Did Cohere give Canada its DeepSeek moment?
Plus: An innovation agenda for the next election.
AI
Softchoice taken private, moved stateside by WWT after $1.48-billion acquisition closes
Completed acquisition puts the 35-year-old software provider under American ownership at a sensitive moment.
Cohere says Command A model edges out LLM competition in speed and energy efficiency
New enterprise AI model outperforms DeepSeek, ChatGPT on several enterprise-specific tasks, company says.
Two new AI tools to help you land a job
Path Pilot and OpportuNext unleash AI assistants to support those seeking employment.
Novarc Technologies raises Series B round led by Export Development Canada
Novarc recently partnered with a Wisconsin-based welding manufacturer to develop AI-powered welding solutions.
Waabi develops realism metric to gauge reliability of autonomous vehicle simulators
Founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun calls on all AV developers to demonstrate their simulators are true to life.
Augmenta closes $14.4 million CAD to advance quest towards AI-driven building design
Autodesk alums plan to refine electrical system tech, move into plumbing and mechanical.
Canadian government opens $300-million AI Compute Access Fund in latest AI commitment
Fund follows recent refresh of feds’ AI Advisory Council and release of public service AI strategy.
Leaders discuss the right speed for innovation and regulation at Remarkable AI conference
Vector Institute event also explored the role of reinforcement learning and Canada’s compute needs.
Toast wants women to take a radical step this International Women’s Day: rest
#WithoutHer campaign asks men to assume more responsibility for uplifting women in tech.
Toronto and Ottawa area companies receive $32 million in AI-focused FedDev funding
Ada, Mission Control, and Loop Financial among supported companies.
Shopify merchants can now prompt AI to design a store theme
Merchants can generate up to three free personalized themes with a description of their business.
New Turing Award winner Richard Sutton calls doomers “out of line,” talks path to human-like AI
Sutton joins Canadian peers Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton in winning “Nobel Prize of computing.”
Sanctuary AI, Nexera, and Novarc make deals and developments in busy week for Vancouver robotics companies
Nexara nabs funding from BDC, Novarc strikes a partnership, and Sanctuary AI’s robots get touchy.
TandemLaunch closes $37-million Fund IV to create and back deep tech startups
Through VCCI, feds support the firm’s plans to launch new Montréal companies.