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3 days ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
The chorus of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and scientists pressing for a measured approach to the technology’s development clashed with the urgent tone of tech companies scrambling to keep pace with its rapid advancement at the World Summit AI in Montréal. “Understand [AI agents] as a leap of faith, as the way to go.
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1 week ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Canadian AI godfather Yoshua Bengio says that if companies succeed in creating superintelligent AI agents without solving for self-preservation, it could carry “catastrophic” risks. Bengio, founder of the Montréal-based AI research institute Mila, made the remarks over Zoom as part of his closing keynote address to the World Summit AI conference in Montréal.
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1 week ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Three American tech companies and one Toronto-based company are expanding their Montréal offices to enhance their French-language product offerings and draw from the city’s “intellectual firepower.” “We’re looking for people who want to work at a fast-growing company, who are customer-centric and want to get stuff done.” Giovanni Iacovino Alexa Translations The United States (US)-based firms—Terzo, SafelyYou, and Ampliwork—and Toronto-based Alexa Translations are looking to hire for 220 roles...
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1 week ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Cohere has released a new embedding model that it says offers superior search and retrieval functions for AI agents. Seventy-two percent of early AI adopters expect autonomous agents to take over some tasks from their employees by the end of 2025. Embedding models turn complex information, such as text or images, into vectors or numbers that AI models can process. In other words, they encode meaning for large language models (LLMs).
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1 week ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Toronto-based Xaba has secured $6 million USD ($8 million CAD) to improve the capabilities of industrial manufacturing robots with its custom reinforcement learning programming system. The all-equity, all-primary financing was led by Hitachi Ventures with participation from Hazelview Ventures, the Crown corporation BDC Capital, Exposition Ventures, and Impact Venture Capital. The seed extension, which closed at the end of last year, brings Xaba’s total funds raised to $8 million USD.
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2 weeks ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Montréal-based medtech startup Puzzle Medical Devices has raised $43 million in a second Series A round to complete a clinical study of its heart pump for patients experiencing heart failure. The all-equity round, which closed in March, was co-led by existing investor Desjardins Capital and newcomer KF Matheson, the family office of former Liberal leadership candidate Frank Baylis, executive chairman of Baylis Medical, and Kris Shah, Baylis Medical president.
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2 weeks ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Sheldon McCormick, formerly of proptech startup Properly and Uber Canada, has been tapped to serve as Communitech’s new permanent CEO. McCormick most recently co-founded and served as COO of Properly, a Toronto-based digital real-estate brokerage and search platform. McCormick will replace interim CEO Jennifer Gruber, who will return to her original role as CFO. Gruber was tapped to lead the Kitchener-Waterloo innovation hub in October after the departure of Chris Albinson at the end of 2024.
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2 weeks ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Canadian tech stocks, including Shopify and Lightspeed, rallied today after the United States (US) announced it would pause universal tariffs and reduce them to 10 percent for most countries except China. Shopify’s Nasdaq-listed share price soared by 18.6 percent on the day and closed at $91.40 USD.
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2 weeks ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
QueerTech has revealed the first cohort of its 2SLGBTQIA+ accelerator program, which includes a range of mostly software and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled early-stage startups. The 12-week QT Founders Catalyst Program kicked off this week and includes 18 companies from across Canada, eight of which incorporate AI into their product offerings.
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2 weeks ago | 
betakit.com | Madison McLauchlan |Madison Mclauchlan
Federally funded innovation hub Scale AI has launched a $30-million fund to boost artificial intelligence (AI) adoption among Canadian companies as tech leaders embrace AI as a key productivity booster. “It seemed imperative for us to act collectively to safeguard the competitiveness of Canada’s AI ecosystem.”The initiative covers up to 40 percent of the cost of “high-impact” AI projects and is open to all Canadian companies, not just Scale AI members.
