Wealthsimple’s acquihire, Shopify’s AI policy, and Nintendo’s Switch 2 confusion

All of the above. In an internal memo he shared publicly this week, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke told employees that prototyping should be “dominated” by AI exploration, and that teams will have to “demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more headcount and resources. Shopify will also be adding AI usage questions to its performance and peer review questionnaires.

The US Justice Department is disbanding a unit that was responsible for investigating cryptocurrency crimes. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche criticized the previous Biden administration as too aggressive against the sector that has seen great gains due to President Donald Trump’s crypto-friendly policies.

The open letter says the Canada-United States trade war has been “a wakeup call,” and refers to the present moment as “the greatest economic crisis our country has faced since the Second World War.” Signatories are calling on party heads to share how they plan to build “a more sovereign, more resilient, and more prosperous Canada” at next week’s federal election debates.

Wealthsimple acquired Plenty, a platform designed to help couples navigate financial decisions together. Plenty’s team of five, including married co-founders Emily Luk and Channing Allen, are joining Wealthsimple at the end of April to help expand its family-focused products.

Montréal-based medtech startup Puzzle Medical Devices raised a $43 million round co-led by existing investor Desjardins Capital and newcomer KF Matheson, the family office of former Liberal leadership candidate Frank Baylis.

CO280 struck what it claims is a “historic” 12-year deal with Microsoft to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from an American paper mill. The project will be designed to capture biogenic (biological origin) emissions from boiler stacks by retrofitting them with capture equipment and storing the CO2 permanently in geological formations.

Ontario’s new Procurement Restriction Policy says the province cannot procure goods or services from a company that has headquarters or main office in the US and fewer than 250 full-time employees in Canada, leaving the door open for those above that threshold. This is despite Premier Doug Ford declaring “all” US-based companies barred from provincial procurement last month as part of retaliatory measures against US tariffs.

Mowry told BetaKit in an interview ahead of the Google Cloud Next Conference that there is so much opportunity in AI right now that “doing the right thing in the right order” has become a key challenge for Google Cloud and other companies, one that has forced the cloud services giant to be selective and prioritize where it invests.

Tailscale provides a corporate virtual private network (VPN), which the company has seen a “surprising number” of leading AI companies using, including Perplexity, Mistral, Groq, Hugging Face, and Toronto-based Cohere. The startup raised a $160 million USD ($230 million CAD) Series C round this week to grow its team and keep up with demand.

None of the above. Nintendo announced that the launch price of its highly anticipated console would be $449 USD ($629 CAD), but US President Trump’s tariffs on nearly all imports caused Nintendo to delay pre-orders of the system in both the US and Canada. This past week, Trump announced that he’s pausing tariffs on most countries except China for 90 days. So, all we know right now is that BetaKit wants one.