Shopify adds OpenAI to cart, Constellation loses its star, and Canada’s new defence agency

Shopify merchants can now sell products directly through ChatGPT conversations, the company announced Monday. Vanessa Lee, Shopify’s VP of Product, said the new feature is aimed at letting shoppers “buy without breaking their flow.”

Leonard, who founded Constellation in 1995 and stepped down from the role as CEO last week for health reasons, has drawn comparisons to Warren Buffett for his role in building Constellation into a tech juggernaut.

Before she joined BDC Capital in 2021, Minhas served as CFO and COO at Toronto-based e-commerce startup Knix. This week, she was promoted to managing partner of BDC’s Thrive Venture Fund for women-led Canadian technology startups.

On The BetaKit Podcast, Avery Pennarun said the AI revolution has put a gun to the head of CISOs: embrace unsafe data practices or get fired. He said those same CISOs have told him the false choice has created a “ticking time bomb.”

Wait times under Canada’s Start-up Visa program, which offers a direct path to permanent residency for foreign entrepreneurs with innovative business ideas, have grown to 53 months. This timeline has led some to question whether the program is an effective mechanism for bringing foreign founders to the country.

Building Bloc Systems, a Burnaby, B.C. startup, is developing mobile microfactories equipped with 3D printers to produce prosthetics. The company is preparing to deploy its technology to support Ukraine, where demand for prosthetics is rising as the healthcare system strains under the ongoing war.

Merriam-Webster posted a promotional video announcing a “NEW Large Language Model.” The advertisement was a fake, with Merriam-Webster announcing that the model “has over 217,000 rigorously defined parameters,” it “never hallucinates,” and it “uses no electricity.”

The video ended with the line “there’s artificial intelligence, and there’s actual intelligence,” with a shot of Merriam-Webster’s 12th edition Collegiate Dictionary.

Oasis Learning AI has built a productivity tool for custom employee training video courses, tailored to companies with massive headcounts. The AI-powered platform creates an automated pipeline from an employee submitting a training module request to managers designing and customizing a video.

The new agency will seek to streamline procurement processes for defence tech companies. Canada’s defence procurement system has been bogged down by long timelines and bureaucracy for decades, leaving the country and its military at a disadvantage in modern warfare.

Foresight!