Tesla pays Elon, Apple might pay Google, and a #Budget2025 breakdown

Tesla’s new pay plan could make CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, but it will only fully pay out if the company’s market capitalization hits $8.5 trillion. It would also increase Musk’s ownership stake from about 13 percent to 25 percent.

Apple is reportedly gearing up to pay Google roughly $1 billion USD per year for an AI model to help power a revamped Siri.

Slated for a spring release, Google’s tech will handle Siri’s summarizer and planner functions, while some features continue to use Apple’s in-house models.

Amongst funding for CBC/Radio-Canada in this week’s federal budget, the government said it will work with the public broadcaster to “explore participation” in Eurovision, an international song competition annually organized by the European Broadcasting Union. 

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told Global News that Eurovision is “a platform for Canada to shine.”

The 2025 budget shifted responsibility for Canada’s long-awaited open banking system from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) to the Bank of Canada. 

The feds appointed the FCAC to oversee open banking in the 2024 budget and said it would table a second piece of legislation that fall, but the legislation and the system’s launch was later delayed to 2026.

Nearly 900,000 Peloton exercise bikes, including 45,000 in Canada, were recalled over faulty seat posts that could break and detach during use, posing a fall and injury hazard.

While there are no incidents reported in Canada, there have been at least two in the United States that resulted in injuries. The recall involves Peloton Original Series Bike+ units with the model number “PL02” and serial numbers that begin with the letter “T.”

The 2025 budget allocated $334.3 million to the quantum industry and research under the Defence Industrial Strategy. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget committed more than $80 billion to defence, including $6.6 billion to the Defence Industrial Strategy meant for research, innovation, and access to capital in the sector.

In an interview with BetaKit, Faugno said the company is at “the scale and profitability” to be public, but market investors want “a level of predictability” from businesses that is hard to deliver in the dynamic AI market. 

The Toronto-based cybersecurity software company surpassed $400 million USD in annual recurring revenue this year and shook up its  C-suite to prepare for its eventual leap to the public markets.

The 2025 budget adopted some of the proposed SR&ED reforms from Shopify president Harley Finklestein. Taking effect April 1, 2026, an elective pre-claim approval process grants technical approval before a project moves ahead, with processing time cut in half to 90 days. 

Want to know what else is in #Budget2025 for Canadian tech? Catch up on all of BetaKit’s comprehensive coverage here. 

Abdur-Rashid said his Mississauga-based healthtech company “didn’t even consider building a lab in Toronto,” adding that it was “way too expensive” for the space they needed. 

The Kare founder discussed his choice at the “Scaling in Sauga” panel of the Startup Canada Tour on Oct. 21, where founders talked about the benefits of building outside of Toronto.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) has authorized Toronto-based online brokerage and wealth management firm Questrade to launch Canada’s next bank.

The approval marks the end of Questrade’s six-year journey to gain a Schedule 1 banking license, which it applied for in 2019.