BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM If you’ve ever driven away from school while your kid was still crying at the door, you know the horrible feeling. The half-formed urge to turn the car around. The uncertainty about whether going back would help or just make it worse. The guilt riding shotgun all the way…
Calgary-based Helcim raised fresh financing and reported more than $150 million CAD in annual revenue as it looks to fill a new vacuum within Canada’s payments infrastructure. The news: The Calgary-based payments processor announced on Friday that it has raised a $53-million CAD Series C round led by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)’s…
Could an experimental drug compound once studied as a diabetes treatment also fight deadly superbugs? In 2020, an AI model gave researchers a promising answer to that question, identifying halicin’s ability to kill bacteria, including strains resistant to other antibiotics. “You can’t know it all yourself. You’ve got to know people who can help you…
Montréal-based Élisa Interactive has raised an $875,000 pre-seed round to create entirely new worlds … in the video game Roblox. “People go [on Roblox] to get together and have fun online, and that’s what we’re betting on.” Founded by father-son duo François and Julien Bélanger, Élisa Interactive’s AI-powered level design tool makes creating video game…
A group of developers known for their work on the popular children’s video game Club Penguin have raised an undisclosed amount of funding to build its spiritual successor. The news: Kelowna, BC-based game studio Magic Potion Games announced on Thursday that it has secured a Series A round, just as its child-friendly game Imagine Island…
Canada’s largest VC firm saw a net revenue drop in fiscal 2026, but ultimately grew its net income as the value of its VC investments rose by more than $400 million CAD. On Wednesday, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) released its annual report for the year ended March 31, 2026. Amid income of…
New job postings suggest Anthropic is looking to significantly increase its data centre footprint in Canada, with a particular focus on Alberta. The news: The US-based AI giant created multiple job postings for new Canadian roles that will be in charge of getting more data centres built in the country. One posting is for a…
Aaron Bast is managing director at Graphite Ventures. Last fall, the Toronto Blue Jays took the Los Angeles Dodgers to seven games in the World Series. The Jays did it without the biggest payroll in baseball, the deepest farm system, or the home-field advantage. They did it the way Michael Lewis’ Moneyball described two decades…
Montréal startup StratosX has landed a partnership with Air Transat to help the airline minimize flight disruptions amid a chaotic time for air travel. The aerospace software startup announced on Thursday that its “recovery platform” for airlines, X360, is being deployed by Canadian leisure airline Air Transat to manage its aircraft, crew, and passengers. StratosX…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Eight months after a shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach killed 15 people, Australia is following through. New South Wales starts a gun buyback on November 2, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed Sunday. It’s the largest the country has run since Port Arthur. What the buyback looks…
