Cohere is close, OpenAI adds Jony Ive, BetaKit has a new bureau

Able Innovations CEO Jayiesh Singh said the province’s commitments to domestic companies pale in comparison to its foreign direct investment, such as its $2.5-billion pledge to help Honda build four new plants in the province.

The investment amounts in the budget “will not have a significant economic development impact … in the face of trade wars,” Singh told BetaKit.

Charles Assaf told BetaKit that the backlash against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies has made companies less vocal about their sustainability plans. Novisto closed $37.7 million CAD in Series C funding this week for its ESG reporting platform.

More than half of BetaKit’s readers named Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky, as the Web Summit speaker they’re most excited to see. The BetaKit Guide: Web Summit showcases the speakers, sessions, and parties our readers are most excited about, with recommendations for places to eat, drink, and get to know Vancouver and its growing tech scene.

Ice and Ogle are among the crypto founders who bought a dinner with Donald Trump. The offer was extended to the top 220 buyers of his meme coin, with the dinner set to take place at his private golf club near Washington.

Just ahead of the grand opening of its facility to test and validate technologies that capture carbon from the atmosphere, Deep Sky announced a leadership change: Damien Steel has stepped down as CEO and will be replaced by COO Alex Petre.

Toronto-based Berg Chilling Systems has delivered a key cooling system for NASA’s Artemis IV mission, which will send astronauts to the moon in 2028. But the mission is dependent on support from the Trump administration, which has said it wants to refocus NASA’s attention on Mars. A spokesperson for Berg Chilling Systems “remains hopeful” that the moon mission will go ahead.

Google.org provided a $5-million grant to Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) to help post-secondary educators integrate AI curriculum into their courses. Amii will use the funding to create a national consortium of 25 post-secondary schools to develop curriculum they hope will increase Canadian literacy related to the technology.

BetaKit will establish a full-time presence in Alberta in 2025, hiring an Edmonton-based journalist to cover the Prairies region. The role will be funded for two years through an innovative partnership with YEGAF, a not-for-profit entity supported by some of the region’s leading startup organizations and economic development agencies.

CEO Aidan Gomez teased this week that the company is nearing profitability, as new partnerships land amid conflicting revenue reports. Reuters pegged Cohere’s annualized revenue at $100 million USD this month, while The Information reported the company fell over $350 million short of its 2023 projections.

Christian Selig, the Canadian iOS developer who ran the third-party Reddit client Apollo, is joining the new iteration of Digg as an advisor. Before shutting down in 2023, Apollo aimed to provide a superior Reddit experience tailored specifically for iPhone and iPad users. It quickly gained popularity for its design, feature set, and responsiveness to user feedback.

In a deal reportedly worth nearly $6.5 billion, OpenAI is acquiring io, a hardware startup launched by former Apple design chief Jony Ive alongside ex-Apple engineers Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey, and Tang Tan. While Ive won’t join OpenAI, his design firm LoveFrom will lead the design of all OpenAI products, including software.