The year every Canadian startup went AI-first
In 2025, some of Canada’s most influential tech leaders leaned hard into an AI-first ideology.
AI
Ex-Shopify engineers raise fresh financing to scale Turbopuffer’s AI search
Ottawa startup secures funding from Lachy Groom and Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital.
GeologicAI acquires Finland’s Lumo Analytics to round out suite of critical minerals sensors
Lumo’s LIBS technique uses lasers to rapidly analyze core rock samples for critical minerals.
CoLab joins Nvidia Inception Program to beef up AI capabilities for its engineering tools
St. John’s startup says Nvidia’s platforms will improve how engineers interpret simulation data.
Queen’s University recruits Ian Karlin from Nvidia in bid to build Canadian supercomputer
After working on leading supercomputers abroad, Karlin wants to help boost Canada’s computing capacity.
Shopify’s former head of core product to lead app development at OpenAI
Glen Coates to head OpenAI’s app platform and help turn ChatGPT into an operating system.
Feds sign five-year MOU with Coveo in latest AI partnership
Government will explore how it can use the company’s platform in its operations.
Amiral Ventures holds $40-million first close to address “lack of leadership” in Canadian VC
Montréal firm backed by Québec government, Desjardins Capital, and nearly 50 individual LPs.
Scale AI unveils $129 million for 44 new applied AI projects across Canada
AlayaCare, League, FluidAI Medical, MDA Space, and Vooban among recipients.
Startup investigation reveals 50 peer-reviewed papers contained AI-hallucinated citations
GPTZero found “obvious” instances of false, LLM-generated references in academic papers.
Coinbase Canada CEO Lucas Matheson to join former Shopify colleagues at Opendoor
Former Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian continues to poach Canadian tech talent.
Court order prompts Well Health, Healwell to hand over records in merger probe
Federal watchdog to investigate if takeover affects choice and cost to users.
Shopify merchants can now sell products through AI chatbots
Update announced in Shopify Editions newsletter that contained over 150 product updates.
She tried to bring Silicon Valley’s tech energy to Vancouver. Why did she leave to build a US startup instead?
Mai Trinh’s Internet Backyard nabs $4.5 million USD pre-seed for data centre financing platform.
Microsoft to spend $7.5 billion on AI data centre expansion with pledge to protect Canada’s “digital sovereignty”
President calls project “the most important commitment in Microsoft Canada’s history.”