportunity the Jays did heading into last fall. The moment is now. Blink, and we’ll miss it.

The opinions and analysis expressed in the above article are those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of BetaKit or its editorial staff. It has been edited for clarity, length, and style.

Feature image courtesy Flickr. Shared under Creative Commons license BY-SA 2.0.

The post Canada’s answer to tariffs isn’t counter-tariffs: it’s capital first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal startup StratosX has landed a partnership with Air Transat to help the airline minimize flight disruptions amid a chaotic time for air travel.

The aerospace software startup announced on Thursday that its “recovery platform” for airlines, X360, is being deployed by Canadian leisure airline Air Transat to manage its aircraft, crew, and passengers. StratosX says its platform uses predictive modelling and generative AI, paired with an airline’s internal operations data, to recommend how planes and passengers should be rerouted to minimize costs and wasted time.

“We are collaboratively building the plane as we fly it.”

Joshua Goring, StratosX

“Typically, what happens is people will choose the first workable solution, which is: how do I fix the disruption?” Joshua Goring, chief commercial officer at StratosX, told BetaKit in an interview. “They don’t choose the best one, because they’re firefighting.” 

“What our system will do is seek out where disruption is happening and proactively suggest the quickest way to recover from that,” whether that’s rebooking passengers or moving a reserve crew around, Goring said.

Unpredictable weather events, geopolitical conflicts, and labour disputes have plagued air travel in recent years. In the summer of 2025, more than 8.7 million Canadian passengers faced flight disruptions, according to travel tech company AirHelp, driven largely by a nationwide strike by Air Canada workers. 

From a business perspective, Goring said disruptions and their cascading impacts create a $60-billion USD problem for airlines, which are also seeing their bottom lines squeezed by skyrocketing fuel prices. 

Air Transat has been no exception. In its second-quarter earnings, the airline reported a net loss of $79 million, about $50 million more than the same period last year. It attributed the loss to an “unprecedented industry-wide fuel crisis.” The airline operates more than 40 aircraft, with flights to over 70 destinations, many of which are marketed as vacation spots. 

In an email to BetaKit, Air Transat spokesperson Stéphanie Dussault said the platform is being “codeveloped” with StratosX and allows the company to look at information about aircraft, crew, and passenger experience all at once.

“As a Canadian airline, we are also pleased to collaborate with a Canadian company bringing homegrown innovation to the aviation sector,” Dussault wrote.

RELATED: Hopper’s tech will power RBC’s travel reward program

StratosX says its system is set up to detect when pressure is building on a certain part of an airline’s operations—for example, to flag staffing shortages or worsening weather conditions (which Goring said are becoming a more frequent and severe problem).  

Founded last year by CEO Ghislain Gagné and COO Kaitlin Guarino, a former director of operations at Southwest Airlines, StratosX now has a team of roughly 10 people. Goring said that Air Transat’s feedback will help the team tweak and refine the platform. 

“We are collaboratively building the plane as we fly it,” he said.

Feature image courtesy StratosX.

The post How Air Transat hopes StratosX’s AI will help it fight flight disruptions first appeared on BetaKit.

Some of the world’s frontier model developers have faced backlash for damaging books to train AI models. Now, the original digital bookseller, Amazon, has been caught joining its peers. 

The news: Sales of secondhand books are reportedly booming, which some business owners worry could be related to bulk orders from AI companies looking to cut and scan the tomes. By placing a tracking device in a book shipment, 404 Media proved last week that Amazon has been buying books in bulk and scanning them at a warehouse in Las Vegas, cutting the spines and destroying the books in the process. In a statement, Amazon said that it buys books to “help develop and improve the products and services our customers use.” 

From the source: Anthropic led a similar initiative, called Project Panama, which internal documents showed was an “effort to destructively scan all the books in the world” to train its AI models. To give a sense of scale, one vendor’s project proposal requested 500,000 to two million books over a six-month period. That single request could cover the entire physical catalogue of the Grande Bibliothèque in Montréal, which is estimated to house 1.2 million books. However, not everyone feels the destruction is a travesty; the world “no longer needs five million copies of The Da Vinci Code,” one bookseller told the BBC.

The context: Large AI companies are running out of useful text data to train LLMs, making physical books that weren’t previously available online a hot commodity. It’s just one example of how AI developers’ insatiable need for high-quality training data—data not itself generated by AI—is having unintended consequences beyond the tech world. Just this week, Google and Mercor battled over access to Spirit Airlines’ old data, including hundreds of millions of internal emails, Microsoft Teams chats, and employee productivity records (Google won).

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Latest news from across tech

Tariff purgatory 

Hours before 50 percent tariffs were set to kick in on Canadian goods, US President Donald Trump announced the measures were paused pending a “DEAL!”  The tariffs were poised to hurt Canada’s electronics and electrical exports the most, according to The Globe and Mail. The industry exports $4.4 billion USD of equipment to the US each year.

Canada may have a three-day breather, though it’s unclear if a deal with the US will be any better. The United States Trade Representative vagueposted that the deal will include “comprehensive market access for all American goods” and “digital trade alignment,” but provided few other concrete details.

Social media on trial

A California federal courtroom heard on Tuesday that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms are designed in ways that harm young users’ mental health. It’s the beginning of a trial that could profoundly affect the future of social media, and Canada’s own upcoming regulations.

ChatGPTeen

Speaking of youth internet safety, OpenAI has (some might say belatedly) launched ChatGPT for Teens, featuring additional guardrails and educational considerations. 

Who’s funding Canadian defence?

Substacker Ethan Marcoux is trying to paint a picture of where Canada’s booming defence dollars are flowing from. He compiled a list of 77 investors, government programs, accelerators, and angel networks doing the work, including details on stage and cheque size. 

Can’t stop the “grindslop”

Is that post about your long day at work meaningful, or just grindslop? Business Insider gets to the bottom of those performative hustle recaps you’re seeing (or maybe posting) on LinkedIn.  

Want to help shape the future of AI and tech? 

Join more than 7,500 leaders from around the world in Montreal for ALL IN, Canada’s largest AI and tech event. 

Learn more.

On the move

This week’s hires, fires, and exec shakeups:

• After leaving her job as Nvidia’s lab leader, Sanja Fidler has revealed her next chapter: a new Toronto-based startup called Veeda AI. 
• Toronto-based data analytics company NowVertical hired Philip Jones as CFO, replacing the outgoing Christine Nelson. 
• Atlantic Canada tech accelerator Propel added trophi.ai founder and CEO Mike Winter to its board of directors. 
• The federal government blocked Québec-based, Chinese-owned laser firm Coractive from appointing a board director over concerns the tech could “benefit foreign militaries,” according to The Canadian Press.  
• Sixty-one percent of Canadians don’t think AI creates as many jobs as it replaces, according to a new report from Toronto-based Embark. 
• For the third year in a row, CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent report found Calgary to be North America’s fast-growing tech talent market. Meanwhile, 60 percent of Canada’s AI jobs are concentrated across Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver. Read the report here. 

Want to feature a hiring announcement in our list? Email partnerships@betakit.com with the subject line JOBS.

¹ Direct sync available for supported accounting systems: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, and Sage Intacct.
² This percentage is an estimate, not a guarantee. More details at ramp.com/canada.

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Madison McLauchlan (Montréal reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Jason Leung.

The post Why AI companies are gobbling up books first appeared on BetaKit.

Canada’s largest AI and tech event for public- and private-sector leaders, ALL IN 2026, will bring together more than 7,500 AI leaders from over 40 countries. Germany has been named this year’s Country of Honour, reflecting closer technology ties between it and Canada.

In February, Canadian and German ministers met at the Munich Security Conference to sign a joint declaration on AI and launch the Sovereign Technology Alliance. The aim is to improve access to the chips and systems needed to drive AI, turn more research into commercial products, strengthen the talent pool closer to home, and generally rely less on technology from other countries.

Led by Karsten Wildberger, Germany’s minister for digital transformation and government modernization, the delegation of more than 50 German business leaders is coming to see what Canadian startups and innovators are building, find potential partners, and showcase German technology as part of its pavilion.

The visit—and the event itself—come as Canada puts more emphasis on AI adoption and commercialization at home and abroad. Launched in June, the federal government’s AI for All strategy is intended to help more Canadian companies put the technology to work and support those building it here.

Celebrating its fourth edition, ALL IN will take up many of the same priorities, including business adoption, the data and infrastructure behind AI, and emerging areas of research. Held on Sept. 16 and 17 in Montréal, the event will feature more than 260 speakers across four stages, with delegates expected from more than 40 countries.

“As Canada’s largest AI and tech event, ALL IN provides a powerful platform to highlight Canadian champions, connect global leaders, attract investment, and showcase our world-class ecosystem,” said Isabelle Turcotte, event co-founder and CEO.

Convening Canada’s AI champions 

The speaker lineup brings together people who helped establish Canada’s strength in AI research, as well as those now building companies around it. Yoshua Bengio, one of the “godfathers of AI,” and co-president and scientific director of AI safety nonprofit LawZero, and founder and scientific advisor of Mila, will appear alongside Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez and chief AI officer Joelle Pineau. The Canadian contingent also includes Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook (on a panel moderated by BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys), Coveo executive chair Louis Têtu, and the leaders of Bell Canada and TELUS.

From outside Canada, the speaker expertise spans foundation models, infrastructure, and global policy. Among those taking part are Google DeepMind senior director of product management Tulsee Doshi, Mistral AI chief revenue officer Marjorie Janiewicz, NVIDIA global initiatives vice-president Calista Redmond, Aleph Alpha co-CEO Ilhan Scheer, Liam Fedus, co-founder of Periodic Labs and co-creator of ChatGPT, and George Osborne, managing director and head of OpenAI for Countries and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Government of the UK.

Amandeep Singh Gill, the United Nations under-secretary-general and special envoy for digital and emerging technologies, is also scheduled to attend, as is Canada’s AI and digital innovation minister, Evan Solomon.

The programming is organized into five tracks, covering AI and society, applied AI and enterprise transformation, frontier research, data and infrastructure, and physical AI and robotics. Together, they span the systems needed to build and run AI, the ways organizations are deploying it, and address questions about its wider impact.

A dedicated infrastructure pavilion will focus on the computing resources behind AI, while another will feature quantum technology. The exhibition floor will also include a showcase of Canada’s Top 100 AI startups, including Wisr AI, REVEAL, GeoMate, Carnage Solutions, and Variational AI. Workshops, roundtables, and reverse pitch competitions will explore applications in areas including smart cities, citizen experience, the public sector, and other industries.

Germany won’t be the only country looking to make connections. Delegations are also expected from more than 40 countries, including Brazil, France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Curated tours will introduce visitors to Canada’s AI organizations and companies.

For Turcotte, it’s all part of a broader effort to strengthen Canada’s position in AI.

“Around the world, flagship technology events serve as strategic national assets for countries seeking to accelerate innovation and strengthen their global competitiveness and their tech leadership,” she said. “And that is precisely what ALL IN is building for Canada.”

PRESENTED BY

Explore the full ALL IN 2026 program and registration details.

Feature image courtesy ALL IN.

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Sanja Fidler, the former head of Nvidia’s Toronto AI lab, has launched a new startup to tackle how robots interact with the physical world through AI. 

The news: Fidler announced today that she’s launching physical AI startup Veeda AI alongside longtime Nvidia colleagues Zan Gojcic, who will serve as CTO, and Huan Ling, who will be chief scientist. The startup will focus on world models, which are AI models that create an internal simulation of the real world based on things like physical, spatial, and movement data.

Veeda AI, which was officially incorporated in June under the name Veeda Innovation, is backed by Toronto’s Radical Ventures and Silicon Valley firm Khosla Ventures. The company confirmed that it has raised $90 million USD ($124 million CAD) from investors so far, as first reported by The Logic. 

From the source: “At Veeda, our sole mission is to build simulated reality for Physical AI. Our conviction is that this will become the critical infrastructure layer for all areas of robotics,” Fidler wrote in a LinkedIn post.

The context: Fidler was Nvidia’s first hire at its Canadian research lab, now the Spatial Intelligence Lab, and helmed it for eight years. The lab focused on research projects into world modelling simulations of physical systems, as well as algorithms for understanding three-dimensional data.

The University of Toronto associate professor announced her departure from the AI chip giant earlier this month, writing online that world models are “where the next breakthrough lies.”

Final thought: While the world’s leading AI developers have so far built their reputations on text-based large language models, Veeda joins a crop of neolabs building world models that deal with three-dimensional physical data. Former Meta chief scientist Yann LeCun left the big tech company to start Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs last year; startup General Intuition hit a $2.3-billion USD valuation for its world models based on video gaming data.

Feature image courtesy Sanja Fidler via LinkedIn.

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AI vibe-coding tools like Replit and Lovable let anyone, regardless of their software development experience, quickly turn their ideas into full-fledged applications and websites.

Toronto-based Blueprint has set out to do the same for a much more challenging vertical: hardware. After initially developing its own autonomous indoor delivery robots, the AI startup has pivoted to helping others convert their text-based prompts into buildable designs for physical devices, as it looks to become “a Lovable for hardware.”

Blueprint aims to empower anyone to “take any [hardware] idea and bring it to reality,” no matter their technical prowess.

As Blueprint co-founder and CEO David Feldt told BetaKit in an exclusive interview, traditional hardware design can be “quite slow and tedious and scattered,” and rely heavily on human expertise. Since April, Feldt and his co-founders, COO Sajeel Purewal and CTO Pranav Seelam, have been working to empower anyone to “take any [hardware] idea and bring it to reality,” no matter their technical prowess.

To date, Blueprint’s clients have used the company’s “language-to-hardware” software to produce more than 200,000 plans for everything from augmented reality glasses to desktop companions, drones, go-karts, grappling-hook guns, MP3 players, RC cars, robotic arms, solar watering systems, wireless chargers, and more.

Blueprint customers describe the gadgets they want to make in simple language, and the company’s AI platform generates design and project plans covering everything from wiring to mechanics, suggested off-the-shelf parts and where to buy them, and a detailed rundown of how to put all of these pieces together.

Say a user wants to build a small, portable MP3 player (one of the devices listed in Blueprint’s community library). They would be given a list of components to purchase, such as the exact type of screws they’ll need to pick up at the hardware store, to the components they’ll need to 3D print themselves, such as a plastic casing. The Blueprint model outlines some assumptions—that they have a 3D printer and a bit of rudimentary soldering experience—then walks the user through, step by step, how to make the device, even powering it on and testing the electronics at the end.

That approach appears to be resonating among both customers and investors. Blueprint announced today that its platform has amassed more than 175,000 users in three months, and revealed that it has closed more than $1 million USD ($1.4 million CAD) in pre-seed funding from a16z speedrun—the Silicon Valley-based accelerator program to which it recently gained acceptance—Founders Inc, and undisclosed angels. 

That figure includes $225,000 USD worth of previously unannounced simple agreements for future equity (SAFEs) from November, plus another $820,000 USD in SAFE funding that the company closed in May. 

RELATED: Augmenta closes $14.4 million for AI-driven building design

Blueprint raised the latter financing to keep pace with the growth it has seen in recent months and expand its team. While Feldt, Purewal, and Seelam are located in San Francisco for a16z speedrun, they plan to return to Toronto after completing the program.

At the moment, Blueprint’s customers fall into two main categories: hobbyist hackers looking to make hardware they can use themselves, and founders building prototypes of products they hope to eventually sell. For entrepreneurs, Feldt sees Blueprint as a research and development tool that can empower small teams to do more with less.

“With Blueprint, you’re making ‘one of ones’—you’re not making products that can scale quite yet,” he said.

The company prohibits using its platform to design guns, ammo, and explosives—“anything whose primary purpose is to injure people or to cause mass harm.” Blueprint does currently allow compound bows, as the company considers them “consumer sporting goods.” However, the startup noted that it is continuously refining its safety policy as the platform grows.

Beyond banning weapons, Blueprint has few restrictions, and users have leveraged it to build a wide variety of products. One of the more interesting projects the company has seen lately is a pickleball launcher.

According to Purewal, one client runs a large medical device company in India and has leveraged the startup’s software to prototype a urine-sampling machine.

Purewal said the long-term, “North Star vision” is for Blueprint to become a blend of Lovable and Amazon that either directly sources and buys the components for users to build these devices themselves at the click of a button, or orchestrates their manufacturing, delivering the finished products to clients. 

For now, Blueprint is monetizing its platform through monthly and annual subscriptions. The startup’s near-term focus is on improving its parts selection and figuring out how to leverage all of the data its users are generating to enhance the quality of its designs.

CORRECTION (08/20/26): This story previously indicated that Blueprint’s pre-seed funding consisted of $250,000 USD in SAFEs from November and $850,000 from May, when it was $225,000 and $820,000, respectively. BetaKit regrets the error.

Feature image courtesy Blueprint.

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Toronto-based Kodeon announced today that it has added Montréal mental wellness platform Breethe to its growing portfolio of mobile life-improvement apps.

Breethe marks the AI-driven app publisher’s fourth and largest acquisition to date, joining a family of Kodeon apps for iPhone and Android that also includes Fitness Buddy, HealthView, and Memorado.

“It’s an excellent product, as you can see from the stats.”

Jon Walsh, Kodeon

“It’s an excellent product, as you can see from the stats,” Kodeon co-founder Jon Walsh told BetaKit in an interview. “For us, it was really a bullseye in terms of the category—sleep, anxiety, meditation: those are really important life-improvement categories that we didn’t have a strong presence in.”

The Breethe transaction closed earlier this month. While both firms declined to disclose the exact purchase price (which consisted primarily of cash plus some Kodeon stock), Breethe co-founder Garner Bornstein indicated that it was in the “eight-figure range.”

Kodeon was launched in late 2023 by co-founders Jon Walsh and Trevor Fencott, and COO Ben Huxley, a trio of serial tech entrepreneurs with deep experience in app development that have worked together for more than 20 years, including at Toronto-based mobile monetization and game development company Fuse Powered, which sold to Upsight in 2016, and Vancouver-based, TSXV-listed game aggregator-turned-adtech firm Ionik (formerly PopReach).

With Kodeon, they have set out to apply some of their learnings from PopReach and deploy an AI-focused rollup strategy in the crowded life-improvement app space. They have snapped up more than 30 apps since then, and layered on agentic AI to optimize and automate everything from onboarding to customer service, operations, and software development.

Walsh sees room to grow these apps by integrating them into Kodeon’s AI platform and implementing better analytics, shared services, and cross-promotion opportunities.

This transaction brings an end to Breethe’s 11-year journey as an independent company. Since its launch in 2015 by a team with a passion for meditation who had previously built and sold tech firms, Breethe has expanded into a profitable mental wellness platform that has generated over $50 million USD in total revenue and garnered 4.6 and 4.7 star ratings on Google Play and Apple’s App Store, respectively.

RELATED: AI rollup firm Beacon closes $225-million USD Series C round

Breethe did not raise any equity financing, fuelling its growth into one of the most popular apps in its category behind Headspace and Calm using its own revenue and some debt, helping more than 18 million clients globally along the way, Bornstein told BetaKit in an interview. “It’s been very rewarding,” he added.

Bornstein said Breethe initially began exploring and nearly completed a sale five years ago to an undisclosed public company, before COVID-19 derailed that deal. Instead, Breethe’s founders, which include Bornstein, Pierre Le Lann, Lynne Goldberg, and Laurence Ardouin, returned to building the business in the interim.

Last year, Breethe launched another process, finding several interested parties, but quickly deemed Kodeon the most interesting option given its business strategy and intent to “maintain the spirit of the brand,” Bornstein said. He claimed the Breethe founders asked Kodeon to up the share of equity included in the deal because they believed in Kodeon’s vision.

Kodeon has raised $8.75 million USD to date, including $5.5 million in equity from undisclosed Canadian family offices and US individuals, and $3.25 million in debt from an unnamed Canadian lender. The startup is profitable, with operating margins of more than 30 percent, and approaching eight figures in revenue, Walsh said.

Going forward, Kodeon plans to buy more profitable life-improvement apps with strong product-market fit and long track records. Walsh said the startup is open to bootstrapped or venture capital-backed businesses, and partial or full-company purchases. Kodeon plans to fund future acquisitions using its existing cash and additional equity fundraises and debt financing, including a potential Series A later this year.

Feature image courtesy Breethe.

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Xanadu’s March debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq marked a milestone for Canadian quantum computing. It became the first Canadian tech firm to list on the TSX since 2021, raising $302 million USD in gross proceeds. 

Perhaps more remarkable, the company, which is building photonic quantum computers designed to solve problems beyond today’s capacity, attracted that level of investment while a commercially useful system and the revenue it could generate may still be years away.

“Venture capital is built to reward speed and reduce risk quickly. Tough tech is the opposite of that on both counts.”

That gap—between innovation spending and selling—is a defining feature of tough tech. Whether it’s quantum or clean tech, advanced materials or next-generation therapeutics, these companies aren’t simply improving an existing product. They’re trying to turn new science into something that doesn’t exist yet. It can take years to test the idea and build what’s needed to bring it to customers, with no guarantee it will work as intended.

That makes securing money even harder than usual. Investors must commit before there’s a proven product or customer demand, then wait much longer to find out whether the investment will pay off. That kind of bet isn’t for everyone.

“Venture capital is built to reward speed and reduce risk quickly,” said Paul Davenport, head of content at Canadian R&D tax credit platform Boast. “Tough tech is the opposite of that on both counts.”

That’s why recent changes to Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development program, better known as SR&ED, are particularly relevant to deep tech. By recognizing more of the upfront physical costs, the updated program could help extend the runway from a scientific breakthrough to something that can be put to work in the real world.

More costs qualify

SR&ED is Canada’s largest federal R&D support program, returning, on average, more than $4.4 billion in tax credits to over 19,000 claimants every year as non-dilutive capital to offset the cost of experimentation.

For years, the program was often considered a better fit for software and SaaS. Capital costs were removed from SR&ED more than a decade ago, leaving companies doing physical R&D able to claim eligible wages and materials, but not much of the property needed to carry out the work. Bill C-15, the federal budget legislation that became law in March, changes that. It restores capital expenditure eligibility for qualifying property acquired on or after Dec. 16, 2024, bringing more of the physical investment behind eligible R&D back into a claim.

“Wages and materials were never the whole story for capital-intensive R&D,” said Davenport. “Now the equipment and infrastructure that this kind of research actually depends on is back in scope.”

The legislation also doubles the annual spending limit for the enhanced refundable credit from $3 million to $6 million. At the 35-percent rate, the maximum federal refund rises from $1.05 million to $2.1 million. Eligible Canadian public companies can access the enhanced credit for the first time, as well.

SR&ED still won’t replace investors or government grants, said Davenport. The money comes back after eligible work has been completed, but it can be put toward another experiment or technical milestone, helping other sources of funding go further.

Review the receipts

The broader eligibility doesn’t mean every purchase can be claimed. SR&ED can be complicated because what matters isn’t simply what a business bought or spent, but when it was acquired, how it was used and whether that use can be tied directly to eligible research.

“The biggest misconception is assuming that this change is automatic,” said Davenport. “It’s just not that simple.”

For companies wondering whether the new rules apply to them, he suggests starting with major capital purchases from the past 12 to 18 months. Review the receipts and flag any specialized equipment, prototyping tools or pilot-line infrastructure acquired after the eligibility date. Some of those costs may now qualify, including purchases made by businesses that previously decided a claim wasn’t worth the effort.

Those with filings already underway should also check whether affected tax years can include the newly eligible spending rather than waiting until the next one.

The larger opportunity is to make SR&ED a regular part of the financing plan instead of trying to piece everything together at tax time. Boast, for example, can help companies review their spending, connect purchases to eligible work and gather the technical and financial records needed to support a claim. Once that process is in place, teams can document the research as it happens and plan how any refund could support the next stage.

Davenport said university and public research has created an early advantage in deep tech. Helping private companies build the facilities and specialized teams they need could extend that lead as the technologies mature.

“Canada is already going to be off to the races,” he said.

PRESENTED BY

Not sure whether your capital purchases qualify under the new rules? Talk to a Boast SR&ED expert.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by CDC.

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Toronto- and San Francisco-based startup Space has raised $2.4 million USD ($3.3 million CAD) for its cloud storage system that allows files to live on your device without taking up space. 

The news: The startup announced the pre-seed round led by San Francisco accelerator a16z speedrun on Tuesday morning. Other investors included Canadian venture capital firms Golden Ventures and Northside Ventures, as well as a dozen angel investors hailing from companies such as Parsec, Superwhisper, and Modem.

Founded by Jason Zhao, Arihant Bapna, and Matthew Ao, Space allows documents to live within a computer’s operating system, while the actual data itself is stored in the cloud. This means users can access files in their “space” as if it were their computer’s documents folder, even drag and modify the file in programs like Premiere, all without having to physically download the file onto their device. The startup posits that this is the next generation of storage, particularly in the AI era. 

From the source: “Space is disrupting one of the oldest assumptions in computing: a file has to exist on your device before you work with it,” a16z general partner Jonathan Lai said in a statement. “Matt, Ari, and Jason are innovating with a new type of AI-native file system that can serve both human creators and AI agents with the same primitive: instant access to the exact data they need.”

The context: Space was inspired by Zhao accumulating dozens of terabytes of footage across multiple physical drives while vlogging for his YouTube channel. The company is looking to relieve that problem for its initial customer base in the video, marketing, and architecture, engineering, and construction industries.

Final thought:  At the moment, Space is in private beta, with roughly 100 users and teams onboarded. The startup said it plans to eventually expand into more data-intensive areas like media, AI training infrastructure, computer vision, and enterprise data systems. Its long-term vision is the “Space Computer,” or the infinite computer, in which your physical device is just a window into the “effectively unlimited” storage and compute power of the cloud.

Feature image courtesy Space.

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Clearco says it’s “rescaling” after a difficult few years that saw it downsize its operations and revamp its funding model for e-commerce clients. 

“The name of the game since the recapitalization is, run the business lean, recognize that the market rewards disciplined operators, and that it’s the fastest path to profitability.”

Andrew Curtis

The Toronto-based FinTech company announced on Tuesday that it had secured $100 million USD ($138.7 million CAD) in asset-backed debt financing from Australian investment firm Macquarie Group, its first such financing in years, as it aims to provide capital to its approximately 400 e-commerce customers. 

Founded in 2015 by Michele Romanow and Andrew D’Souza, Clearco provides capital to e-commerce merchants and direct-to-consumer brands, without equity dilution. Clearco initially provided funding and took a cut of revenue in return. Now, it takes fixed weekly payments from its customers based on projected sales. 

“The beauty of that is it allows the customers to better anticipate their cash-flow needs,” CEO Andrew Curtis told BetaKit in an interview on Monday. He added that this model avoids customers having to give more to Clearco during busy weeks. 

Clearco raised over $400 million CAD in equity financing over the years, and its valuation reached more than $2 billion USD in 2021. As macroeconomic conditions worsened in 2022, however, the company cut staff, pulled out of some overseas markets, and narrowed its product offering. In 2023, the company made leadership changes, more layoffs, underwent a recapitalization, and raised $60 million USD in equity after it was impacted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

“Since then, we’ve just been rescaling the business and growing it,” Curtis said. “That growth means we deploy more capital to our customers, and this facility allows us to do that more cost-efficiently and with more flexibility.” 

In December 2025, The Logic reported that Clearco was growing again, tripling its capital advances as entrepreneurs struggled to raise capital from banks and VCs.  According to public filings, Clearco raised just over $7.5 million CAD in convertible promissory notes (an unsecured debt that turns into equity) this year, which the company said came from existing investors.

The Logic also reported its headcount was 110, a fifth of what it was in 2022. Curtis told BetaKit the updated headcount is now just under 100, which he attributed to “streamlining.”

RELATED: Clearco secures new equity financing from existing investors and asset-backed facility as struggling financier recapitalizes

“We try to run the business very lean, and we have since … 2022 and 2023,” Curtis said. However, he added that Clearco has made investments in its revenue and marketing teams. “When we can realize efficiencies otherwise, via AI, we do that as well.” 

“The name of the game since the recapitalization is, run the business lean, recognize that the market rewards disciplined operators, and that it’s the fastest path to profitability,” Curtis said. 

When it comes to reaching that milestone, the CEO said the new credit facility “makes a huge difference” because the cost of capital is 50 percent lower than it was in 2023. Clearco expects to be at break-even by the fourth quarter of this year. 

Feature image courtesy Clearco.

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Toronto-based intellectual property (IP) software startup NLPatent is rebranding to Clerq as it looks to better serve legal teams contending with a surge in complex patent applications. 

The company announced its new identity on Tuesday, in addition to an agentic AI overhaul of its platform that introduces more tools that can take action on a user’s behalf. Clerq says its new platform builds time-saving features on top of its proprietary research engine, which was originally developed to help patent professionals search and analyze patents using plain-text descriptions. 

Co-founded by patent lawyer Stephanie Curcio in 2021, Clerq originally developed a machine learning research platform for patent-related work. But as more people use generative AI tools to take on work, the floodgates have opened for patent applications. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, more than 56,000 new patent families (groups of related applications) related to generative AI were published in 2024 and 2025 alone—more than the output of the entire previous decade.

“A crazy perfect time”

This trend has also coincided with a global surge in general patent volume, according to Curcio, as patent offices at large corporations and law firms face a backlog of applications. However, in Canada, patent applications have remained relatively flat over the past few years despite population growth. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office recorded a one-percent decrease in patent filings year over year in 2024. In the US, they fell by nine percent that year.

Still, patent offices are struggling to keep up. “When you have that backlog, it discourages innovation at your company,” Curcio said in an interview. That’s because inventors might be waiting months to hear back about an invention. 

The CEO added that AI is not only adding to internal backlogs at corporate patent teams, but often making invention disclosures—the internal summaries inventors submit —more lengthy and difficult to parse. Those summaries are then used to prepare the formal applications that are filed with patent offices. “Something that would have been three or four pages is now 20 or 30 pages,” Curcio said. “It’s a crazy perfect time to be building this exact thing.”

RELATED: NLPatent’s $3-million USD raise helps it power patent research with AI

As agentic workflows grew in popularity last year, Curcio said she realized that NLPatent’s research engine had the “perfect foundations to provide the agent with necessary context.” 

In practice, that looks like an AI triage assessment for screening inventions and a “patentability report” that indicates whether an invention is patent-worthy, given existing records, or whether similar inventions already exist. Clerq is also adding integrations with RPX Corporation, a risk-management provider for patents, as well as Park IP, which offers global patent translations and foreign filing services. Clerq says the new platform reduces many common patent-related workloads from days to minutes.

Clerq, which has roughly 25 employees, sells its platform to patent and IP lawyers at law firms like Gowling WLG, as well as in-house patent teams at corporations; it counts roughly 100 client organizations and thousands of users. 

The company is also adding an IP expert to its executive team: Michael Chernoff, who most recently led a patent research team at Murgitroyd and previously was on Clerq’s client advisory board. The company said Chernoff will lead enterprise sales support and customer success for Clerq while setting new product directions. 

CLARIFICATION (08/20/2026): This story has been updated to more clearly state which part of the patent application process has become more time consuming.

Feature image courtesy Harry Murphy/Collision via Sportsfile.

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There were zero Canadian-led foodtech financings at the Series A stage or beyond during the first half of 2026, per a new report from the Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN).

“I’m worried that we don’t see the value in what we have as much as others do.”

Dana McCauley, CFIN

Guelph-based CFIN is a federal government-funded, industry-led not-for-profit tasked with connecting and supporting innovation within Canada’s food sector. It defines foodtech as solutions that span the food production and delivery process, from manufacturing robots to next-generation products, and restaurant management and consumer apps.

CFIN’s report notes that while Canadian foodtech has a “small but sturdy” base at the pre-seed and seed levels, the few larger rounds that do exist are increasingly being led by foreign investors from the United States and Europe.

This includes Vancouver-based soil measurement tech startup Miraterra’s $16-million CAD seed extension, and Toronto New School Foods parent NS/TX’s $14.7-million CAD Series A to fuel the development of its alternative protein manufacturing platform for plant-based meats.

“I was just flabbergasted that [NS/TX] was able to get traction with all of these offshore investors and was just so, so struggling with Canadian investors,” CFIN CEO Dana McCauley told BetaKit in an interview.

While Canada has a “healthy but shallow” amount of domestic venture capital firms and strong base of non-dilutive funding for early-stage foodtech, McCauley said she fears the country is not doing enough to support its most promising food innovators as they grow, keep them in Canada, and realize the full economic value of the tech they are building.

“I’m worried that we don’t see the value in what we have as much as others do,” she said.

RELATED: Report: Canadian tech firms are selling to foreign buyers when it’s time to scale

Last week, the Canadian Council of Innovators released a study that found Canadian tech companies are exiting to international buyers “at precisely the moment when scaling becomes more complex and capital-intensive,” in part due to lack of domestic financing. Canada’s dearth of growth funding is something that the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity has also been calling for the Government of Canada to address. 

CFIN’s report indicates that this is also a problem in Canadian foodtech. During the first half of 2026, CFIN reports that $62.7 million CAD was collectively deployed into Canadian foodtech startups across 47 funding events based on disclosed amounts. This includes 10 equity deals worth $52.9 million, only three of which cleared $5 million.

Below that level, players like Nàdarra Ventures, NYA Ventures, Spring Impact Capital, and Verdex Capital have been active. Above that line, “the market thins fast,” the report notes.

From consumer-facing to “boring” infrastructure

CFIN’s study found that an overwhelming majority (nearly 94 percent) of that capital has concentrated on three specific domains within foodtech: food manufacturing tech, food safety and traceability, and next-generation ingredients. This marks a step change compared to previous years, McCauley said.

For most of the past decade, food delivery apps, meal kit startups, restaurant tech providers, and consumer-facing alternative protein brands have defined Canadian foodtech’s public image. But in the first six months of this year, CFIN tracked only $1.1 million between those verticals.

McCauley is heartened by this shift in focus towards “fairly boring” foodtech infrastructure, which she said dovetails nicely with Canada’s current $3.2-billion National Food Security Strategy.

The CFIN CEO said the report also found evidence that Canadian food automation tech is starting to scale, citing Relocalize breaking ground on its autonomous dark factory, and London, Ontario-based Appetronix’s acquisition of fellow restaurant robotics developer, Vancouver’s Cibotica, and Oakville, Ontario’s Gastronomous’ widening commercial footprint.

Greater robotics adoption among domestic firms—an area where Canada lags its peers globally—would go a long way towards supporting their future growth, McCauley said.

Feature image courtesy CFIN.

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Toronto-based AI startup Peripheral Labs announced on Monday that it has secured another $8.7 million USD ($12.1 million CAD) in seed funding to accelerate the development and deployment of its spatial intelligence technology for the sports market.

The financing was co-led by two new investors, Toronto’s Deloitte Ventures and Montréal-based Inovia Capital, with support from existing backers Khosla Ventures and Entrepreneurs First. It brings Peripheral’s total funding to $12.5 million USD ($17.3 million CAD), a figure that includes an initial $3.6-million USD seed round from May 2025.

Deloitte Ventures’ Jon Wolkin sees potential for Peripheral’s tech to make delivering immersive sports experiences “more practical.”

Peripheral co-founder and CEO Kelvin Cui said Deloitte Ventures provides “deep visibility into where sports media is heading,” while Inovia has a track record of helping “category-defining companies” across North America and the European Union.

In the release, Deloitte Ventures managing director Jon Wolkin said the firm is seeing “growing momentum toward more immersive sports experiences,” and that Peripheral’s tech has the potential to make delivering it more practical for both leagues and broadcasters.

Peripheral was founded in 2024 by Cui and CTO Mustafa Khan, a pair of University of Toronto robotics graduates and former self-driving racecar builders. 

The sports tech-focused AI company is developing a large reconstruction model (LRM) capable of quickly turning two-dimensional images captured by cameras into fully navigable three-dimensional video for live sports and coaching. That neural rendering and real-time 3D LRM is built on breakthroughs in robotics and autonomous vehicle perception.

Peripheral relocated from San Francisco to Toronto in 2025. This May, it partnered with the Quantum Sports and Learning Association to build North America’s first biomechanics basketball shooting lab in the city. At the time, BetaKit toured the startup’s courtside set-up and sat down with Cui to unpack this partnership and why Peripheral returned to Canada, and moved from self-driving to sports tech.

RELATED: Peripheral establishes first biomechanics basketball shooting lab in Toronto

Peripheral’s latest seed round comes shortly after the startup demonstrated its tech to NBA and WNBA officials during summer league basketball, as part of the NBA Launchpad program, which identifies and tests emerging tech with potential to transform professional basketball. The Toronto Raptors have published several videos showcasing Peripheral’s tech on the team’s social media accounts that Peripheral claims have garnered millions of views.

Peripheral plans to put the fresh capital toward expanding its engineering team and accelerating its deployments with sports leagues and stadiums. The startup intends to launch its first consumer-facing product, a browser-based replay system, later this year.

Feature image courtesy Peripheral Labs.

The post Peripheral nets $8.7 million USD to bring spatial intelligence tech to sports first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based startup Legio has raised $5 million USD ($7 million CAD) in seed funding to build out its time-saving platform for campus security officers.

​Founded this past April by CEO Darren Hill, CTO Mike Wertman, and CPO Joe Crampton, Legio helps campus security teams manage their dispatch, incident response, casework, and patrols, while making it easier to keep up with reports and other compliance requirements. The AI-native platform helps officers file the right reports for the right incidents, automatically populates relevant information, and notifies any relevant department, if needed. It’s work Legio sees as vital for campus security teams that it says spend about 40 percent of their time on paperwork instead of on patrol.

“The work of documenting the shift crowds out the work of protecting the campus.”

​Legio’s seed round will fund its product development and new engineering hires. The company is also trying to grow its design partner program, which brings in post-secondary institutions to use and provide feedback on its platform. Hill told BetaKit that the program is working with two institutions so far.

​In a statement, Hill said that up to this point campus public safety often runs on platforms “built for generic enterprise and bolted on for higher education.”

​“Teams carry heavy reporting obligations on top of round-the-clock operations, and the work of documenting the shift crowds out the work of protecting the campus,” Hill said. “We’re rebuilding the category from the ground up.”

​Legio looks to bolster the ability of campus safety staff as discourse around campus surveillance intensifies. The Breach reported last month that Canadian universities made a coordinated effort to spy on participants in pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, eventually leading to the removal of encampments and at least one lawsuit. Hill told BetaKit that Legio isn’t a surveillance platform; rather, it operates across all of campus safety to bring “the right teams together.”

​“Our focus is not about arming campus police, but rather involving Student Affairs, Residence Life, conflict resolution, and Campus Safety teams in safety matters,” Hill told BetaKit in an email. “This collaborative approach allows us to reach the appropriate resolution for the wellbeing of everyone involved—ideally before an incident occurs.”

​Legio’s new funding comes entirely from Toronto-based growth equity firm Klass Capital, which has backed Canadian companies like AlayaCare, Manifest Climate, and security platform TrackTik. Klass also has a unique connection to Legio: Hill works for the firm as an operating partner, and Wertman is also Klass’s CTO.

​Hill told BetaKit that he and Wertman assist Klass’ portfolio companies as members of the operating team, but they realized there was “a really interesting opportunity to build something from the ground up that could solve a difficult and genuine problem.”

​“When [managing partner] Daniel Klass was presented with the idea of being part of what we were building, he was excited by the opportunity,” Hill said.

​For his part, Klass said in a statement that Legio is the kind of vertical software his firm looks for.

​“Darren, Mike, and Joe bring the domain expertise to rebuild it, and their AI-native architecture is the right foundation for a market this overdue for change,” Klass said.

​Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Obi.

The post Campus safety platform Legio raises $5 million USD from Klass Capital first appeared on BetaKit.

As AI enables more and more scam calls, a Canadian startup is trying to prevent financial losses to bad actors over the phone in real time. 

“All processing happens in the moment, during the call itself, [and] once a call ends, no data about it is stored, we never keep recordings or transcripts.”

Richard Gotlieb,
OnGuardAI

Montréal- and Atlanta-based OnGuardAI launched a scam-protection app on Friday in the US to coincide with National Financial Awareness Day. The startup says it’s looking to flag and stop fraudulent calls while they’re happening through its app, which monitors calls in real time and sends an instant text to the user and a family member if “fraud patterns” are detected.

“All processing happens in the moment, during the call itself,” OnGuardAI co-founder and CEO Richard Gotlieb told BetaKit in an email. “Once a call ends, no data about it is stored, we never keep recordings or transcripts.”

The app is mainly designed for seniors, who are disproportionately targeted by phone fraudsters in Canada and the US. It’s a growing problem across age ranges, too: according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Canadians lost $643 million to fraud in 2024, up nearly 300 percent since 2020. Common scams include a caller impersonating a government official to try to obtain information like social insurance numbers, or fake family emergencies that ask for banking credentials. Gotlieb explained in a press release that his father’s experience with a scam caller led him to realize that scam victims can be educated about warning signs but still get tricked into giving scammers their money.

RELATED: Flare uncovers phishing campaigns scamming Canadians with fake toll and parking violation texts

That’s why OnGuardAI says its tech analyzes speech in real time for “known social engineering tactics,” such as emotional pressure and manipulation. Though other services exist that already do this and flag worrisome calls, OnGuardAI takes it further by sending an immediate text to an associated family member with a list of red flags and suggested actions. 

Despite beta tests with Canadian users, the OnGuardAI app isn’t yet widely available in Canada due to pricing barriers. 

“The economics only work where carriers don’t charge for call forwarding,” Gotlieb explained in an email. He added that the app, which is available on a monthly or annual subscription basis, works with Rogers-band carriers, but the team is working on offering availability through Bell and Telus carriers. 

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Centre for Ageing Better.

The post OnGuardAI launches app to flag scam calls in real time first appeared on BetaKit.

Entrepreneur Sumit Ajwani has a simple philosophy around when it’s time to raise money: wait until it hurts.

For the founder and CEO of Toronto-based MakeOS, an AI-enabled production-management system, waiting buys time to learn from customers and sharpen your business case. It also means giving away less of the company when the round finally comes.

“We are not always the largest cheque in a round. But if we are doing our job, we are most useful at the moment when a company is still early enough to be misunderstood, but real enough that conviction can change its path.”

“Investors are fundamentally underwriting risk,” said Ajwani, drawing from his own recent experience. “The more proof you can bring to the table, the stronger your position becomes.”

The MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund has heard similar stories from several founders it backed early. The fund, one of the most active early-stage investors supporting promising Ontario startups, asked them to share what their financing rounds taught them. Each had a different path to funding, but they all arrived at the same conclusion: investors are intrigued by ambition, but they want proof the business is real, a clear understanding of who the customer is, and evidence that early traction can turn into growth.

For William Ma, IAF’s managing director, that’s where early financial backing can improve a startup’s chances, especially in today’s environment, where founders are navigating conflicting pressures. AI hype has raised valuation and growth expectations, even as investors demand clear proof of demand, disciplined spending and a credible path to profitability.

But “the more useful questions are usually much closer to the business itself,” Ma said. “What have you learned, what still needs to be proven, and what would capital unlock right now?” 

Investors want proof

For Josh Guttman, co-founder and CEO of SELLIT9, a tech re-commerce platform, the signal to raise came directly from customers.

Guttman was closing every merchant, adding resale partners, and running every enterprise deal himself. But the company had outgrown what one person could handle, and customers were asking for product features Guttman had planned to build later. New funding would let SELLIT9 accelerate that work.

“When your customers are pulling the roadmap out of you, and the only thing in the way is resources, that’s the time,” he said.

But during investor meetings, he realized his deck didn’t have enough detail on how the demand he was seeing would turn into a larger business.

One investor stopped him mid-update with a challenge: “The math is breaking for me a little bit… that projection is 100x where you are today,” Guttman recalled.

As an early backer, IAF worked with Guttman to sharpen his strategy for investor conversations. He had someone to prepare for calls, talk through term sheets, and make sense of what investors were seeing in the market.

“Nobody wrote a cheque because of my massive top-down market slide,” he said. The real interest came when he walked investors through the business from the ground up. “Transparency is what built the trust that closed the round.”

The selling point

Ajwani spent a decade working with production teams before starting MakeOS, but investor meetings showed him that experience did not speak for itself.

“The question I got more than any other was, ‘Who exactly are you selling to?’” he said. “Knowing the customer and explaining the customer are two very different things.”

That changed how he thought about the raise. Looking back, said Ajwani, he would’ve spent less time on his own story and more time on the customer’s story: who the buyer is and the problem they are trying to solve.

Cyder faced that challenge from the market side. The Toronto FinTech startup helps credit unions build loyalty programs for their members, a space co-founder and CTO William Christodoulou knew well. But investors needed help understanding the size of the addressable market and how much of it Cyder could realistically serve. 

Once the company had real business results to point to, the raise became easier.

“We had real contracts, real ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), and real traction when we raised,” he said.

That kind of proof also gave Cyder a more direct way to talk about what comes next that resonates with investors. Christodoulou said the company had “clear metrics to strive for and a path to profitability,” which helped keep the conversation grounded in the business.

In Ma’s view, these are some of the deeper tests founders face when raising early funding rounds, and they aren’t always expected. Investors need to understand a company’s potential, but they’re also trying to gauge whether the founder sees something others don’t, and understands the opportunity well enough to win.

“The question is not only, ‘How big is the market?’ but ‘Why does this insight belong to you, and can you make others see it as clearly as you do?’”

A hot market is not enough

That need for clarity extends to how founders position AI in the pitch. Ma said positioning a company heavily around AI—and the Anthropic-level growth everyone is now benchmarked against—can help attract attention and support a higher valuation, but it can also create assumptions a startup may not be able to live up to.

“The risk is not raising on a hot narrative,” he said. “The risk is not being able to meet the expectations it creates.”

With that in mind, Ajwani was careful not to make AI the centre of MakeOS’s pitch. “AI wasn’t our story; it was just part of our story.”

SELLIT9 took a similar approach. Like MakeOS, the company uses AI, but Guttman knew investors would still judge it on customer demand, revenue, and a credible plan for expansion. He was also wary of raising at a valuation the company might struggle to justify later. 

“Think hard about what that hot valuation actually costs you,” Guttman said. “Sure, you’ll get a great number today. But is that sustainable growth without the proof points underneath it?”

Christodoulou also kept the conversation anchored in the company he had already built. Cyder’s contracts, recurring revenue, and path to profitability gave investors a basis for valuing the business without relying on a broader market trend.

“Don’t use hype and buzzwords to fake your way through a raise,” Christodoulou advised. “Have a business model, make money, and solve a real problem. Then the money will come.”

Why the first backer matters 

By the time a round closes, founders should have a clear sense of what investors need to see. Getting there, however, often depends on having someone willing to believe in the company before the case is fully proven.

That’s why the IAF was created. The fund is one of the province’s most active early-stage investors. It backs Ontario founders from day zero through seed stage, pairing its cheques with the guidance, networks, and customer access a young company needs to compete globally. To date, IAF has invested in more than  200 startups and deployed more than $100 million since 2008 across sectors, including enterprise software, healthtech, cleantech and deeptech. Its portfolio includes notable exits like drone technology company Aeryon Labs, acquired by FLIR Systems for approximately US$200 million in 2019, and medical technology company Profound Medical, now publicly traded on both the TSX and Nasdaq. 

For Ajwani, that first ‘yes’ from the IAF changed the way the whole fundraising process felt.

“Before that, every ‘no’ felt existential,” he said. 

That’s where Ma believes an early investor can make the biggest difference.

“We are not always the largest cheque in a round,” he said. “But if we are doing our job, we are most useful at the moment when a company is still early enough to be misunderstood, but real enough that conviction can change its path.”

PRESENTED BY

MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF) is actively investing in high-potential startups. If you’re interested in learning more or exploring whether IAF could be the right investment partner for your company, visit marsiaf.com to learn more and pitch us.

Feature image courtesy MaRS.

The post Lessons on early-stage fundraising from Canadian startups that have closed rounds first appeared on BetaKit.

Brazilian Canadian product and user experience (UX) designer Marcos Rezende has built a new privacy-focused mobile application with AI.

Rezende previously worked at Microsoft and spends his days as a senior product designer at Kitchener-Waterloo event marketing platform Hive. He recently launched NearLens on the side to help iPhone users navigate a world where smart glasses with cameras are becoming increasingly present and hard to spot. 

Rezende’s free iOS app listens for Bluetooth signals associated with camera-equipped eyewear, and tracks matches in real time.

In an interview with BetaKit, Ottawa-based Rezende said NearLens’ focus is to give its users a signal that they are in the vicinity of camera glasses, such as Ray-Ban Meta, that could be actively recording.

Rezende’s free iOS app listens for Bluetooth signals associated with camera-equipped eyewear, and tracks matches in real time. As App Developer Magazine put it, NearLens is “a practical response to a growing gap in how smart glasses affect everyday privacy.”

Camera-equipped smart glasses, and their ability to fairly easily record others without their knowledge, have spurred backlash and present new challenges under Canadian privacy law.

For his part, Rezende has taken care to ensure that NearLens does not create new privacy concerns of its own. A NearLens post claims the app does not access cameras or microphones, identify wearers, or confirm if glasses are capturing photographs and footage. Rezende said he has done this “to guarantee privacy end-to-end.”

Rezende shipped the first version of NearLens with the help of AI tools after 328 software commits in two weeks. He said the idea came out of a postgraduate project at Lisbon’s IADE. NearLens has “no backend at all,” does not require accounts, compile analytics, or leverage any third-party software development kits, and runs using on-device AI where available. 

RELATED: Google reportedly close to buying Canada’s AdHawk for its eye-tracking smart glasses tech

Rezende also plans to keep NearLens free. He sees the app as a temporary solution until society determines where it wants to allow these devices, and how it plans to approach them.

For its part, Meta recently said daily usage of its smart glasses tripled year-over-year. Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the wearable eyewear as “one of the fastest-growing categories of consumer electronics ever.”

Rezende recently put NearLens to the test in four different locations to get a sense of how common they actually are at the moment. At Ottawa’s TD Place Arena, his app detected 15 signals consistent with camera-equipped smart glasses among 7,000 people over three hours. Whereas at the city’s Meridian Theatres, it returned zero matches.

A recent Business of Fashion-McKinsey report singled out smart glasses as poised for growth in 2026, when analysts project sales to quadruple thanks to a bevy of sleeker, cheaper options.

With files from Jesse Cole.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Redd Francisco.

The post Ottawa tech worker builds app to detect nearby smart glasses first appeared on BetaKit.

Montréal’s Brdg has closed $850,000 CAD in pre-seed funding to help real estate developers, cost consultants, and lenders navigate the complex world of financing construction projects in Canada.

“The construction financing process is quite archaic,” Brdg co-founder Ness Cabessa told BetaKit in an interview. Cabessa said it is both fragmented and manual-labour-intensive.

“A lot of time is being wasted, and time in construction is money.”

Construction draws, which are typically overseen by cost consultants, are a phased payment system whereby lenders closely monitor developers’ progress and release loan funds in installments as they achieve project milestones. 

Cabessa and Brdg co-founder Samuel Brand dealt with these challenges firsthand during their time working in general contracting and development, respectively. “A lot of time is being wasted, and time in construction is money,” Cabessa said.

After learning how difficult this process was to manage, especially for larger projects and small to mid-sized developers with limited internal infrastructure, they soon realized that this was a problem that few others were addressing.

Cabessa and Brand launched Brdg in 2024 with co-founder Daniel Bensoussan, and the trio sees room to use AI to simplify the construction draw process for all parties. 

The construction tech startup’s pre-seed round, which closed earlier this month, was raised through a simple agreement for future equity from a group that included New York’s Forum Ventures and undisclosed strategic investors from the real estate and construction finance world.

In a news release, Forum partner Kevin Corliss said the firm was attracted to the domain experience that Cabessa and Brand bring and their “commercially savvy” cost consulting partnership-based distribution approach, calling them “a team that understands not just the problem but how to build a real business around it.”

RELATED: US firm Forum Ventures bets on Toronto to build next wave of AI software

Cabessa, Brand, and Bensoussan have developed a construction finance platform designed to replace fragmented spreadsheets and manual work with centralized software that automates document collection, compliance reviews, budget validation, and draw packaging.

“We’re giving developers the tools to simplify the construction financing process, but also enabling cost consultants to automate [their daily] administrative workflows,” Cabessa said.

Brdg launched in beta near the start of 2026, and was made available to the broader public earlier this summer. Today, Cabessa said Brdg has partnered with industry stakeholders across projects representing more than $600 million in active development, from high-rise residential rental buildings to industrial projects, hotels, and shopping centres.

The startup hopes to one day become “the operating system for construction finance.” The next step on that path, Cabessa said, involves growing Brdg’s five-person team, layering on more agentic AI, and pursuing strategic partnerships in the construction lending space as it looks to expand its presence across Canada.

Feature image courtesy Brdg.

The post Brdg secures $850,000 to modernize construction financing first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian payments processor Moneris, co-owned by banks RBC and BMO, announced its sale to a US private equity firm this week. If the $2-billion CAD deal is closed and approved, roughly one in three Canadian payments will run through a US-controlled entity.

Payment processing is an invisible but critical piece of economic infrastructure. With Moneris gone, Canada’s Big Five banks will soon mainly rely on US providers. As Vass Bednar of the Canadian Shield Institute pointed out, that means a foreign player will have “effective control over how the country’s commerce clears.”

Domestic tech solutions could help. Calgary’s Helcim is positioning itself to fill the vacuum left by Moneris. Its CEO, Nicolas Beique, told BetaKit that Helcim has seen a 30-percent jump in inbound calls this week from Canadian leads who want to support Canadian companies. Meanwhile, some have questioned whether Moneris itself is a valuable enough asset to worry about; a single payment processor isn’t necessarily as critical to sovereignty as the rails those payments run on.

But real-time rails aren’t here yet, and Moneris’s new ownership still creates a vulnerability. The long-awaited instant payment settlement is still on the way. It’s supposed to finally roll out in Q4 of this year, bringing faster and cheaper payments.

If nothing else, the Moneris sale could be a wake-up call for Canada to create the thriving payment ecosystem it has promised companies and consumers. A first step would be finally delivering sovereign payment rails and ensuring they can’t be bought.

Madison McLauchlan,
Montréal reporter

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See every swipe as it happens. Automatically block out-of-policy spend.

When a receipt comes in, Ramp extracts the details and matches them to the related card transaction, which can then be auto-coded with GST/HST details and sent straight to your accounting system.¹

The average customer saves 5%² in their first year.

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Top stories from BetaKit

The skincare scientist

Despite constant compliments on his glowing complexion, PhD biochemist Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette’s passion isn’t for skincare. But the founder and CEO of Ottawa-based BioThera Solutions says he has developed a skincare serum that could act as a foothold into “the future for medicine.”

No lack of conviction

Kitchener-Waterloo-based Convictional has decided to permanently shut down after a “Hail Mary” pivot from e-commerce to an AI-native Slack alternative didn’t pan out. The co-founder and CEO walks through what went wrong, and what happens now.

Sale over scale

A new study from the Council of Canadian Innovators has found the four main barriers that cause Canadian tech companies to exit to international buyers “at precisely the moment when scaling becomes more complex and capital-intensive.”

What lurks in smoke

Researchers from the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, and Queen’s University are studying the millions of tiny organisms that live within the wildfire smoke that has become increasingly prevalent in Canadian life.

Fall into these tech events

Summer’s coming to a close, which means that Canadian tech events are ramping back up:

• BC Founders Day is back for its third year on Aug. 20 to unite what organizers call a fragmented BC startup scene. BetaKit readers can use the code MOST_AMBITIOUS for 20 percent off tickets.
  
  
• The CVCA’s global investment forum is coming up on Sept. 14, bringing high-profile investors and tech leaders to Toronto at the same time as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first-ever Canada Investment Summit.
  
  
• Edmonton Unlimited has unveiled its annual list of 10 companies to watch ahead of the city’s Startup Week, which runs from Oct. 5 to 9.

Sponsored stories

What it takes for Canadian tech to enter defence

DIGITAL’s Webinar Series on Defence Market Access is helping Canadian commercial tech founders navigate the complex defence landscape by providing a roadmap for procurement, scaling dual-use technologies, and national security adoption.

Deals and dollars

Who cashed in, or out, this week:

• Xanadu partnered with the University of Alberta on a quantum-powered cancer treatment project. (Toronto/Edmonton)
• GoodLeaf Farms said it has become profitable across all of its vertical farming operations for the first time. (Guelph)
• LegalBooks.ai launched LegalLayer, a law firm built for AI agents in Canada, the company told BetaKit. (Toronto)
• Fisent Technologies raised $4.3 million USD to help enterprises automate their AI use. (Toronto)
• St. John’s-founded legaltech Spellbook launched an AI document editor. (Toronto)
• Telesat’s rising stock dipped after it reported a steep loss in its Q2 earnings. (Ottawa)
• Medical networking app The Rounds was acquired by advertising agency Native Touch. (Halifax/Toronto)

---

Data point

30

The number of “PhD-level” papers that Transformer Lab claims its autonomous AI research tool was able to create in 30 days.

---

The refresh

System overload

Soul-crushing hours. Cutthroat competition. Mass layoffs. Tech workers have always dealt with a lot, but their therapists reveal to Business Insider the new stressors that have their waitlists filling up months in advance.

Your finance team has better things to do than chase receipts.

Canada’s innovation ecosystem is dense but disconnected. The founder, corporate, or investor who’s the right fit for you is often within reach—if only you had the right information. Historically, most of these key connections happened by chance: an encounter at a conference or a mutual friend. MaRS Connect was built to help you access who you need when you need them. Hundreds of investors and corporate innovation partners are on MaRS Connect, scouting for Canadian tech. Your next deal is waiting for you. Find your next investor, partner, or customer on MaRS Connect

BetaKit Podcast  ·  Aug 14

“When we talk about sovereignty, we’re talking about strategic capacity. Can you govern yourself with the tools that you have?”

What would happen if, overnight, Canada suddenly lost all access to American tech? Canadian Shield Institute managing director Vass Bednar joins to answer that question before discussing how Canada can bootstrap digital self-reliance in the face of weaponized integration. Listen now ›

¹ Direct sync available for supported accounting systems: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, and Sage Intacct.

² This percentage is an estimate, not a guarantee. More details at ramp.com/canada.

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Madison McLauchlan (Montréal reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Moneris.

The post What will the Moneris sale cost Canada?  first appeared on BetaKit.

What would happen if, overnight, Canada suddenly lost all access to American tech?

That question was posed by our friends at the Canadian Shield Institute, who have put together an infographic outlining what the average day might look like without the economic and technological integration Canadians have come to expect—maybe even depend on. 

“When we talk about sovereignty, we’re talking about strategic capacity. Can you govern yourself with the tools that you have?”

You can play with the infographic yourself, but the TL;DR is not great: while there are some viable Canadian alternatives, our country just doesn’t have a complete ‘sovereign tech stack.’ It’s part of the reason why our 2026 BetaKit Most Ambitious issue, which tells stories of Canadian innovators strengthening our security, autonomy, and prosperity, has an entire section dedicated to the companies trying to fill those gaps.

In that section, we also have an op-ed from Canadian Shield Institute managing director, Vass Bednar, asking another important question: how sovereign is sovereign enough? Do we really need a Canadian version of every app or service or technology, or is there a better way?

This week on the podcast, Vass joins to answer that question and a whole bunch of others, like what does minimum viable sovereignty for Canadian tech look like? How should we evaluate recent ‘elbows up’ federal policy initiatives? And maybe the biggest question of all: what does sovereignty really mean for Canadians in an ever more interconnected digital world?

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, RSS

The answers might be as tough to parse as the questions, but Vass is an apex-level policy wonk and has an incredible way of explaining complex subjects so that Canadians can engage with them.

So let’s do that! Let’s engage. Let’s… dig in.

PRESENTED BY

The BetaKit Podcast is presented by BetaKit Most Ambitious.

Amid global uncertainty, the path forward is clear: Canada’s moment to build is now.

Presented by Uber Canada, DMZ, and National Bank of Canada, BetaKit Most Ambitious is back, telling stories of nearly 100 Canadian innovators strengthening our nation’s autonomy, security, and prosperity.

Read BetaKit Most Ambitious now.

Recorded and edited by Toronto Podcasts.

The post Can Canada function without American tech? first appeared on BetaKit.

The Ontario government has announced the framework for a new Data Centre Playbook that it says will set the terms for data centre development in the province.

The news: The playbook will base data centre approvals around three main pillars: economic development, digital sovereignty, and community benefits. The province also says it plans to put laws in place that will ensure data centres pay full price for the electricity they use.

However, the document has not yet been finalized, and the government has launched a 30-day public consultation to collect public feedback that will inform the final version.

From the source: The Ontario government says it will only offer “non-financial support to attract investments.” In a news release, the province said that means things like “leveraging Ontario’s existing strategic advantages such as a clean and reliable electricity system, ample land space, cool climate, and skilled workforce.”

The context: Ontario is experiencing rapid growth in data centre development, as AI companies rush to build infrastructure to support their models. But backlash against data centre development is growing. 

As residents raise concerns about the projects’ energy use, environmental impacts, and long-term economic benefits, municipalities are starting to respond. But with few data-centre-specific regulations on the books, those responses have been largely ad hoc.

The Town of Oakville just put in place a one-year moratorium on new data centre development, and Mississauga will soon vote on its own pause. Hamilton, meanwhile, recently voted down a proposed moratorium.

Final thought: Other Canadian provinces have created their own policies to respond to the data centre boom, with dramatically different results. In June, Manitoba rejected a major proposal for a 141-hectare hyperscale data centre, with Premier Wab Kinew saying the projects aren’t in the best interest of Manitobans. Meanwhile, Alberta has gone out of its way to court data centre development, and Meta recently announced it will invest $13-billion to build a massive, hyperscale data centre north of Edmonton.

Ontario appears to be cutting a path between these two extremes, but until it releases the playbook in its entirety, it’s difficult to see exactly where that path will lead.

Feature image courtesy Doug Ford via Linkedin.

The post Ontario proposes data centre playbook as demand for AI infrastructure surges first appeared on BetaKit.

Guelph, Ontario-based GoodLeaf Farms has become profitable across its vertical farming operations for the first time.

The news: GoodLeaf is a technology-enabled vertical farming operator that supplies retailers with baby greens, microgreens, and salad mixes grown in its Calgary, Guelph, and Saint-Hubert, Québec facilities. The company announced on Tuesday that all three of its farms have achieved profitability, a significant milestone for an industry where most commercial-scale vertical farming firms are still struggling to break even.

From the source: GoodLeaf president and CEO Andy O’Brien sees the milestone as a significant one for both the business and the sector more broadly. “Fifteen years ago, [GoodLeaf] started with a belief that Canada could grow fresh, local leafy greens year-round, even in a challenging climate,” O’Brien told BetaKit over email. “At the time, that was an ambitious idea. Reaching operational profitability validates that vision and proves that vertical farming can be both sustainable and financially viable.”

The context: GoodLeaf, which was founded in 2011 in Halifax, has spent over a decade developing recipes and proprietary tech that helps the firm maximize the yield and quality of its produce by monitoring and controlling light, air, and water delivery to its plants. The company, which counts McCain Foods, Farm Credit Canada, and Power Sustainable Lios among its backers, attributes its success to “years of innovation, disciplined growth, and strategic investment.” It also comes on the back of fivefold revenue growth over the past three years, as GoodLeaf’s total sales soared from $6.4 million in 2023 to $34 million in 2025. GoodLeaf said its revenue is up another 31 percent this year, thanks to rising consumer demand and expanded retail distribution.

Final thought: For years, many have questioned the commercial viability of vertical farming. iGrow News reported that 2025 brought a market correction for the industry that featured 14 controlled environment agriculture-related bankruptcies. O’Brien sees GoodLeaf as proof that vertical farming can work and contribute to Canada’s food future, with “the right operating model and disciplined execution.”

Feature image courtesy GoodLeaf Farms.

The post After 15 years, GoodLeaf proves there’s profit in vertical farming first appeared on BetaKit.

Toronto-based quantum computing firm Xanadu has struck a partnership with the University of Alberta to pioneer new quantum algorithms that can help in cancer treatment.

The news: The research partnership, led by Xanadu’s algorithms team and chemistry professor Alex Brown, aims to develop a quantum computing framework to design next-generation photosensitizers. Photosensitizers are molecules that react to light. They can be used in photodynamic therapy, a non-invasive cancer treatment that uses light to selectively destroy tumour cells, while avoiding the side effects of traditional cancer treatments.

From the source: Xanadu says discovering new and more effective photosensitizers is typically slow and expensive, but it recently published a paper on how quantum computers can simulate interactions between light and matter. According to Brown, it’s difficult for standard computational methods to capture how photosensitizers perform when activated by light.

“We’re excited to explore how fault-tolerant quantum computing could provide new tools for understanding and designing more effective light-activated cancer treatments,” Brown said in a statement. 

The context: This is the second academic partnership Xanadu has struck this month, following a memorandum of understanding it signed with the University of Guelph last week. That partnership is meant to prepare Guelph students for quantum careers by introducing them to “practical” quantum computing concepts, tools, and research opportunities.  

Xanadu, which became publicly traded earlier this year, also filed its second-ever earnings report last week, in which it reported increased research and development spending and the significant expansion of its US operations in Albany, New York, which Xanadu has called a strategic base for its broader US expansion

Final thought: Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook has previously said that quantum chemistry might be “the lowest-hanging fruit” in drug discovery given theoretically lower qubit requirements. By working with Brown, a photosensitizer development expert, the public quantum company hopes to strengthen its quantum-based drug design. 

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta. 

Feature image courtesy Xanadu.

The post Xanadu and University of Alberta partner on quantum-powered cancer research first appeared on BetaKit.

The Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and its member firms plan to court major global investors next month in Toronto as they convene in the city for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit.

The news: The CVCA announced on Thursday the speakers attending its invitation-only event, which is happening on Sept. 14. Participants in the Canadian Global Growth Forum include Cyrus Madon, private equity (PE) group chair at Brookfield Asset Management, Camilla Languille, co-CEO of Mubadala’s PE platform, HarbourVest Partners CEO John Toomey, and Sagard chair and CEO Paul Desmarais III, among others. They will be joined by other senior investment leaders from across Canada, the United States, China, Malaysia, France, and Australia. High-profile Canadian tech leaders like Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez, Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Michael Katchen, and Kepler Communications co-founder and CEO Mina Mitry are also set to speak.

From the source: As part of the event, local PE and venture capital (VC) fund managers will meet privately with investment heavyweights from around the globe and sell them on investing in Canada. According to The Globe and Mail, the Canada Investment Summit, which will begin that evening, is expected to welcome executives from nearly 100 global investors across 28 countries, who collectively manage almost $120 trillion.

The context: The Canadian Global Growth Forum has been in the works for some time. As The Globe reported last week, the two events are not formally linked—the CVCA forum arose from PE and VC leaders seeking a greater role in the Canada Investment Summit, which hopes to attract new investment to advance nation-building projects and grow the country’s economy.

Final thought: For Canadian PE and VC funds, the chance to pitch prospective big-name limited partners on home turf is acute: Carney’s September summit is the first of its kind in Canada, and will draw the sort of guest list typically only seen in Switzerland or the US.

Feature image courtesy Josh Scott for BetaKit. Photos by Toronto Tech Week, BDC, and Elevate.

The post High-profile investors, tech leaders to speak at CVCA global investment forum first appeared on BetaKit.

After steadily rising over the course of this year, Ottawa-based satellite operator Telesat’s stock price dropped on Thursday after its Q2 earnings showed a steep net loss. 

The news: Telesat, which trades on the TSX and Nasdaq under the symbol $TSAT, reported $79 million in consolidated revenue for the second quarter, a 25-percent decrease from the same time last year. Its net loss for the quarter was $559 million, compared to a $76-million gain in the prior year. 

Investors reacted harshly to the earnings report, sending the stock down nearly 14 percent. While a steep plunge on the day, it’s a blip in Telesat’s recent performance, as its stock is up more than 80 percent year-to-date.

Telesat blamed the drop on non-cash losses, including an increase in the fair value of financing warrants for its Lightspeed satellite subsidiary, and the weakening Canadian dollar, which increased the Canadian dollar value of its US dollar-tied debt.

From the source: On the earnings call, Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg said the value of the company’s warrants has increased by more than 50 percent thanks to it recently signing its largest-ever contract. 

“That’s obviously a positive sign for the business,” Goldberg said. “It’s good news if you’re a Canadian taxpayer because the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec have warrants in the Lightspeed project.”

The context: Warrants give the holder the right to buy or sell stock at a set price, but depending on the type of warrant, an increasing stock price means the difference must be recorded as a loss. Telesat struck large loan agreements with Canada and Quebec in 2024, granting the governments warrants for 10 percent and 1.87 percent of Telesat Lightspeed’s shares, respectively. 

Since those warrants were signed, Telesat’s stock price has increased fourfold, fuelled by recent increased interest in national space capabilities.

Final thought: Including the recent signing of its large contract with the Canadian government, Telesat said its low-Earth orbit satellite backlog is $5.6 billion. Goldberg said on the earnings call that global conflict has opened an opportunity to address demand for defence and sovereign capabilities, and that he’s very bullish about Telesat’s ability to meaningfully grow its backlog by the end of next year. 

Feature image courtesy Telesat. 

The post Telesat’s steep Q2 net loss slows its stock bull run first appeared on BetaKit.

What would Canada look like if tech journalist and author Cory Doctorow were AI minister? For starters, there would likely be less sloganeering and more cursing coming out of Canada’s innovation ministry. It might also look, however, like a Canada that’s more skeptical of big, southern tech firms, more comfortable outside the confines of US copyright law, and less AI-pilled than the government is today. 

 Doctorow, who published his most recent nonfiction work, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, earlier this summer, joined BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys in the podcast studio last month, where he talked about repealing Canada’s anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, why jailbreaking big tech is a path to sovereignty, and how he fears the government’s “all-in” approach to AI could turbocharge 21st century fascism. 

You can read an excerpt from that conversation below.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

In your essay in BetaKit Most Ambitious, you talk about this idea that for Canada’s digital sovereignty to mean anything, we’ve got to jailbreak this country. Can you tell our audience what that means?

First, let’s talk about three ways that Canada is not digitally sovereign. We’re subject to raids on our privacy and on the functionality of the tools we use. We try to get Facebook to pay for news, now we just don’t have news on Facebook, and so on.

Another is market opportunity. You could jailbreak the Facebook app. You could offer people all of the services that Facebook has, but without having to use Facebook. There’s plenty of Americans who would buy that if they could, and there’s plenty of people all over the world who would buy that if they could. 

The third way is that Microsoft could turn off M365 for any ministry or structurally important firm and brick that firm or branch of the government. 

So the question is why can’t we just fix this? The answer is that in 2012 we passed a wildly unpopular law that says it’s illegal for Canadians to modify American technology if it has digital rights management (DRM), and you can’t break DRM even for lawful purposes. 

Apple won’t let you replace a screen or add more RAM unless you go Apple-certified and even then they might not let you. 

Jailbreaking is a way we defend our human rights. It’s the way that we capture those markets and turn their trillions into our billions. Jeff Bezos tells every supplier, “your margin is my opportunity.” When he does it, that’s not progress. And, if we do it to him, it’s not piracy. That margin is our opportunity. 

It’s also how we get our digital sovereignty because while we can build equivalents to M365, no one is going to copy and paste a million documents and data structures into your Canadian cloud.  

We need to do something like virtualize a phone and iterate through all the records and be able to extract the data that way which we can only do if we repeal this wildly unpopular law, become a dis-enshittification nation, turn their trillions into our billions, become digitally sovereign, protect the privacy and money of the people in Canada and set up an export market where everyone in the world, including Americans, become our customers rather than doing something like boycotting American products and drinking shitty Wayne Gretzky rye instead of delicious American bourbon, and whacking some poor farmer in a state that begins and ends with a vowel because we’re not buying his corn anymore. 

By the time this episode comes out, BetaKit will have sat down with Evan Solomon, Canada’s AI minister. My question for you is: if you were AI minister, what would you do?

There’s a story about a system admin who’s told they have to build a server farm that can process a certain number of flops within 10 years. When asked what their plan is, they say, “I’m going to do nothing for the next nine years while Moore’s Law does its work, and then I’m going to build a data centre for 10 percent of what it would cost me to build it today”’ 

So, as minister I would say: I am not investing in GPUs, data centres, or AI, except to find efficiencies in open-source models and to do scientific research, until and unless the bubble bursts. I’m not buying Aeron chairs in March of 2020 because I’m not dumb. That would be my answer. 

Our audience has seen Canada fail to commercialize all of the innovations it helped to R&D. I think we’re looking for a way to win for once. 

But what would winning mean? Winning the race to build the most money-losing technology in the history of the human race? That is not a contest anyone wants to win. If you want to capitalize on this, then improve the open-source models and find ways to do local compute so that they’re not dependent on these big firms.

Isn’t that Cohere? 

Sure. Sounds good. What you don’t want is vendor lock-in, and what you don’t want is to shovel asbestos in the walls by taking these chatbots where you’re buying them at one percent of the operating expense and then making them structurally important to your firm, with the understanding that these companies are not long for this world. That’s crazy. 

That’s not how you build a Canadian future; that’s how you take a bunch of Canadian businesses and expose them to risk.

So it’s even worse when the government buys into the inevitability fallacy?

Governments hate civil service in the same way that bosses hate employees. You show up and—especially if you’re Trump or Musk—you’re like, I would like to do a bunch of illegal things and everyone who works for the government says, “yeah, but it’s illegal.” You get rid of that civil service and replace them with chatbots, and you just say a thing and it happens. It allows you to live this solipsistic existence where you have an idea and it turns into policy and you don’t have to talk to experts who know how to do things you don’t know how to do.

The subtitle to your new book is How to think about artificial intelIigence—before it’s too late. What does “too late” look like?

The “too late” is when we fire a bunch of people who know how to do things; we vaporize their process knowledge, which we will spend decades trying to get back, and we replace them with chatbots who are bad at doing their job and cannot absorb their process knowledge because it can’t be integrated into training data. 

Then, the companies that run those chatbots go under, workers have scattered, and even if they do come back, they’re missing the other parts of distributed knowledge of how things work. And then, when 35 percent of the stock market is suddenly vaporized when the Magnificent Seven go away, we do what we’ve always done in this century when we have a market crisis: austerity, which we know drives people into the arms of fascism. That’s too late. 

Watch the full conversation from The BetaKit Podcast here:

Feature image courtesy The BetaKit Podcast.

The post Q&A: What Cory Doctorow would do as Canada’s AI minister first appeared on BetaKit.

Chris Neumann spent much of his career in the startup mecca of Silicon Valley. So when the BC native moved back to Vancouver in 2021 to join Panache Ventures, he quickly took note of the differences between the two ecosystems. 

“[Vancouver is] one of the only ecosystems that doesn’t have a nexus for startup activity.” 

“Vancouver’s a very unique startup ecosystem in that it is the most fragmented ecosystem that I know of in the whole world,” Neumann told BetaKit. “It’s one of the only ecosystems that doesn’t have a nexus for startup activity.” 

But he’s been working at changing that. 

Neumann started BC Founders Day—an annual event that focuses on bringing Vancouver’s startup community together—after a conversation with Version One founding partner Boris Wertz. Now in its third year, the event was conceived during a conversation on how to reinvigorate the BC startup landscape in the wake of COVID-19. 

“We were noticing how this dynamic became worse post-COVID-19, and we were like, ‘hey, maybe we can do something about it?’” Neumann said. “I pinged a bunch of notable founders in Vancouver … and said if I put something together … would you guys give up half a day, and we’ll do some mentoring and panels?”

The answer was overwhelmingly supportive, according to Neumann, with more than 400 people registering for the event on the first day. 

Mentors and mentees

Neumann designed Founders Day as an event that would ensure collisions between early-career entrepreneurs and established professionals in the startup sector. The event builds on a mentor-mentee relationship where nearly 100 established founders, identified by Hawaiian lei necklaces, indicate to new founders they’re available for mentorship. 

RELATED: Panache’s Chris Neumann on FounderFuel’s return and “shitty” VC behaviour

That portion of the event, which runs in the morning and features panel discussions alongside networking, is for founders only. It’s a rule the organizers rigorously enforce by vetting attendees to ensure the right collisions happen. It’s not all so exclusive, though. Afternoon programming is open to the wider tech ecosystem.

Scaling up

Since its inception, the conference has grown. Its second year saw attendance jump from around 500 to more than 750. Organizers hope 2026’s attendance will follow a similar trajectory. This year also marks the first time the conference is being held at South Flats, an outdoor venue near Vancouver’s Emily Carr University, rather than the Vancouver Convention Centre.

This year’s theme is “what does exceptional look like?” It features seminars from some of BC’s biggest business success stories, including a conversation with Jack Newton of Clio and panel discussions with founders from Koho, Moment Energy, and Soma Energy, as well as VCs from throughout the BC and US ecosystems. 

There’s also a debate closing out the event on a topic particularly salient to entrepreneurs from the Lower Mainland: to build in BC, or make the move south of the border?

For Neumann, the last three years have been evidence the conference is on the right track. 

“It’s starting to get there. We’ve had a ton of feedback from people telling us this is a great event to make connections, that they’ve received investment here, [and] that they’ve hired here,” he said. “It’s a good reminder that there is a lot of stuff that’s going on in the Vancouver ecosystem … as founders, you can feel a bit isolated, and it’s a nice reminder that there’s a ton of people doing awesome stuff in this city and province.”

Tickets to BC Founders Day are available here. BetaKit readers can use the code MOST_AMBITIOUS for 20 percent off the price of any ticket.

CORRECTION (08/13/2026): A previous version of this story suggested Boris Wertz was involved in launching BC Founders Day. Chris Neumann launched the event after a conversation with Wertz, but Wertz was not directly involved. The story has been updated to reflect those facts.

Feature image courtesy Chris Neumann.

The post BC Founders Day changes venues as it looks to continue growth first appeared on BetaKit.

As AI finds its way into more of our everyday life and work, the companies that make, or rely heavily on, the technology are trying to balance perceived productivity gains with policies that promote transparency.

The news: On Tuesday, Anthropic announced it will add watermarks to text generated by its AI models, such as Claude, in response to European regulations. Anthropic didn’t specify exactly how the watermark will work, only that it will travel with the text when copied and pasted elsewhere, and that it “may”—a notable word choice—persist through editing.

From the source: Tech writer Katie Notopoulos questioned if this move by Anthropic, as well as AI detection at large, might devolve into a “never-ending game of whack-a-mole” where the tools often get it wrong. “At what point does this become an arms race between AI users and AI detectors… do we ever call a truce and just go back to sending typo-filled emails[?]” she writes for Business Insider.

The context: According to TechCrunch, companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI have also committed to adding identifiers to AI-generated content. The move to watermarking comes as institutions like MIT have stated that AI detection tools don’t work, and are instead encouraging clear policies and expectations around AI use.

Canadian-founded, New York City-based AI sales unicorn Clay is adopting the latter approach. The company’s new AI Writing Policy encourages its employees to take responsibility for every idea in their work, even if AI generated them.

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Latest news across tech

Ouroboros feasts

The circular nature of AI financing got more pronounced this week as the Financial Times reported that the world’s largest financiers are assembling a $500-billion funding package for Nvidia. The chipmaker intends to use the funds to support the AI buildout that its own business supplies.

The Zuck has struck

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in on the open weights debate this week. In yet another lengthy tech CEO manifesto, Zuckerberg called for the US to lower barriers for open-source AI models to better compete with foreign labs. Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez lauded Zuckerberg’s stance, calling focus on progress over risks the “right vision for the future of AI.”

From flax to firepower

As global conflict increases the demand for the explosive compound nitrocellulose, it has become a national priority for Canada to produce its own. The Globe and Mail profiles CellCore Technologies, the Canadian company aiming to become a sovereign supplier by tapping into, of all things, the domestic flax industry.

Gym-class cyberattack

Andrew Bird was just sitting on his couch, annoyed at how difficult it was to book a class at his gym. When the Australian man asked his personal AI agent to book it for him, the agent discovered vulnerabilities which it exploited to bump him up the waitlist, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Hot market for hot flashes

Vancouver drug discovery platform AbCellera’s stock is soaring after results from its latest human trial showed its menopause treatment could be the most effective at relieving hot flashes. The public company cashed in on that interest by opening up a $200-million USD public offering of common shares and warrants on Tuesday.

Not-so-artificial intelligence

What if artificial intelligence wasn’t artificial at all? Wired enters the world of organoids: small, lab-grown brains filled with millions of neurons that researchers say could eventually grow big enough to become biological processors. The jury is still out on the ethics.

Celebrate the 16th annual LiONS LAIR Pitch Competition!

Join the region’s most promising startups for a night of high-stakes pitching, celebration, and connection at the LiONS LAIR gala. Save the date for Sept. 24 at the Oakville Banquet & Conference Centre to see who takes the grand prize home.

Tickets are limited. Get yours now.

On the move

This week’s hires, fires, and exec shakeups:

• Former Amazon head of Canadian public policy Jacob Glick has joined Anthropic in the same role.
• Schneider Electric Canada promoted Shaun MacGarvie to VP of national sales and Sophie Chadefaud to VP of marketing.
• National Bank of Canada added retired general Rick Hillier as its strategic defence advisor as it looks to further support the country’s defence industry.
• Former Council of Canadian Innovators chief of staff Abu Kamat joined the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association in the same role.
• Kitchener-Waterloo-based Convictional will shut down after a failed pivot; founder and CEO Roger Kirkness says he plans to help the 14-person team find new jobs.
• More than one-third of Canadian SMEs expect to expand hiring over the next six months, according to a new report from HR platform Employment Hero.

Want to feature a hiring announcement on our list? Email partnerships@betakit.com with the subject line JOBS.

¹ Direct sync available for supported accounting systems: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, and Sage Intacct.
² This percentage is an estimate, not a guarantee. More details at ramp.com/canada.

Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Aerps.com.

The post The AI text conundrum first appeared on BetaKit.

Edmonton Unlimited has unveiled its annual list of 10 companies to watch ahead of this year’s Startup Week. 

The 10 companies, which will be showcased at Edmonton Startup Week’s Launch Party this October, were chosen from a cohort of 59 applicants. Organizers say that breadth of field signals a growing “depth and momentum” in the Edmonton tech and startup scene. 

Running since 2010, Launch Party watch list alumni include Edmonton anchor company Jobber, as well as Run With It Synthetics, FireSafe AI, and dozens of others.

To make the selection, the innovation agency contracted the help of three business and investment leaders, including Ashif Mawji of ScaleGood Fund, Yasmine Al-Hussein of Yaletown Partners, and Aroon Sequeira, the founder of Valuepath Partners. 

Honourees were judged across five metrics: team and execution, traction and validation, market and opportunity, innovation and differentiation, and Launch Party fit.

“The overall goal was to identify companies that are not simply promising ideas, but are demonstrating the capability, validation, and opportunity to build and grow from Edmonton,” said Stephanie Gillis-Paulgaard, the vice-president of brand and strategic partnerships at Edmonton Unlimited. 

Included in this year’s list are:

• Aqtiva is an Agtech company using plasma-activated water technology to supplant traditional fertilizers with an eco-friendly solution to enhance plant health and improve soil quality. Aqtiva was named New Startup of the Year at the YEG Startup Community Awards. 
• Zylotex is turning Alberta-grown hemp into sustainably developed cotton-replacement fibres, offering biodegradable, microplastic-free alternatives to synthetic fabrics or cotton as well as use in industrial or medical settings. 
• Pulmvita is improving oxygen delivery for patients with lung diseases like COPD by creating a new design of nasal breathing tube. The device improves breath detection, and has outperformed status-quo oxygen delivery devices in volunteer trials, according to Pulmvita. The company won the first prize spot at Startup TNT’s summit last year. 
• RNARevive is a biotech company developing RNA therapeutics that enable “long-lasting biologic drug production.” The company’s platform delivers temporary RNA instructions to a patient’s cells, causing them to produce long-lasting medicine from a single dose.
• TaxFormify provides AI-driven management software for accountants and CPAs, automating administrative tasks, categorization, and streamlining tax workflows. 
• Osprey Systems is a defence tech startup using AI to boost the performance of drones and autonomous vehicles in harsh environments like the Arctic or where satellite or cloud connectivity is unavailable. The company is seeking partnerships in the Canadian defence industry. 
• Proholistic Discovery is a biotech and drug discovery company using AI-driven systems to guide drug discovery and boost clinical success rates. It claims its platform can lower cost and minimize risk and trial failure rates. 
• InovativAI is developing an AI “concierge” service for airplanes to improve accessibility for passengers. Its Nexora platform includes, live multilingual translation of over 100 languages that can be delivered as a software overlay to in-flight entertainment systems with no hardware changes. 
• Dualchemy builds AI-powered hiring and acquisition tools. It claims to replace “black-box” filtering and algorithms with a real-time preference engine, scaling and streamlining decision-making for recruiters. 
• 7 Summit Snacks is a food-tech company making superfood chocolate bars that leverage nutritional science to increase endurance for athletes.
  

Edmonton Startup Week is an annual celebration of Edmonton’s startup community featuring panels, mentorship opportunities, and networking events. It runs from Oct. 5 to 9.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy of Edmonton Unlimited.

The post Edmonton Unlimited unveils 10 companies to watch ahead of Startup Week first appeared on BetaKit.

Kitchener-Waterloo-based technology company Convictional is closing up shop at the end of August after failing to generate enough traction as a corporate collaboration platform.

The startup announced in a blog post last week that it will permanently shut down on Aug. 27. This comes after Convictional divested from its original e-commerce business last year and refocused on building an alternative to Slack for the AI era. 

“Past a certain point, it’s not a great use of investor funds chasing product-market fit somewhere where customers’ behaviour suggests they are [already] satisfied.”

The company’s results since then convinced co-founder and CEO Roger Kirkness to pull the plug. “Past a certain point, it’s not a great use of investor funds chasing product-market fit somewhere where customers’ behaviour suggests they are satisfied with the status quo,” Kirkness wrote in the post.

“What we wanted to build, people don’t want, and what people want in this area, they are building themselves (or can’t be sold profitably),” Kirkness later told BetaKit over email.

Convictional, which still has “several years” worth of runway left, plans to return its remaining cash—a little less than half of the nearly $49 million USD ($68 million CAD) in venture capital funding that the company had raised to date—to its investors, which include Y Combinator (YC)’s growth fund and Kitchener-Waterloo’s Garage Capital, among others.

Kirkness first launched Convictional in late 2017 with another ex-Shopify employee, former Convictional president Chris Grouchy, to better connect retailers with their suppliers. The initially Toronto-based startup joined YC in 2019. Over time, it evolved into a tool for enabling dropship partnerships.

That part of the company’s business, which it branded Modern Dropship, grew to 3,000 customers, $2 million USD in net annualized revenue, and $83 million in gross merchandise volume (GMV) before Convictional divested in early 2025 after the startup’s leadership and investors identified limited growth potential.

RELATED: Convictional secures $50.7 million CAD, announces UK expansion

While he and Grouchy explored pivots within retail e-commerce, Kirkness said that “nothing felt exciting, and the rest of what was growing it seemed like Shopify was already working on.” 

Grouchy left Convictional in 2024, around the same time that the company began discussions with Modern Dropship’s eventual acquirer, California-based competitor Carro.

“We spent years on the hardest problem in B2B commerce: getting retailers and their suppliers to say yes to the same infra,” Grouchy told BetaKit over email. “That software still runs meaningful volume today.”

While Kirkness did not disclose the financial terms of the Modern Dropship divestiture, he acknowledged Convictional “lost a significant amount” of what it spent to build and sell the platform, but said its software is still around today and helps Carro power much more in GMV. Two of Convictional’s employees joined Carro as part of that deal.

The rest of the company refocused around a new idea. “Convictional 2.0 was about trying to productize the way we ran the first business,” Kirkness said, claiming that the startup’s operating handbook had already been adopted by other companies.

“I think the right but hard thing was to keep our word, return cash, and let the team move on somewhere growing.”

As AI completes more tasks for the folks working at tech companies, Kirkness said the Convictional team developed the thesis that traditional collaborative tools for businesses like Slack may not be as useful in a future where humans are more responsible for providing judgment. The company began looking into building a platform of its own about two years ago.

Convictional rolled out an initial version last fall, and re-launched a few weeks ago “as a sort of Hail Mary.” But Kirkness said they learned that larger firms were developing their own solutions in-house, and while smaller companies want better tools, “sustainable distribution” remains an unsolved problem.

“While we had lots of polite encouragement, we didn’t have enough paying/using customers to turn it into a good business anytime soon,” Kirkness said. “I think the right but hard thing was to keep our word, return cash, and let the team move on somewhere growing.”

RELATED: Convictional closes $6.7-million Series A as it works to become digital backbone of B2B trade

Kirkness said this decision was his own, and credited the support of Convictional’s investors throughout the process. Grouchy, who now provides go-to-market services to other startups, said he has “nothing but respect” for how Kirkness has handled everything since he left, “including this decision.”

While Convictional 2.0 was not successful, Kirkness said “the idea that judgment work would overtake task work has become increasingly true” and Convictional was able to complete “a lot of cool research.” He hopes to open source that work and the company’s intellectual property so others can benefit from what Convictional learned.

For now, Kirkness plans to take a break from tech. “I’m hoping to do more homeschooling stuff with my kids, chop some wood, help [Convictional’s 14-person] team find new jobs, and push AI and tech out of my mind for a little while,” he said. 

Feature image courtesy Convictional.

The post Convictional to shut down, return investor money, after AI-era pivot falls short first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian tech companies are increasingly asking whether products built for commercial use could also serve defence and national security needs. 

If the answer is yes, the question becomes ‘where to begin?’

DIGITAL, one of Canada’s five federally funded Global Innovation Clusters, has been fielding that question from founders with increasing frequency. In response, the Vancouver-based organization launched its Defence Market Access Series, a national webinar program designed to help commercial tech companies understand how Canada’s defence ecosystem works.

“If you want to go into the defence market, you’re going to have to be patient, and you’re going to have to think through what it’s going to mean for your organization.”

Nadia Shaikh-Naeem,
DIGITAL

“It isn’t easy to manage two markets, and the defence market is a demanding one,” said Nadia Shaikh-Naeem, Chief Programs Officer at DIGITAL. “It requires a significant amount of security. It requires a significant amount of capacity within the organization [and] strategic focus.”

The series arrives as Canada directs new attention and investment toward its defence industrial base. The federal government’s renewed focus on defence—chiefly through its $6.6-billion Defence Industrial Strategy—has created an opening for companies working in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, healthtech, and more. It has also exposed how unfamiliar many commercial tech founders are with this market.

“The webinar series is a culmination of us going out and listening to all of our members, listening to all the questions that they had, and really realizing that there’s a [knowledge] gap,” Shaikh-Naeem added.

Companies enter the sector by selling directly to the government, partnering with a major contractor, or joining a partnership. Each route has its own procurement process, security requirements, integration demands, and timelines. Just obtaining the appropriate security clearance can take 18 months or more, Shaikh-Naeem said, which creates a practical challenge for smaller companies with limited runway. 

The sessions covered in DIGITAL’s Defence Market Access Series span procurement, funding, intellectual property, partnerships, working with prime contractors, and learning the culture of the defence industry. 

According to DIGITAL Chief Operating Officer Elysa Darling, more than 550 people from across Canada have tuned in so far. She said the goal of the series was to convene a diverse group of domain experts to ensure that builders and buyers are speaking the same language.

“Anytime you’re trying to do something brand new, the path is genuinely confusing,” Darling added. While the webinars go deep on a wide range of topics, she wants founders to walk away with one message: “Persevere.”

Defence is a market with its own culture and expectations. Founders need to understand the role of prime contractors, how procurement programs work, and how policies like the Industrial and Technological Benefits can create openings for suppliers.

“If you want to go into the defence market, you’re going to have to be patient, and you’re going to have to think through what it’s going to mean for your organization,” added Shaikh-Naeem.

When evaluating a potential dual-use project, DIGITAL first considers whether the technology addresses a clearly defined need in a commercial, defence, security, or resilience context. It then looks at technical maturity, commercial validation, scalability, domestic talent, and whether credible partners can help move the technology toward adoption.

“The technology may have an obvious defence relevance, but companies still need to understand procurement requirements,” Darling said.  “They need to understand integration challenges, market access, and the realities of working with government or defence customers, which a lot of our companies don’t have.”

DIGITAL has identified roughly 60 completed or active projects in its portfolio that either have defence applications or are exploring them. One example comes from Lethbridge, Alberta-based Verge Ag, which worked with DIGITAL to develop path-planning technology for agricultural machinery. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the company adapted its technology to support Ukrainian farmers operating in hazardous terrain. 

“We built Path Planner to help farmers plan safer, more efficient field operations, and did not initially expect the same technology could support route planning around conflict-related hazards in Ukraine,” Godard, CEO and co-founder of Verge Ag said in a statement. 

Godard said having a partner that can help connect the dots is crucial for companies transitioning from a civilian use case to a defence application.

“That’s the role DIGITAL plays for us, and it’s exactly why webinar series like this one matter,” he added. “Most companies don’t know what the path into defence looks like, or who the right partners are. DIGITAL is helping make that path visible for the rest of the ecosystem.”

DIGITAL has also supported a project led by Québec-based Ova.ai, which created AI-enabled immersive training spaces specifically for the aerospace and naval industries. 

“The line between civilian and defence readiness is thinner than people think.”

Another project led by Toronto-based Lumeto is using virtual reality technology to train military medics for high-stress environments. Eyal Kleiner, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Lumeto, said the company’s training simulation technology can prepare nurses for work in civilian roles, but also as a combat medic in the field. 

“The underlying need is the same: improving and scaling training so frontline health professionals are prepared to perform when it matters most,” Kleiner said. “That’s the heart of dual-use technology, and it’s exactly the kind of ecosystem collaboration Canada needs more of right now.”

Lumeto’s simulations include scenarios that mimic the intensity of actual combat zones, including AI-based virtual patients who respond like real people. 

“The line between civilian and defence readiness is thinner than people think,” Kleiner said in a statement. “Our platforms were built to train healthcare teams, but the same tools are directly relevant to military and emergency response training. DIGITAL’s webinar series is helping more of the ecosystem see that connection.”

DIGITAL operates from a unique position to support these projects. The organization is both funded by and closely connected to the federal government.

“We are able to translate some of what’s coming down the pipe in the federal government to our industry members,” Darling said. “We’re acting as that connective tissue between industry and government, and private and public.”

At the same time, DIGITAL is technologically horizontal, which means it can help firms developing a vast array of technologies—including AI, digital twins, and advanced analytics —test their solutions in real operating environments, including healthcare, mining, and energy, among others.

The projects DIGITAL has funded throughout its history have generated $786 million  in investment, contributed $4 billion in gross domestic product growth, and helped participating companies raise close to $1.4 billion in follow-on capital.

DIGITAL believes its consortium model can help close the gap between dual-use potential and commercial adoption. Its projects bring together a tech company, an actual customer, and often a post-secondary or research institution. “We always say that the two best forms of revenue are non-dilutive capital and revenue from a customer,” Darling said. “Those are the two key elements, and we provide both of those.”

Shaikh-Naeem said DIGITAL’s model can also reduce risk for defence customers and prime contractors by giving buyers an early role in evaluating the technology, while smaller companies get feedback on integration, performance, and market fit.

Darling and Shaikh-Naeem both believe the defence opportunity for Canadian companies is substantial, but accessing it requires patience, preparation, and a clear understanding of how the market works. DIGITAL’s Defence Market Access Series is intended to give founders a first step in that preparation.

“We have some of the most innovative, interesting technologies coming out of Canada,” Darling said. “They just need a market. I think that Canadians are ready to seize that opportunity.”

PRESENTED BY

Canada’s defence market is opening – and it’s looking for companies like yours. DIGITAL’s Defence Market Access Series runs June through November 2026. Register for the next session on August 20 at 10:00 a.m. now.

Feature image courtesy Adobe.

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A networking platform for medical professionals has been acquired by a Toronto mobile advertising agency.

The news: Halifax-based The Rounds, which runs a digital network where physicians and healthcare professionals can discuss and learn about medical topics, was acquired by Toronto advertising agency Native Touch in May, CEO Tim Rice confirmed to BetaKit following a report by Entrevestor. 

Rice said The Rounds will maintain its standalone brand with a Halifax-headquartered team, with plans to continue hiring in Atlantic Canada and remotely across Canada.

From the source: “About a year ago, our board began considering options for growth through a corporate transaction, whether by acquiring, merging, or being acquired,” Rice wrote in a LinkedIn message to BetaKit. “We landed on Native Touch because of the synergies between our sponsorship business and their digital advertising and portfolio capabilities. It’s a fit built on where the business is headed, not just an exit.”

The context: The Rounds was founded in 2012 as a secure digital network for physicians and other healthcare workers to connect, ask questions, and discuss medical approaches. With backing from US VC firm Panoramic Ventures, it expanded its peer network to more than 17,000 healthcare professionals and added hundreds of learning programs and medical content modules, according to its website. 

Rice said that the company’s new ownership will allow it to improve product capabilities, expand its membership base, and build upon its platform for patient support programs, which are set up by pharmaceutical companies and typically offer free support in taking drug treatments. The CEO says the tech platform provides personalized options for patients enrolling in these programs.

Final thought: This isn’t the first time Native Touch has broken into the pharmaceutical space. In January 2025, it acquired Canadian pharmacy digital out-of-home ad network Pharmacy Media Network, giving it access to ad space in hundreds of Canadian pharmacies. For its part, The Rounds’ network of medical experts proved valuable for sponsorship opportunities—and that is part of the business that “found synergies” with Native Touch, Rice told Entrevestor. 

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Vitaly Gariev.

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Canadian technology companies are exiting to international buyers “at precisely the moment when scaling becomes more complex and capital-intensive,” according to a new study released today by the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI).

“Once you hit product-market fit and you go, it’s time to scale—that’s when the wheels start coming off.”

CCI identified four main barriers driving these early sales: difficulty securing domestic clients, growth financing, specialized talent, as well as a lack of cohesion across the ecosystem.

As one unnamed founder put it in the report, “once you hit product-market fit and you go, it’s time to scale—that’s when the wheels start coming off.”

CCI, which lobbies on behalf of the country’s tech scaleups, teamed up with Impact Group, DataAngel Policy Research, Yvan Clermont, and Labmedia Consulting to produce the report, which is based on in-depth interviews with 30 undisclosed Canadian founders and one senior executive across 30 unnamed businesses that were acquired by foreign buyers.

The CCI study’s authors checked in with entrepreneurs in software, health and life sciences, transportation, energy, finance, and hardware to determine why they sold when they did and what might have kept them Canadian-headquartered.

The companies surveyed had demonstrated commercial success, but faced a “scale conversion gap” when growing them required more funding, customers, and other capacity than the Canadian ecosystem could provide, the report notes.

“When those elements are unavailable or slow to access, foreign acquisition can become the most viable path,” the study said.

Trouble scaling top-tier tech

During a virtual panel discussing the report, Labmedia founder and principal Lindsay Borthwick said she was surprised to learn so many companies developing tech their customers called the best on the market faced such a challenging path to scaling in Canada. 

Despite producing “outstanding” software and other products, Borthwick said Canadian founders still “couldn’t find the support they needed to get to the next stage.”

“I just kept hearing that again and again,” she added.

A lack of funding available “at the size, speed, or risk tolerance required,” particularly in science-based or capital-intensive sectors, made foreign investment the only viable source for many, according to the report.

RELATED: Canadian startups face a home-market adoption problem, CentML co-founder says

These companies often required a “stamp of approval” from international clients first to secure domestic recognition, the report said. Some still encountered challenges getting their foot in the door with Canadian customers and governments after achieving it.

Fellow panellist Kyle Briggs, co-founder of The SAIL Fund and entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Science, previously built, bootstrapped, and sold his own Ottawa-based deep tech startup. 

The Northern Nanopore Instruments co-founder and CEO, who had a product on day one, said his firm was only able to obtain customers abroad, and met with lots of folks who wanted to see milestones before investing that would have only been possible with outside capital. 

“We definitely ran into issues with risk tolerance,” Briggs said, noting that Northern Nanopore Instruments’ inability to secure the equity and non-dilutive funding it needed to grow in Canada led to its sale to a UK-based Oxford Nanopore Technologies in late 2023.

RELATED: CVCA and NACO offer competing visions for feds’ $750-million venture envelope

Northern Nanopore Instruments is not alone. Just last week, US semiconductor giant AMD struck a deal to acquire Toronto AI chipmaker Taalas. In April, Toronto-based AI-powered 911 call screening firm Hyper sold to Motorola. They are just two of the latest in a long line of promising Canadian tech companies that have sold early to foreign buyers.

A Canadian ecosystem that works “in pieces rather than as a connected pathway,” with “little coordination” between grants, investors, lenders, and public programs has also made maintaining momentum tough for the entrepreneurs surveyed.

As another founder put it, “There was no step between the early-stage startup support… and the kind of capital I needed to keep the company in Canada.”

Decision-making power moves abroad

A shortage of experienced executives and specialized workers needed to scale globally and a cumbersome domestic procurement system also spurred respondents to turn to international clients, investors, partners, and acquirers.

While some of these exits were driven by individual business decisions, the report found that the aforementioned structural barriers have had an outsized influence on these types of deals.

“There was no step between the early-stage startup support… and the kind of capital I needed to keep the company in Canada.”

Though 93 percent of acquired companies maintained a presence in Canada in engineering, product development, or manufacturing, the power largely moved elsewhere.

“When these firms are acquired before reaching maturity, Canada may retain talented employees and local operations, but loses something much more important: strategic control,” the study added, noting that in 93 percent of cases, leadership and decision-making shifted abroad post-acquisition.

Only a third of the founders behind these businesses went on to build new companies. Another third stayed with their acquirers, while the remainder either contributed to the ecosystem in advisory, investment, or operational roles, or exited it entirely.

The report offered some recommendations that governments and private players could adopt to stop this outflow. These included aligning financing criteria with commercialization timelines, using public procurement to validate emerging firms, improving continuity across government programs, accelerating access to specialized immigration routes, and developing funds with the sector expertise and ability to lead large rounds.

Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

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BMO and RBC are selling off Moneris, one of Canada’s largest payment processors, to US-based private equity firm Francisco Partners.

The news: The two Canadian banks announced an agreement to sell their co-owned operation for $2 billion CAD on Monday evening. As part of the deal, BMO and RBC will each receive 50 percent of the sale’s proceeds and exclusively refer their customers to Moneris going forward. 

The transaction is expected to close in early 2027, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Once closed, Moneris will join the numerous payment processing companies in Francisco Partners’ portfolio, including Hypercom, Paymetric, PayLease, NMI, and Verifone. Under Francisco Partners’ leadership, Jeff Sloan, the former president and CEO of Global Payments, will become the chairman of Moneris. 

From the source: “Moneris is one of the strongest payments solution providers in North America, with a trusted brand, leading technology, and a proven team that has helped shape the way Canadian businesses operate,” Francisco Partners’ Peter Christodoulo said in a statement. He added that there’s a “significant opportunity to build on that foundation” through investment in innovation, platform expansion and long-term growth, while preserving Moneris’s “deeply Canadian identity.”

RELATED: Elevate, Moneris launch new accelerator for Canadian ecommerce startups

The context: Founded in 2000 and based in Toronto, Moneris provides online and in-person payment systems for Canadian merchants. The firm has nearly 2,000 employees and supports more than five billion transactions per year. Moneris claims it powers one in three transactions in Canada. The Francisco Partners deal comes almost exactly one year after Reuters reported that BMO and RBC were planning to put Moneris up for sale.

Final thought: Moneris is being sold off just over a year after TD inked a deal to offload 3,400 contracts from its wholly-owned payment processing business to US-based FinTech giant Fiserv. Meanwhile, Scotiabank and CIBC are both partnered with US-based firms, Chase Payment Solutions and Global Payments, for their payment processing offering. As Helcim founder and CEO Nic Beique has pointed out, Canada’s “Big Five” banks have now almost completely withdrawn from independent payments processing, ceding their services to US-based providers. These changes come as Canada prepares to modernize its national payment rails through the introduction of a Real-Time Rails payments system, which is set to launch later this year.

Feature image courtesy Moneris.

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For a PhD biochemist who has likely spent a lot of time with his forehead scrunched up over a microscope, Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette gets a lot of compliments on his skin. It makes sense; he’s the founder and CEO of BioThera Solutions, a bootstrapped Ottawa startup developing a skincare product based on the very scientific-sounding extracellular vesicles (EVs for short).

“All the girls are telling me I have this glow,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said in a May interview. “Okay, sure [but] I’m not a skin guy, I’m a tech guy with this tech.”

Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette believes the cosmetics industry is generally a lot of “marketing noise with very little science, if any.”

St-Denis-Bissonnette might have co-authored the most cited academic paper on EVs, and he might have the glowing skin you’d expect from an expert in the field, but he doesn’t exude passion for skincare. He’s a man of science, an expert on how every living cell naturally produces microscopic EVs to carry molecular components like proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids (such as mRNA) to act as a biosignal for other cells. Essentially, EVs are a cell’s natural way to communicate with one another. 

By taking advantage of this natural cell communication method, the EV’s molecular components can be used to modify gene expression, influence inflammatory signals, and support cell repair. On a practical level, St-Denis-Bissonnette says EVs can potentially be used to track the progression of treatments, as a biomarker to detect cancer, or even potentially to teach cells how to kill cancer. 

With all of these potential applications in the cards, skincare is just a means to an end for St-Denis-Bissonnette.

“This is really the technology of the future for medicine,” he said.

St-Denis-Bissonnette claims BioThera’s EV-derived topical serum, which he’s been using himself for over a year, reduces wrinkles and hydrates the skin. The serum is derived from aloe vera, a plant widely known to help soothe sunburns that also happens to be full of “potent” EVs. BioThera has refined those EVs into its patented solution. But that is just the beginning.

The company is exploring some therapeutic applications, but it can’t get there without solving some structural and scientific problems that come with EV production; problems that can be addressed with the cash and resources that come with going to market, fast. 

He picked dermatology as a strategic entry point to take advantage of the lighter regulatory burden that comes with creating cosmetics; it’s also an industry he believes is “marketing noise with very little science, if any.” 

As a company approved for cosmetic use by Health Canada, BioThera has been able to file provisional patents, regulatory notifications, and run a clinical trial within a year and a half, all while St-Denis-Bissonnette was finishing his PhD. He claimed that a comparable company took eight years to do the same by taking the therapeutic regulatory route. 

“If you can find a way to get to market and prove your concept in a way that is still aligned with what you want to do, in a way that’s more de-risked, why wouldn’t you do that?” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. 

“We’re using this wedge as a faster ramp to go to market, so the timeline is shorter, and the costs are less as well,” he added. 

Trojan skincare

All of this groundwork is in service of what St-Denis-Bissonnette sees as BioThera’s most valuable asset: its scalable EV isolation method. The most common EV isolation method can reliably extract a “juice box” full of EVs, he said. But that method simply does not work at an industrial scale. He claims BioThera has developed a method that can handle 1,000 times the volume input, without degrading the final EV product. At the end of the day, the skincare product is a Trojan horse for St-Denis-Bissonnette’s long-term goal of turning BioThera into the contract EV manufacturer of choice. 

“Over the past year, my overall goal was to de-risk this idea as much as possible, because I don’t want to bring in [an investor] and either waste their time or money,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. “It’s very important for me.”

RELATED: Canadian life sciences is at a “generational moment,” but experts disagree on its future

With a patent and clinical testing in hand, BioThera is raising a $1.5-million USD ($2.1-million CAD) seed round to help with production and international expansion. The raised capital will be matched by non-dilutive funding, St-Denis-Bissonnette said, including from the NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program. Once the money is in the bank, BioThera plans to file patents in new jurisdictions and continue the company’s direct go-to-market strategy, bringing the EV-based serum directly to dermatologists to teach them its strengths.

“We are really taking a science-first approach to it,” he said. “We want to make sure that dermatologists and the end users really understand what this product is right now.” 

BioThera is also preparing for its second clinical trial later this year, which will test the efficacy of its EVs in treating irritation caused by dermatological procedures like lasers and microneedling.

What more do investors want?

Despite all of his initiative, St-Denis-Bissonnette said he’s having a hard time finding investors who are willing to fund a biotech company. It’s particularly frustrating to him as he says he sees those same investors willing to throw money at AI startups with “barely an idea.” He thinks BioThera could have been much more productive over the past year if this weren’t the case.

“What’s crazy to me is that you would think that with an actual product, professional patent, regulatory approval, [and] a clinical trial, it would be relatively easy to show investors that we have a lot of traction,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. “But I’m still being [told] that I’m too early for a lot of these things, which I still don’t really understand.” 

“We’re using this wedge as a faster ramp to go to market, so the timeline is shorter, and the costs are less as well.”

The hesitancy is particularly pronounced in Canadian investors, a phenomenon he called “really sad” as he thinks BioThera has an opportunity to “do something unbelievable in Canada.” St-Denis-Bissonnette fully intends to build and commercialize the company in Ottawa, but the fundraising efforts have put him on multiple flights to Boston and San Francisco. 

BioThera’s investor struggles are reflected broadly across Canada. Last year, the Canadian life sciences sector saw its lowest level of investment since 2018, according to the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association’s annual report. The sector recorded a 47-percent year-over-year decline in dollars invested and an 11-percent decline in deal volume.

“Canadian investors, compared to some of the US [investors], they want a sure thing,” St-Denis-Bissonnette said. “They want Series A validation at the pre-seed stage.” 

Despite that heartache, St-Denis-Bissonnette’s confidence in his product and company hasn’t wavered. Earlier this year, he was selected for a Fulbright short-term entrepreneurship grant that sent him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there, he connected with esteemed professors and accomplished entrepreneurs who taught him an important lesson about building in biotech: “It doesn’t matter what others are saying, if you actually see that your thing is working or doing something, then screw everybody else.” 

“I know the goddamn thing works,” he said. “So you just pursue that forward.” 

Feature image courtesy Frédéric St-Denis-Bissonnette.

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Toronto-based Theia’s 3D motion-capture technology is playing a key role in a study that could help healthcare workers better avoid a common workplace injury.

The tech company announced on Tuesday morning that it’s collaborating with New Brunswick researchers to help evaluate whether a patient-turnover device—which helps caregivers turn patients over in hospital beds—could meaningfully reduce their risk of injury.

“Historically, this would have been very tricky—probably impossible to do.”

Marcus Brown, Theia

The researchers are tracking healthcare workers’ movements as they use Vendlet, a device made by European company DHG Denmark, to reposition “simulated patients,” which are actually members of the research team posing as patients. By comparing the motion data of the caregivers who used Vendlet when lifting to those who didn’t, the study aims to measure if the device makes the action less physically strenuous. 

Musculoskeletal injuries are one of the most common causes of time loss in the Canadian workers’ compensation system, according to the BC Nurses’ Union. For nurses and healthcare support staff, patient lifts and transfers are a leading culprit, as they can place intense strain on the lower back. Vendlet’s tech was previously shown to reduce physical strain on the caregiver when repositioning a patient, but the tech hasn’t yet been proven in Canada. 

That’s where Theia comes in. The company’s machine learning platform can generate 3D biomechanical data from video alone, without requiring those being observed to be labelled with tracking markers or other attachments. It’s intended to allow researchers to measure a vast amount of data with less time and effort. 

“Historically, this would have been very tricky—probably impossible to do,” Theia CEO Marcus Brown told BetaKit in an interview. Without Theia, both the patient and the caregiver in more than 500 trials would have had to be labelled with reflective markers. 

Researchers Michelle Cardoso, from the Université de Moncton, and Wayne Albert, a dean at the University of New Brunswick and head of its Occupational Performance Lab, are leading the study, which was funded by the Workers’ Compensation Board and WorkSafe Saskatchewan, as well as nonprofit organization Mitacs. Results are expected by December 2026. 

RELATED: Peripheral establishes first biomechanics basketball shooting lab in Toronto

“[Theia’s] measurements provide the evidence we need to evaluate new technologies and determine which approaches can reduce the physical demands placed on caregivers,” Albert said in a press release. 

Theia’s flagship product, Theia3D, turns video data from multiple cameras into biomechanical data that maps movement onto a 3D skeletal model, analyzing how joints move in space. The company also says video data is analyzed locally, reducing privacy concerns about data being sent to a cloud provider.  

Though it’s had deployments in healthcare, Theia’s tech has applications in sports analytics, too. Last year, the NBA selected the company as one of four partners for its biomechanics pilot program, which helps athletes analyze their movements on the court.  

Brown said that Theia sells its platform to research labs studying biomechanics as well as companies looking to analyze worker movement: for example, to figure out what repetitive movements lead to potential injury, and develop associated training plans. He did not disclose the company’s revenue but said it was north of $5 million CAD annually. 

Feature image courtesy Theia. 

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Toronto’s Fisent Technologies has raised $4.3 million USD ($6 million CAD) to rapidly grow its software business automation platform. 

The news: Enterprise AI software startup Fisent Technologies announced on Tuesday that it had raised $4.3-million USD in all-equity, all-primary financing led by US-based FinTech investment firm FINTOP. 

The 16-person company, whose AI software automates work for highly regulated industries such as insurance and healthcare, said it would use the money to hire more roles on its go-to-market team and accelerate product development.

From the source: “AI software is becoming easier to build, but deploying, governing, and improving it inside a complex enterprise remains difficult,” FINTOP partner John Philpott, who is joining Fisent’s board, said in a statement. He added that Fisent has set itself apart with “production performance, hands-on enterprise enablement, expansion within large customers, and a strong, partner-led distribution model.”

The context: Philpott’s commentary speaks to a wider trend: as nearly every company tries to adopt AI, implementation help has become a hot service. Investment giant a16z has called forward-deployed engineers—in this case, referring to a broad set of roles to help enterprises buying AI software actually learn how to use it—the “hottest job in startups.” 

For its part, Fisent said it’s looking to boost its “deployment engineering capabilities” with the new funds. The company leverages new generative AI capabilities to organize data for large businesses in sectors like banking, insurance, and healthcare. According to Fisent CEO Adrian Murray, Fisent helps these sectors automate knowledge work while providing a “trust layer” with confidence scoring and citations for AI outputs. For example, its tech was used to automatically verify thousands of power-of-attorney documents for a large US wealth management company.

Final thought: Though it was founded in 2021, Fisent is calling this deal its first priced venture round, after raising $2 million USD from investors including Pega, a US mid-market enterprise company and strategic partner. It seems well placed to capture some of the growth from companies scrambling to adopt AI: Fisent claimed it grew revenue by more than 200 percent in 2025 and landed an undisclosed Fortune 50 client. 

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Jose Vazquez.

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If you’ve spent time outside in virtually any part of Canada this summer, you’ve likely been choked by wildfire smoke. But just how harmful is that smoke? Is it similar to inhaling, say, second-hand cigarette smoke, or is there something even more sinister wafting in those fumes? Researchers are trying to find out. 

“You’d think fire is going to kill everything that’s alive, but … there’s pretty reasonable scientific evidence that suggests microbes could live.”

Christina Thornton,
University of Calgary

Christina Thornton is one part of a multipronged series of research projects bringing together the University of Calgary, University of Alberta (U of A), and Queen’s University to study the microbiome—that’s millions of tiny organisms like bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live together in a specific habitat—that exists within wildfire smoke. A microbiologist by trade and practicing respirologist with the Cumming School of Medicine, Thornton’s project is part of an emerging field called pyroaerobiology. Researchers in the field are trying to understand what microbes and chemicals exist in the combusted smoke lingering in our atmosphere. 

Thornton’s project, which she leads collaboratively with the U of A’s Ran Zhao, and which builds upon a prior project with Zhao and Queen’s University’s Paul Kubes, recently received $250,000 from the federal government’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) tied to understanding the makeup of the wildfire smoke that now blankets much of the planet each summer in hopes that more effective medical treatment can be developed. That funding comes on the heels of a prior, $2-million grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Research for Thornton’s work with Kubes. 

“At the end, what we hope that we’ll have is a clear workflow standard operating procedure, as well as a sort of fingerprint of what wildfire smoke looks like both in terms of chemical and microbial composition,” Thornton said. 

Inspired by disaster

Thornton and her colleague’s project was conceived three years ago during the 2023 wildfires in Western Canada. It was the most severe fire season in living memory for Canada, and it caused the three academics to wonder how dangerous the smoke they were inhaling was. 

“We know wildfires are bad: clearly there are chemicals and particles … we are breathing in. But do we know if there’s anything else we’re breathing in?”

As it turns out, there’s a lot more than just ash, soot, and PM2.5— the ultra fine particulate matter that gets caught in our lungs—in that smoke. According to Thornton, smoke composition from wildfires can include things like fungal spores and microbial agents that haven’t historically existed in aerosol form, meaning there’s no basis for what impacts they might have when inhaled. 

“You’d think fire is going to kill everything that’s alive, but … there’s pretty reasonable scientific evidence that suggests microbes could live. And, what happens is when they’re exposed to these extremes of temperature, they can make spores, whether bacterial or fungal, and those spores can be dispersed and potentially inhaled,” Thornton said. 

That carries all manner of potential implications, from associations with cardiovascular disease and stroke, to exposure to potentially immune-system-influencing antigens, according to Thornton. 

“Microbes carry their own DNA,” Thornton said. “Antibiotic-resistant genes are present in these bugs. We don’t know what those are doing. If they’re carrying antimicrobial resistance and we’re breathing them in, that may have implications for how we treat patients.”

RELATED: How four Edmonton startups are collaborating to fight wildfires

Another study, out of the US, found associations between wildfire incidents and occurrences of respiratory fungal infections. 

To find those microbes and chemicals, the team uses high-volumetric air samplers to capture wildfire smoke, analyze those samples, and develop microbial communities that can be grown and studied. They’ve also made use of the Government of Canada’s burn lab, located at the Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton, to burn natural components in a controlled setting and measure the outcome. 

A growing field of study

Thornton’s work is part of a growing field of research surrounding wildfires and their implications on human health. At U of A, in the Faculty of Engineering, assistant professor Haoran Yu is studying the ways airborne particulates enter indoor spaces and move through the air, as well as the chemical composition of smoke. Further east, the University of Manitoba is preparing to open the AirSAFE Lab, a multidisciplinary research centre on the health impacts of wildfire smoke. That centre is slated to open later this year. 

It’s a welcome effort, because, as Thornton says, the impacts of wildfire smoke are widespread, expensive, and not going away anytime soon. 

“We’re already in a strained healthcare system … it doesn’t take much to tip things over,” she said. “[Wildfire smoke] has healthcare costs, burdens on the system, increased resources, and we don’t have clear recommendations for what to do or clear guidance for what to do.”

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Image courtesy Open Journalism Network. Photo by InOldNews/Katherine KY Cheng.

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Winnipeg-based autonomous welding robotics company TetraGen Robotics has raised $1.8 million CAD in seed round funding. 

The news: The funding comes via an oversubscribed round led by Calgary’s StepChange Capital, with participation from Vancouver’s Emend Vision Fund, a VC firm with a focus that includes industrial modernization. TetraGen did not disclose cheque sizes or additional investors, but did say that it received funding from Jim Richardson of Winnipeg’s James Richardson & Sons. 

From the source: Founded in 2022 by former University of Manitoba Intelligent Digital Manufacturing Lab founder Matt Khoshdarregi, TetraGen’s tech combines the traditional chassis of a welding robot with proprietary AI software and machine vision. The company markets its robots as being “manual programming-free,” meaning they do not require humans to set up complex welding instructions and can automatically generate programming to adapt to real-world circumstances. 

The context: Canada’s industrial robotics market was valued at $592 million USD in 2024 and is projected to reach nearly $1.3 billion USD by 2030. Focusing on breaking into industries like heavy equipment, mining, and defence manufacturing, where manual programming and weld complexity remain high, TetraGen told BetaKit it will use the $1.8 million to accelerate commercialization, aiming to deploy more autonomous systems to customers throughout North America. TetraGen did not say where its systems are currently deployed, and where they will target expansion first, but said that success will be measured by “increasing customer deployments, expanding our commercial footprint, [and] strengthening strategic partnerships.”

TetraGen said it also plans to use the capital to grow its engineering and commercial teams, but did not say how many hires that might result in.

Final thought: Robots are increasingly common in industrial welding, with the Canadian Welding Bureau updating its official standards in 2025 to reflect the change. Likewise, many post-secondary institutions now include robotics in their curriculum. As Canada looks towards a shortage of skilled trades workers in welding, robotic systems are seen as a way to bridge the gap.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

CLARIFICATION (08/13/2026): This article has been updated to clarify that TetraGen views itself as an autonomous industrial robotics company, rather than a maker of collaborative robots.

Feature image courtesy TetraGen.

The post Autonomous welding startup TetraGen Robotics raises $1.8 million first appeared on BetaKit.

Kitchener-Waterloo-based AI research startup Transformer Lab has launched what co-founder and CEO Ali Asaria said is “the most ambitious thing I’ve ever been a part of.”

For the past two years, Transformer Lab’s four-person team has been quietly working to fully automate the research process.

“We see this as the next revolution, the one that actually replaces what we currently call the AI revolution.”

Ali Asaria,
Transformer Lab

Today, Transformer Lab announced it has opened access to the fruit of that labour, Primus, an autonomous research tool Asaria claims can connect users with AI agents capable of producing “PhD-level” research in a small fraction of the time as their human counterparts.

A global shortage of machine learning (ML) engineers has constrained AI progress; Asaria hopes Primus can fix that, and more. 

“If you work in a neolab, but you can’t hire the best [ML] engineers because there’s only so many of them in the world, and most of the best ones are going to these few companies, well, now you have access to as many of them as you want at the touch of a button,” Asaria told BetaKit in an interview.

Asaria teamed up with co-founder Tony Salomone, who worked at Asaria’s previous retail tech startups Tulip and Well.ca, to build Transformer Lab in 2024. The AI research lab officially launched earlier this year with funding from a group that includes Toronto’s Ripple Ventures and Kitchener-Waterloo’s Garage Capital.

Since forming, Transformer Lab has been spending time with researchers to understand their processes step-by-step and automate them.

Primus projects run dozens or hundreds of different agents, which each use different AI models appropriate to their respective tasks, Asaria said. Some are tiny, while others are frontier models from big-name providers. The company is also training models of its own.

Transformer Lab claims Primus can turn a single prompt-based research question from a hypothesis to a completed research paper in “hours to days” without additional human direction.

Using Primus, Transformer Lab claims that it has produced and published 30 “Masters to PhD-level” research papers in 30 consecutive days across domains ranging from materials science to physics, the interoperability of large language models, seismology, protein design, audio generation, and 3D vision. While Transformer Lab did not provide more detail on how these papers were assessed to be at that level, one of them has already received a citation in published research by the Google DeepMind team.

With Primus, Asaria hopes to play a part in ensuring more than just a few tech giants own the AI future, and accelerate the pace of research across all sorts of scientific domains—beyond just ML. “We see this as the next revolution, the one that actually replaces what we currently call the AI revolution,” he said.

RELATED: Ali Asaria’s Transformer Lab launches worldwide

Transformer Lab has made Primus free to start, and is rolling it out to the public on a waitlisted basis, admitting researchers and developers as AI compute capacity permits.

“We’re a small team, and we have plenty of ideas that get shelved because we lack the resources to execute them,” Rubric Labs co-founder and CEO Sarim Malik said in a news release. “With Primus, it feels like adding a team of world-class, senior ML engineers to your roster overnight who can chip away at your ideas.” 

Asaria is also conscious that tools like Primus could ruffle some feathers. Some academics have expressed doubt that AI can oversee the entire research pipeline; as Alessandra Buccella wrote for The Conversation, “the very existence of science as a source of authoritative knowledge about the natural world fundamentally depends on human life.”

Transformer Lab is trying to be thoughtful about how it deploys the product, including by specifying in its terms that users are not allowed to submit the papers it produces to journals and ask human volunteers to review them.

Asaria thinks a shift to more AI-powered research ultimately stands to benefit humanity, but “needs to be done carefully.”

Feature image courtesy Mauricio J Calero for BetaKit.

The post Transformer Lab wants to automate research with new AI tool Primus first appeared on BetaKit.

There’s a peculiar new sight along Cameron Street, the arterial road of Cannington, Ont. In a courtyard beside the old Cannington Convenience lies what looks like a big, glowing phone booth sitting atop a stone bench. 

“Having these spaces within these communities, big or small, I think, are really essential as we electrify our systems.”

The glowing phone booth, it turns out, is actually a giant battery. Built by Toronto-based startup Civic Grid on behalf of The Nourish and Develop Foundation (TNDF), it helps power the neighbouring food bank for cheap while providing residents with a mini town square to gather and recharge. For Civic Grid, the pilot project is a demonstration of a new kind of community infrastructure. 

“This square provides … lighting, shelter, seating, [and] an open courtyard to be an extension and to strengthen the TNDF’s existing programming,” Civic Grid founder and CEO Max Fine told BetaKit in an interview on Thursday. “Having these spaces within these communities, big or small, I think, are really essential as we electrify our systems and we go through this energy transition.” 

The courtyard’s 60 kWh energy system charges during the cheap, off-peak night hours, then powers the TNDF’s two buildings for six hours the following day. That keeps its fridges and community kitchen running at less cost, while also providing insurance if the power goes out. 

Fine said a battery like this shows how important energy access is for people to participate in society. Already, multiple people are charging their phones in the courtyard in the morning, and it has helped an electric wheelchair user get moving when they ran out of juice. This philosophy is also reflected in the design, with the stone base meant to evoke a community water well. 

RELATED: ThinkLabs secures $28-million USD Series A to help power grids manage data centre demand

“The idea that people can come and fill up, and take it home, [it’s] a more modern version of that well,” Fine said. “You have basic access to a life-saving amount of water; you’re not taking a bath in a public water fountain, you’re just getting a drink.”

Like other startups, Fine and Civic Grid foresee increasing electric vehicle, AI, and heat pump demand straining power grids in the future. While batteries like this could help increase grid capacity, Fine said communities are often against “big, clunky industrial systems” near them. By designing its batteries as a community fixture, Fine said he’s been met with much less resistance. 

“The community is accepting this technology in a place where they might not have accepted it before,” Fine said. “The design is really the unlock of the technology in a lot of these hard-to-reach spaces.”

Feature image courtesy Civic Grid. Photo by Jon Laytner.

The post How a giant battery is transforming a town centre in Cannington, Ontario first appeared on BetaKit.

Exactly 20 years ago, Canadian chipmaker ATI was snapped up by American giant AMD. ATI was, at the time, a dominant player alongside Nvidia—the kind of company that could have anchored a Canadian AI hardware industry.

Now, AMD has struck a deal to acquire Toronto-based Taalas—yet another hot, high-potential chipmaker. And Taalas is just the latest in a growing list of promising early-stage Canadian semiconductor startups snapped up by larger US players, alongside Hyperlume, Untether AI, and chip-adjacent CentML. Later-stage peers Alphawave Semi, GaN Systems, and Tenstorrent have also redomiciled, sold to foreign firms, or both.

Paul Slaby, managing director of Canada’s Semiconductor Council, called the Taalas acquisition “a real vote of confidence” in domestic talent. “AMD does not buy a team like Taalas unless the people here are world-class,” Slaby told me. But, stacked with these other deals, he said, a pattern emerges.

The CSC, which has called for chips to be included as a pillar in Canada’s AI strategy, would rather see Canada grow more of its best semiconductor companies into anchor firms and create its own AMDs than witness “a steady stream of early exits,” Slaby said.

For Taalas’ team, who previously worked at AMD Canada and launched Tenstorrent, this acquisition is a homecoming that provides the reach and resources to scale. But ensuring that continuing to build independently is a viable path forward for a startup like Taalas requires more Canadian late-stage capital, marquee customers, and tax incentives, Slaby and Blumind co-founder and CEO Niraj Mathur told me. If you ask Ranovus co-founder and CEO Hamid Arabzadeh, the answer might be even bolder: “affirmative action” for Canada’s semiconductor scale-ups, “like China did to create Huawei.”

While industry leaders I spoke with congratulated Taalas on the outcome, they also agreed Canada needs a targeted strategy to break this cycle. “If we keep producing world-class talent and IP without a plan to scale the companies that own them, we will keep handing our best work to someone else,” Slaby said.

Josh Scott,
Reporter

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Top stories from BetaKit

Ready for sovereign launch? 

Most of the world relies on Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send satellites into space, but it’s getting much harder to hitch a ride. For Canadian space startups, this could spell trouble, or present an opportunity to build rockets here.

Bright spot for VC 

Amid a tough fundraising market for VCs, White Star Capital, a global firm with Canadian roots, closed its fourth core fund at $350 million CAD. BetaKit talked to the partners about how they pulled it off.

What’s next after Nvidia? 

After eight years heading up Nvidia’s Spatial Intelligence Lab, University of Toronto associate professor Sanja Fidler is leaving her role at the world’s most valuable company.  

Shopify stock surges

Shopify’s stock is up more than 20 percent this week after the company topped 30-percent growth in revenue, gross profit, and merchant transactions. The earnings beat comes shortly after online statements from some Shopify board members have invited public scrutiny.

A hospital’s “immune system” 

Two brothers began building Claryx after their grandmother nearly died from an infection contracted during a routine hospital visit. Now, the Canadian-founded, New York-based company has raised $3.5 million USD for technology that aims to detect hospital outbreaks before they start.

Sponsored stories

“Intimate, safe, and enduring”: How a founder’s personal loss led to a new kind of business

Cremation Tattoos, led by Kerri Parnell and backed by North Forge, is using its patent-pending procedure to safely blend cremated remains into memorial tattoo ink.

Data point

Deals, dollars, drops

Who cashed in, or out, this week:

• It’s earnings week for Canadian tech. OpenText raised quarterly dividends and increased revenue, Xanadu doubled its loss but raised cash for R&D, MDA Space‘s revenue jumped by 34 percent. (Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Brampton, Ont.)
• Cross Border Impact Ventures secured $58 million USD for its second fund, which backs women and children’s healthtech companies. (Toronto)
• Walaw closed $1.5 million CAD to bring its AI receptionist to more health clinics. (Montréal)
• Chexy launched a mortgage rewards program through an Aeroplan partnership. (Toronto)
• Intellistake plans to acquire Dallas-based air screening device company NanoAi Technologies. (Vancouver)
• The feds tapped Telesat and MDA Space for a $2.3-billion CAD contract to build out Arctic surveillance.
• Calogy landed a $1.2-million CAD contract to power autonomous drones for Jaunt Air Mobility Canada. (Sherbrooke, Que.)
• Insurtech Apollo was acquired by global insurance broker Gallagher. (Vancouver, Toronto)
• LoopX raised a $4-million CAD seed round for physical AI in mining environments. (Toronto, Sudbury, Ont.)

The refresh

A Day in the Life Without American Tech

You wake up with a chill. Your Google smart thermostat’s disconnected. Your Chrome browser is down, and WhatsApp and Messenger aren’t working either. The Canadian Shield Institute writes about the obvious, and not-so-obvious, ways that losing access to US technology would change our lives.

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• Practical strategies for scaling finance operations
• Lessons from teams already putting AI to work

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BetaKit Podcast · Aug. 4

“There has never been a more exciting time to found and build a company in Canada.”

Melissa Nightingale of Raw Signal Group joined a special Startupfest edition of the podcast, along with co-founder Jonathan Nightingale, the Vector Institute’s Fatima Khamitova, and Toothpod’s Vishar Yaghoubian to discuss why most startups fail. Listen now ›

¹ Direct sync available for supported accounting systems: QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, and Sage Intacct.
² This percentage is an estimate, not a guarantee. More details at ramp.com/canada.

Contributors: Josh Scott (Toronto reporter), Madison McLauchlan (Montréal reporter), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).

Feature image courtesy AMD.

CLARIFICATION (08/12/2026): This article has been updated to make it clear that AMD’s deal to acquire Taalas has not yet gone through.

The post America loves Canadian chips first appeared on BetaKit.

After discovering a large deposit and drilling Canada’s first-ever natural hydrogen well, Saskatchewan mining company Max Power is using AI to expand and commercialize.

The news: The Regina-based company is advancing commercialization of Canada’s first facility at a natural hydrogen well, after discovering the system late last year. The mining company is using proprietary AI software to identify and develop potential expansions near the site, which is located in southern Saskatchewan and known as the Lawson Natural Hydrogen Complex.

From the source: Natural hydrogen, also known as white hydrogen, is an emerging energy source seen as being greener than manufactured hydrogen. It occurs naturally in underground rock formations and, unlike manufactured hydrogen, which requires expensive and emissions-heavy industrial production, natural hydrogen emits only water vapour when burned. The Lawson complex occupies 28 square kilometres, with several secondary drilling projects underway to validate commercial prospects.

The context: Max Power is an early entrant in the natural hydrogen space. It gained national attention when it discovered the large-scale, commercial natural hydrogen system. The company began the process of commercializing via a multi-well validation drill program at the Lawson site last month. To aid in that effort, it has been utilizing an AI-driven geological assessment tool called Maxx Lemi (short for Large Earth Model Integration). The platform helps target and identify potential future natural hydrogen pathways by processing large geological and geophysical data sets. The company said it’s continuing to integrate machine learning into Maxx Lemi with the aim of reducing traditional site identification processes by months or years. Earlier this year, the company raised nearly $50 million CAD, including investment from precious metals financier Eric Sprott. 

Final thought: Natural hydrogen is an emerging sector of an overall Canadian hydrogen market that was worth an estimated $4.1 billion last year (and expected to grow to more than $5 billion by 2030). Interest in the natural resource is growing, and it is prized for its low emissions and lack of industrial processing. With more than two million acres of permitted land belonging to Max Power—the largest such swath in Canada—the company claims to have already identified several “lookalike” sites similar to its Lawson discovery.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Max Power via LinkedIn.

The post Max Power is maxing out geological exploration with AI first appeared on BetaKit.

After reports that Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is scaling back its rideshare program, Canada’s space industry could be faced with either turbulent clouds or a silver lining on its route toward the stars.

“The industry hasn’t been investing in medium-lift, because everyone thought SpaceX had it solved.” 

Hugh Kolias,
Canada Rocket Company

SpaceX, which recently went public in the largest IPO in history, holds most of the commercial market for sending payloads like satellites into space. But, according to Reuters, the company is increasingly favouring spots for its own Starlink satellites rather than third-party payloads, squeezing out companies that want to hitch a ride. Now, Bloomberg reports that SpaceX has started turning away customers seeking to put their payloads aboard its Falcon 9 rocket’s rideshare program past 2028. BetaKit has reached out to SpaceX for comment. 

For Canada’s burgeoning space launch industry, which the federal government is supporting to build sovereign launch capacity, the news could present a big opportunity. 

“For us, this is fantastic,” said Hugh Kolias, CEO of Canada Rocket Company, a Toronto-based startup trying to build medium-lift launch vehicles in Canada. While securing a ride to orbit has gotten more challenging, he said, “the industry hasn’t been investing in medium-lift, because everyone thought SpaceX had it solved.” 

The possibility of SpaceX not dominating the market has encouraged Canada Rocket Company to upgrade the size of its planned launch vehicle, he said. However, his company is still about eight years from launch. 

For Markham, Ont.-based NordSpace, which is developing both light-load launch capacity and satellites for space missions, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 scaleback made CEO Rahul Goel feel “vindicated.” 

“By the time our launch vehicle comes online, we want to have enough internal demand for satellite launches that we’re not reliant on any third parties, and we can achieve low internal cost the way SpaceX does for Starlink,” Goel said in an interview. In the near term, Goel said there’s a cohort of companies, including NordSpace, that still have slots booked on the Falcon 9. 

RELATED: Kepler to launch historic satellite network on SpaceX rocket this Sunday

Reaction Dynamics director of business and strategy, Jesse Mikelberg, told BetaKit that though he couldn’t comment on SpaceX’s plans, launch capacity tightening will reinforce that “demand for launch continues to outpace supply, dramatically.” 

The Longueuil-Que.-based company is also building space launch vehicles, joining its peers in addressing a gap in Canada’s infrastructure. Right now, Canada is the only G7 country without the capacity to independently launch missions into orbit. The federal government pledged nearly $225 million to build sovereign space launch capacity in March, most of which will go toward Maritime Launch Services’ spaceport in Nova Scotia.

For companies that rely on SpaceX as a launch partner, it exposes a “critical dependency” on the rockets of a US company to get objects into space, according to Wyvern CEO Christopher Robson. In an email to BetaKit, he explained that SpaceX’s Transporter program ate up 57 percent of Western small satellite launch demand between 2019 and 2023, excluding Starlink and OneWeb, while it raised prices. 

Though Wyvern has sent satellites into space on Falcon 9 before, Robson said that it’s building its satellites to fit on light and medium-launch vehicles, like the ones being built by NordSpace, CRC, and Reaction Dynamics. 

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the future of SpaceX flights, some companies have already secured their rides well in advance. This week, the feds announced a $2.3-billion contract for Telesat to bolster Arctic military communications using satellites built by Brampton, Ont.-based MDA Space—which involves sending 69 more satellites into Telesat’s existing network in space on SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

In an email to BetaKit, a Telesat spokesperson said that all satellites included in the deal, including the newly announced ones, will be launched on already-secured Falcon 9 rockets. “One of these rockets does remain subject to the completion of a launch services agreement, but all launches are expected to occur before the start of Telesat Lightspeed global service, on track for Q1 2028,” the spokesperson said.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by SpaceX.

The post Canada could soon lose reliable rides to space. What will that mean for its burgeoning space industry? first appeared on BetaKit.

Canadian conference SAAS NORTH AI is partnering with Dominion Dynamics and AI company Anvil to launch a new summit for founders and investors interested in defence and dual-use technologies. 

The news: Taking place on Nov. 5 in Ottawa, DEPLOY is a single-day summit targeting founders and investors interested in entering, or expanding into, the Canadian defence and dual-use market. The conference will focus on what organizers say are the three biggest barriers founders face in the space: what to build, how to get funding, and how to sell. 

From the source: “Canada’s defence build-out is real, and a lot of our best founders are quietly asking whether they belong in it,” said David Tyldesley, the co-founder of SAAS NORTH AI. “They haven’t had a straight answer.” 

The context: SAAS NORTH AI is Canada’s largest in-person software-as-a-service conference, drawing founders and investors since its founding in 2016. With DEPLOY, organizers are looking to reinforce the idea that defence and dual-use tech are viable pathways for Canada’s software startups. Eliot Pence, the founder of Dominion Dynamics, said the next generation of Canadian defence tech will be built by entrepreneurs, with DEPLOY helping those companies understand the unique requirements of national defence. 

The conference is targeting early-stage founders entering the field, as well as companies already active but looking to expand.

Final thought: Canada has been undergoing a defence-tech spending boom, marking the country’s largest such investment since World War II. Under the federal Defence Industrial Strategy, the feds have committed more than $6 billion over five years to building defensive capabilities in Canada, which has created a frenzy of interest in defence and dual-use technology. Reporting released by BDC last June shows that of more than 600 small- and medium-sized businesses surveyed, nearly 400 of them were actively looking to enter the defence sector, with many of them stuck in early-stage exploration.

Feature image courtesy SAAS NORTH.

The post SAAS NORTH AI, Dominion Dynamics launch new dual-use defence summit first appeared on BetaKit.

American semiconductor giant Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced today that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Toronto-based Taalas, which aims to hardwire AI models directly onto the chips that power them.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction remains subject to closing conditions and regulatory approval.

“Joining AMD will give us the scale, engineering resources, and global reach to accelerate our innovation.”

Taalas was founded in 2023 by a trio of former AMD employees and leaders at Toronto-founded, now Santa Clara, California-based AI chipmaker Tenstorrent. This group includes Taalas CEO Ljubisa Bajic (co-founder and ex-CEO, CTO, and president of Tenstorrent), COO Lejla Bajic, and CTO Drago Ignjatovic.

The company emerged from stealth in 2024, revealing $50 million in funding from Quiet Capital and Pierre Lamond, among others. It announced another $169 million earlier this year from a group that included Fidelity.

Santa Clara, California-based AMD described Taalas as “a pioneer in specialized AI inference silicon.” According to AMD, Taalas’ tech “optimizes AI inference dataflows, significantly reducing compute and memory bottlenecks associated with general-purpose architectures.”

“Taalas’ technology and world-class engineering team strengthen our AI portfolio by delivering differentiated inference performance and efficiency,” Vamsi Boppana, AMD senior vice-president of AMD’s AI group, said in a news release.

Taalas hopes to dramatically boost AI efficiency using hard-wired computation to convert AI models into custom silicon capable of replacing general-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs).

RELATED: Semiconductor industry says Canada needs a better plan for sovereign silicon

Taalas, which aims to offer faster and cheaper hardware for an AI-hungry world, has claimed it can launch new chips in just two months, well faster than the industry standard, which often takes upward of one to two years. The startup is betting it can produce models that are a thousand times more efficient than their software counterparts, with single chips that could outperform small GPU data centres.

“We founded Taalas to rethink AI inference from the ground up by building the hardware around the model … Joining AMD will give us the scale, engineering resources, and global reach to accelerate our innovation,” Ljubisa Bajic said in the release.

As the world shifts from training AI models to deploying them at scale, the market for AI inference—when a model applies its training to generate outputs—is heating up.

AMD plans to integrate Taalas’ tech into both its existing and future offerings. The chip giant already has operations in Toronto and Canada, dating back to its purchase of Markham-based graphics chipmaker ATI Technologies in 2006. The company said this deal “reflects a continued commitment to retaining and growing Canadian talent.”

The Taalas acquisition marks AMD’s second purchase of a Canadian AI chip firm in just over a year. In 2025, AMD struck a deal to acquire the team behind Toronto startup Untether AI, which had been developing AI inference chips that it marketed as faster and more energy-efficient than its rivals.

AMD, which trades on the Nasdaq, is also an investor in Toronto-based large language model maker Cohere and quantum computer developer Xanadu.

Between Taalas, Untether, Tenstorrent, and CentML, which was acquired by current AI semiconductor market leader, Santa Clara-based Nvidia in 2025, four of Toronto’s most promising chip startups have either recently been acquired by or inked deals to sell to major US players, or in Tenstorrent’s case, redomiciled there. Ottawa-based semiconductor startup Hyperlume was also purchased by San Jose’s Credo in 2025. 

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Alexandre Debiève.

The post US chip giant AMD to acquire Taalas first appeared on BetaKit.

The day after Kerri Parnell gave herself her first tattoo, her grandmother died.

Parnell, a lifelong artist based in Winnipeg, had recently learned that some of the earliest known tattoos were created using wood ash. In the days following her grandmother’s death, that connection gave her an idea.

“In my grief, I used her ashes to experiment, developing a safe formula to incorporate them into tattoo ink for a memorial tattoo,” Parnell said. “She became my very first cremation tattoo, which I did on myself.”

The experience gave Parnell what she described as a lasting physical connection to her grandmother. It also exposed a technical and operational gap in the tattoo industry. The options available for people seeking cremation tattoos did not offer the combination of control, safety, and dignity that Parnell believed the process demanded. So, she founded Cremation Tattoos to build that missing infrastructure.

“Cremation Tattoos was born out of a profound desire to create a deeply intimate, safe, and enduring ritual to help people navigate the pain of loss.”

“Cremation Tattoos was born right then, out of a profound desire to create a deeply intimate, safe, and enduring ritual to help people navigate the pain of loss and to help them stay connected to their departed loved one,” Parnell said.

Parnell’s company sits well outside the usual image of a tech startup, but its growth depends on clearing the same hurdles facing many early-stage companies, including how to develop a reliable offering, protect intellectual property, and scale. 

Clients seeking cremation tattoos historically had limited options. They could mail a loved one’s ashes to a third-party company to develop the ink, which introduces the risk of loss in transit and leftover product. They could also ask a local tattoo artist to mix the ashes directly with the ink, a process that may take place without specialized equipment or a controlled environment.

Cremation Tattoos has developed a patent-pending, six-step procedure designed to refine and sterilize cremated remains before incorporating them into tattoo ink. The procedure is completed inside the studio while the client is present, using about one-eighth of a teaspoon of ash.

Parnell described her company’s six-step procedure as a repeatable technical and clinical workflow for an experience that is intensely personal.

“Each step of our formula is vital because it bridges safety with emotional reverence,” she added. “It ensures the ashes are structurally altered to be incorporated safely into the human body and honours the dignity of loved ones from start to finish.”

Parnell’s focus on dignity and care begins before the tattooing itself. Clients complete a thorough consent process and receive an explanation of the refinement method and tattoo chemistry. Sessions take place in a closed-door, single-client studio, with room for support people, music, and personalized ceremonies. 

“Clients have the freedom to come as they are—to share their story or sit in silence,” Parnell added. “The session is entirely guided by them.”

These practices will also form part of Cremation Tattoos’ next phase: the Cremation Tattoos network, a licensing and training system intended to make the service available outside of Winnipeg.

“Our goal is to remove the barrier of travel for grieving families, especially considering that over 1,000 families in Canada experience loss every single day,” Parnell added.

Under the proposed model, certified artists would receive proprietary sterilization kits and training in the company’s technical protocols as well as how to support clients and maintain a private, controlled environment.

Cremation Tattoos plans to centralize all network booking through a single platform. Each client would also receive a numbered “anchoring kit,” which creates an inventory record tied to every completed session.

The network also connects clients to the company’s Legacy Log, an online archive where families can create personal memorial pages. This digital component gives Cremation Tattoos a way to build a central community between clients and a distributed network of artists.

“In my grief, I used her ashes to experiment, developing a safe formula to incorporate them into tattoo ink for a memorial tattoo.”

To prepare the model for expansion, Cremation Tattoos recently joined Ascent, the third stage of the Founder Program offered by Winnipeg-based startup incubator, accelerator, and fabrication lab North Forge. Through Ascent, North Forge works with founders on their minimum viable product and provides one-on-one guidance with mentors and entrepreneurs in residence as participants prepare to roll out their product.

“Our partnership with North Forge is a foundational pillar of our growth strategy,” Parnell said. “Having recently joined the North Forge Ascent program, their ecosystem has immediately become a massive asset for us as we work with our Entrepreneur in Residence to refine our operational framework and map out our scaling logistics.”

Cremation Tattoos considers its formulation, protocols, and training system central to its value proposition, which makes protection a prerequisite for sharing the process with other artists. As an ecosystem partner for ElevateIP, North Forge is helping the company position itself to access specialized IP guidance to protect the underlying process while developing licensing agreements strong enough to preserve quality across different locations.

As Parnell looks to scale her model across the country, she believes North Forge’s intellectual property ecosystem will prove especially important. 

“The specialized IP mentorship and financial backing will allow us to secure our proprietary processes, effectively transitioning us from a validated local model to a secure, standardized, and deeply respected national memorialization service.”

PRESENTED BY

North Forge is a not-for-profit tech incubator, accelerator, and state-of-the-art fabrication lab. We fuel Manitoba’s innovative science-based, technology-enabled, and advanced manufacturing startups from ideation to funding by offering unparalleled programming and resources to help startups grow. 

Join a community that drives innovation and builds connections. North Forge supports your journey from concept to commercialization. Learn more here.

Feature image courtesy North Forge.

The post “Intimate, safe, and enduring”: How a founder’s personal loss led to a new kind of business first appeared on BetaKit.

The federal government is investing more than $20 million over two years to develop Canada’s first secure, quantum-focused defence innovation hub in Calgary. 

The news: Speaking at the University of Calgary (U of C) today, Canada’s national defence minister, David McGuinty, said the investment would support a U of C-led consortium to establish a quantum Defence Innovation Secure Hub (DISH). The hub will be used to accelerate the transition of quantum technology into “mission-ready capabilities” for the Canadian Armed Forces.

From the source: “Quantum will shape the next generation of defence capabilities, and Canada must be prepared to lead—not follow,” McGuinty said in a statement on Thursday.

The context: The announcement marks the first time a DISH—which are mission-oriented hubs aimed at enabling government, industry, academia, and the military to collaborate—has been solely focused on quantum technology development. 

The consortium establishing the DISH will bring together 13 organizations from Canada’s quantum, defence, and innovation sectors, including the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, University of Lethbridge, University of Saskatchewan, Lockheed Martin Canada, General Dynamics Mission Systems-Canada, CAE, Dell Canada, and Calian.

Final thought: The University of Calgary has long been an academic leader in quantum development in Canada, going so far as to build a “Quantum City” research hub that opened in 2025. The cross-border collaboration with post-secondary institutions like the University of Saskatchewan—which is home to the Centre for Quantum Topology and its Applications and the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation—means the Quantum DISH project is building upon a growing quantum ecosystem in Canada’s Prairies.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Adrian Shellard.

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Canadian online auto retailer CarDoor has launched a new platform that it says allows free-market competition to price its sales offers.

The news: Dubbed MarketCheck, the new platform allows sellers to list vehicles and have a series of verified auto dealers compete to buy them, taking a market-value approach to vehicle sales. The new platform marks a distinct pivot for the company, which will no longer offer vehicles for sale to consumers and will instead focus entirely on the wholesale market, connecting inventory from sellers with dealers.

From the source: “Consumers could always sell their car on CarDoor. What’s changed is how we price it,” Imran Vasta, CarDoor’s president and co-founder, said in an email to BetaKit. “Before MarketCheck, we gave a single offer based on our own assessment, similar to what other car selling platforms do today. MarketCheck replaces that guess with real dealer demand.”

The context: CarDoor’s pivot away from consumer-facing sales and toward a market-backed wholesale model is underpinned by insights its leadership says have stood out throughout its tenure. Namely, concerns that auto sales by consumers were plagued by confusion and difficult processes. The company has gone as far as to commission its own research on public opinion around the car-selling process in Canada, which it claims show more than half of consumers reporting negative experiences while selling a vehicle. 

Vasta said that the move to dealer-facing sales has already contributed to the company’s growth, with customer transactions rising 300 percent since CarDoor began testing MarketCheck. The company did not share its current valuation or recurring revenue.

Final thought: Founded in 2021, CarDoor has been an emerging player in the online auto space, but has historically been eclipsed by some of its more profitable competitors. In recent years, however, the venture-backed company has made significant market strides, despite being active solely in Ontario. In 2025, it reached a revenue milestone of $100 million, growing its inventory into the largest online used-car repository in Ontario. The company is looking to expand into other Canadian provinces next year.

CORRECTION (06/08/2026): This article has been updated to reflect that CarDoor is no longer involved in consumer-facing automotive sales and has pivoted entirely to wholesale, dealer-facing sales.

Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Matt Alaniz.

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Canadian impact venture fund Cross-Border Impact Ventures (CBIV) has secured $58 million USD ($81 million CAD) so far for its second fund, which will invest in companies that improve health outcomes for women and children. 

The Toronto-based firm announced on Thursday that it closed the first tranche of funding for its Women’s and Children’s Health Technology Fund II. CBIV is targeting $125 million USD for the fund, and it hopes to secure it by the second half of 2027. Limited partners (LPs) include German national development bank KfW, the Skoll Foundation, Capricorn Investment Group, Ceniarth, Equality Fund, RockCreek Group, and Wire Group, as well as unnamed family offices and high-net-worth investors. KfW is returning as a concessionary capital investor, which means that it allows other LPs to earn higher internal rates of return and provides them with downside protection. 

“We’re seeing less in Canada than in the US or in Europe, but I’m hopeful that the tide might turn here in the coming years.”

Annie Thériault,
CBIV

Launched in 2021 by managing partners Annie Thériault and Donna Parr, CBIV invests in women and youth-focused healthtech companies with strong global commercial potential, including in emerging markets.

With the second fund, CBIV will continue to write Series A and Series B cheques between $2 million and $5 million USD into roughly a dozen companies making biotech, medical device, diagnostics, and other healthtech plays with a global lens.

Ideally, Thériault said in an interview with BetaKit, target companies will have a “good line of sight to commercialization and regulatory approval.” 

CBIV’s Fund I, which is now mostly deployed, backed 11 companies worldwide, with one exit so far in France’s Sonio, a fetal ultrasound software company acquired by Samsung Medison for a reported $92 million USD (CBIV would not confirm an amount). Other highlights from its portfolio include UK-based Daye, a company that makes tampons to reduce menstrual pain and screen for vaginal health. 

The Toronto-based impact fund hasn’t yet invested in a Canadian company, but is hoping to find Canadian ventures to support with the new fund. The partners say a sparse early-stage landscape for medtech—and women’s health diagnostics and devices in particular—has made it difficult to find deals at the early growth stages, where they invest. 

RELATED: CBIV surpasses $135 million CAD in final close to back women, children-focused healthtech startups

Despite recent activity among VCs investing in femtech, studies have indicated a women’s health funding gap in both research and industry. In addition, a recent report from the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association indicated that life sciences saw a 39-percent year-over-year drop in funding activity this past quarter. 

More globally, Thériault is optimistic about the interest from investors in impact-driven healthtech ventures. Fundraising is still a slog, she said, but “those that deeply care about women’s health are twice as motivated.” 

“A couple of years ago, there was negative talk around impact investing,” Thériault said, referencing a global slowdown in environmental, social, and governance investing. But she added that many women investors and women-led foundations doubled down, but were just quieter about their support.  

“There is movement,” she said. “We’re seeing less in Canada than in the US or in Europe, but I’m hopeful that the tide might turn here in the coming years.”

Feature image courtesy Cross-Border Impact Ventures.

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Last week, an automated bakery in Montréal was vandalized for the second time in recent months.

The news: The words “action anti tech” were spray-painted on the business, which is run on a self-serve system and also uses AI in its advertising. On the store’s social media post about the incident, many commenters spoke to their concerns with technology, and the bakery’s use of it, rather than expressing sympathy over the incident. One post reads, “Although I prefer to boycott, I fundamentally can understand why your store was vandalized.”

From the source: “There is now something of what could be called a ‘New Luddite’ movement,” writes Ariel Wittenberg for Politico. Wittenberg writes that anger over the harms caused by data centres and AI chatbots in the US, and unequal distribution of profits, is spurring a broader political movement against technology.