Shopify’s federal swing, Hopper trims its wings, Google gets served

Khanna lost his dental practice to the 100-year flood that hit Calgary in 2013 and said the event shifted him “from being a dentist who owned a business to really becoming an entrepreneur and business owner who practiced dentistry,” OraQ uses AI to analyze dental and medical records to assess patient risk and closed $2.6 million CAD in seed financing this week.

Floyd Mayweather was among several martial arts figures who invested in Montréal-founded FightCamp as part of its $90-million 2021 funding round. Other notable investors include fellow boxing champion Mike Tyson and Canadian mixed martial arts legend Georges St-Pierre. The company launched its connected fitness platform in Canada this week.

The Consumer Electronics Show will take place in Las Vegas this January, but Canada continues to draw big international tech conferences in 2025. Vancouver will host Web Summit, Toronto will host the Consensus crypto conference, and revealed this week, the popular Finnish founder event Slush will host a Canadian event in Québec City under the name Slush’d.

Frustrating bagel lovers across the island, Seido’s co-founder and partner Olivier Belenger praised the quality of research in Canada’s universities he feels is ripe for commercialization.

“This is the place to be,” Belenger told BetaKit. “This is the place to develop the new vision.”

Both WonderFi and Kraken’s Canadian operations surpassed $2 billion CAD in assets under custody. Assets under custody refer to the total value of digital assets that an entity holds on behalf of clients, such as cryptocurrencies, tokens, and other digital assets stored in wallets.

Nurau has developed a natural-language-processing AI tool to support HR workers when dealing with sensitive workplace situations. The platform offers step-by-step guidance on difficult conversations by providing managers with phrases to use and predictions of potential employee responses. The startup, which raised seed funding this week, claims its tech can help managers avoid escalations and reduce costs by limiting turnover.

In July 2023 Expedia cut ties with the travel app after accusing the company of exploiting “consumer anxiety.” But Expedia’s new leadership rekindled the partnership this month, making Hopper less dependent on its direct hotel team and prompting a round of layoffs at the Montréal-based company.

In a statement, the Bureau accused Google of unlawfully tying its adtech tools together to preserve its market dominance, and using its position across these tools to “distort auction dynamics.”

Google vice president of global ads Dan Taylor told BetaKit the Bureau’s complaint “ignores the intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice and we look forward to making our case in court.”

Australia’s bold new law would prevent people under the age of 16 from using X (formerly known as Twitter,) TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Reddit, and would make these platforms liable for fines of up to $50 million AUD ($45 million CAD) for failing to protect youngsters. The world’s first such legislation passed in Australia’s Senate on Nov. 28.

Australia’s ban comes weeks after Canada’s government ordered TikTok to wind up its operations in Canada, though it did not ban use of the short-form video platform.