Al Vigier is the founder and CEO of Vancouver-based AI company Caseway. Something changed in our sales calls over the past year. Buyers who used to open with questions about features and pricing now open with questions about jurisdiction. “Where is the company incorporated? Who owns it? Where does the data live? Which foreign government…
Toronto-based Timia Capital has bolstered its lending capacity by $60 million CAD, giving it the ability to provide larger loans to more business-to-business (B2B) technology companies. The news: Timia provides debt to B2B tech firms across Canada and the United States, focusing on B2B software-as-a-service and software-enabled companies with product-market fit, with between $2 million…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM For years, researchers knew that air pollution stunts lung development in children. What they hadn’t been able to show was whether cleaning up the air could actually change that trajectory. A study published in The Lancet Public Health suggests it can. Scientists at Queen Mary University of London followed…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Ninety-seven percent of French people find telemarketing calls annoying. A 2025 parliamentary report called it “one of those rare issues that unites people in France.” The government has apparently decided that’s enough to address it directly. As of early August, unsolicited telemarketing calls are illegal for businesses operating in…
Canada’s trade war with the US has intensified, and tech leaders say we need to hold fast and make deliberate choices now that the stakes are raised. The news: On Saturday, the US imposed sweeping, 50-percent tariffs on everything from aluminum to dairy and electronics, and Canada has responded with dollar-for-dollar retaliatory measures. It’s the…
Coinbase Canada’s new country director and CEO Eric Richmond thinks that Canadian cryptocurrency companies and watchdogs could use more “all-encompassing” regulation. In an interview with BetaKit last month, Richmond noted that Canada’s patchwork of provincial and territorial securities regulators has largely governed crypto firms via staff notices and exemption orders, a fragmented approach he claimed…
Toronto’s BlackTech Capital (BTC) has officially launched its Catalyst fund, which will back early-stage cleantech companies led by founders who have traditionally been underrepresented in the tech sector. On Wednesday, the firm announced that it held a $500,000 first close of a target $2-million CAD fund, which it aims to close before the end of…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The first terawatt of global solar capacity took nearly 68 years to reach. The second arrived in roughly two years. The third came in 19 months. The world crossed the 3-terawatt mark in early 2026, and the pace is still picking up. In 2025 alone, the world installed 664…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM For parents of tweens and teens, August often brings the same showdown: a wish list brimming with the latest must-have styles and a budget that’s not budging. That water bottle your kid swears will change their life? The wide-leg jeans that cost more than your weekly grocery shop? It’s…
Businesses and IT leaders have a limited understanding of what sovereign AI means or what opportunities it may offer, according to a new study sponsored by Toronto-based AI developer Cohere. The news: The study, performed by analyst firm IDC on behalf of Cohere, found that more than half of executive leaders believe sovereign AI is a…
