A|I: The AI Times – Is Canada’s IP strategy paying off?

Plus: The alarmingly accurate face search engine anyone can use.

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Worximity secures $14 million for smart factory analytics tech (BETAKIT)

The financing comes from Investissement Québec and existing Worximity investors, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Marel, a multinational food processing company based in Europe that has strategically invested in the startup since 2019


BeyondMinds shuts down, lays off 65 (GLOBES)

Nobody had foreseen that a company in the enterprise AI sector would fold and after deliveries startup Avo shut down its Israel operations last week, laying off all its employees in Israel, there are now concerns that the crisis over valuations has now extended more deeply into the startup ecosystem.


The federal government wants to address Canada’s intellectual property woes, but is its strategy paying off? (BETAKIT)

While companies like Ranovus demonstrate how Canadian tech companies can scale through the development of IP, many stakeholders from the IP sector believe that most Canadian startups are not deriving value from their IP, which has put Canada behind its peers in the global race for IP rights.


A Face Search Engine Anyone Can Use Is Alarmingly Accurate (THE NEW YORK TIMES)

PimEyes is a paid service that finds photos of a person from across the internet, including some the person may not want exposed. “We’re just a tool provider,” its owner said.


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Canadian innovators wonder what proposed SR&ED review will accomplish (BETAKIT)

Speaking over the phone with BetaKit, Munro noted the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program–better known as SR&ED–isn’t working, in his opinion. But he wasn’t convinced another review of the $4 billion annual program would fix things. After all, the SR&ED program has been tinkered with and reviewed almost constantly since it was first established in 1944.


Monte Carlo Joins Unicorn Ranks With $135M Funding Led By IVP (CRUNCHBASE)

Monte Carlo took its product approach from DevOps and site reliability platforms applied to the world of data engineering and data products Gavish said. “Our audience is data teams, data engineers, data scientists and analysts,” he said.


Unbounce expands leadership team with addition of Indochino, RBC Ventures, Mapbox alums (BETAKIT)

Housley brings over 20 years of C-Suite level experience at a variety of consumer brands to Unbounce, including Indochino, Milestones, Lavalife, and Hudson’s Bay. Meanwhile, Sieben comes to Unbounce after spending the last four years at RBC Ventures and Toronto-based, RBC-powered cashback application Ampli, while El-Hilo most recently worked as head of data platform at Washington location data firm Mapbox.


UK fines Clearview just under $10M for privacy breaches (TECHCRUNCH)

The watchdog has also issued an enforcement notice, ordering Clearview to stop obtaining and using the personal data of U.K. residents that is publicly available on the internet; and telling it to delete the information of U.K. residents from its systems.


Flying Fish Partners appoints Tiffany Linke-Boyko as principal for Canada, secures $7.5 million from AEC (BETAKIT)

Founded in 2016, Seattle-based Flying Fish makes seed-stage investments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet-of-Things (IoT), cloud computing, as well as speech and natural language tech startups.


The big new idea for making self-driving cars that can go anywhere (TECHNOLOGY REVIEW)

This was the first time that reinforcement learning—an AI technique that trains a neural network to perform a task via trial and error—had been used to teach a car to drive from scratch on a real road. It was a small step in a new direction—one that a new generation of startups believes just might be the breakthrough that makes driverless cars an everyday reality.


Forma.ai raises $57.8 million CAD in Series B round for sales compensation platform (BETAKIT)

Forma.ai is a sales compensation platform provider that combines human controls with artificial intelligence (AI) to “turn sales compensation into science.” The platform aims to help organizations to design, execute, and optimize their sales compensation strategy through data.


Michael Edgar

Michael Edgar

Michael is a multimedia journalist working out of the U.K. and a staff writer for BetaKit.

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