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Attabotics secures $95 million CAD from EDC, Ontario Teachers’ to scale its warehouse robots (BETAKIT)
With its tech finally ready and $95 million CAD ($71.7 million USD) in fresh “Series C-1” funding, Attabotics founder and CEO Scott Gravelle said the startup is prepared to start scaling.
After launching its new and improved Attabot in September, Gravelle says “the hard part’s done.”
Advanced Navigation closes mammoth $108m Series B backed by KKR (BUSINESS NEWS AUSTRALIA)
The funds will be used to bolster the Sydney-based company’s R&D ambitions, building on work already done in the navigation and AI space for clients including technology giants Google, Apple, Airbus, Boeing and General Motors.
Raquel Urtasun’s Waabi gearing up to hit the road (BETAKIT)
According to Waabi, the Waabi Driver will soon hit the road for testing, and offers “unparalleled safety, scalability, and flexibility” compared to its competitors. Waabi has set its initial sights on autonomous long-haul trucking, as the firm looks to help the industry address its labour shortage and ongoing supply chain woes.
What Riding in a Self-Driving Tesla Tells Us About the Future of Autonomy (THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Over six hours, his car navigated highways, exit ramps, city streets, roundabouts, bridges and parking lots. With his hands near or on the wheel and his eyes on the road, the car attempted more than 40 unprotected left-hand turns against oncoming traffic. It kept us on the edge of our seats.
Alberta Innovates has been here from the start, investing in the next big thing.
Twenty years ago, Alberta Innovates planted seeds for the future by funding artificial intelligence research at the University of Alberta.
For most people, it was the realm of science fiction. Some, however, had a sense of what it could become.
Canadian tech layoffs continue as tough year comes to a close (BETAKIT)
Properly, TealBook, D2L, Symend, and League have all made layoffs in recent weeks. Along with recent cuts by Apollo Insurance, Faire, Swift Medical, VanHack, and Koho, these moves indicate that Canadian tech companies across verticals and geographies continue to feel the pressure of challenging market conditions.
The painful changes that helped GSoft scale from zero revenue to $100 million ARR (BETAKIT)
GSoft is one such centaur, hitting $100 million ARR in 2021 and on track to grow that revenue base in 2022, with plans to hire over 200 new employees across Canada this year.
But hitting this rare startup milestone required making a lot of painful and difficult decisions.
Meet Your New Corporate Office Mate: A ‘Brainless’ Robot (THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Naver — a soup-to-nuts internet conglomerate in South Korea — has been experimenting with integrating robots into office life for several months. Inside a futuristic, starkly industrial, 36-story high-rise on the outskirts of Seoul, a fleet of about 100 robots cruise around on their own, moving from floor to floor on robot-only elevators and sometimes next to humans, rolling through security gates and entering meeting rooms.
FreshBooks, Plusgrade, Day & Ross among six Scale AI projects to receive $25 million (BETAKIT)
Scale AI, one of Canada’s Global Innovation Clusters, is providing $9.3 million out of the total $25 million investment, with the rest of the funding coming from industry partners.
The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next (THE VERGE)
The question arises because of the way generative AI systems are trained. Like most machine learning software, they work by identifying and replicating patterns in data. But because these programs are used to generate code, text, music, and art, that data is itself created by humans, scraped from the web and copyright protected in one way or another.
BluWave-ai, Tehama receive collective $4.4 million from FedDev Ontario for product development, hiring (BETAKIT)
The Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) is providing BluWave-ai with $1.7 million and Tehama with $2.7 million in repayable contributions.
The funding is expected to add 85 jobs between the two companies, and the government hopes it will leverage another $12.6 million in private sector support.
Intel unveils real-time deepfake detector, claims 96% accuracy rate (VENTUREBEAT)
On Monday, Intel introduced FakeCatcher, which it says is the first real-time detector of deepfakes — that is, synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness.
Intel claims the product has a 96% accuracy rate and works by analyzing the subtle “blood flow” in video pixels to return results in milliseconds.
Canada’s 2022 Developer 30 Under 30 (BETAKIT)
The Developer 30 Under 30 is a recurring list that recognizes some of the top developers based in Canada. WeaveSphere also added a new award for this year’s conference, which honours 20 technology leaders in the country.
Cerebras Reveals Andromeda, a 13.5 Million Core AI Supercomputer (TOM’S HARDWARE)
The chips are housed in sixteen CS-2 systems. Each chip delivers up to 12.1 TB/s of internal bandwidth (96.8 Terabits) to the AI cores, but the data is fed to the CS-2 processors via 100 GbE networking spread across 124 server nodes in 16 racks. In total, those servers are powered by 284 third-gen EPYC Milan processors wielding 64 cores apiece, totaling 18,176 cores.
WeaveSphere’s 2022 Tech Titans list names 20 tech leaders in Canada (BETAKIT)
Named Tech Titans: Top 20 of 2022, this new award honours people in the tech ecosystem that have disrupted the industry through technology, led a digital transformation to deliver business value, and enable growth in client relationships.