A Swedish defence official walks into the Québec pavilion at VivaTech… It sounds like a setup in need of a punchline. But for Beonyx, a Saguenay-based robotics company, one of nearly 100 Québec technology companies represented at Europe’s largest technology event this June, that moment was no laughing matter. “Paris opened doors into the European…
Alberta is investing $50 million into the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), the Province announced this morning. The news: Announced by Premier Danielle Smith at Platform Calgary, the $50 million will be distributed over five years and be drawn from five provincial ministries. The Ministry of Technology and Innovation and the Ministry of Advanced Education…
Eleven words changed the way Amanda Hall thought about her career, and her budding startup: “Why are you doing this? It’s too big for you.” That’s what the Summit Lithium Technologies founder and geophysicist says she was told eight years ago, when she first pitched the ambitious notion of extracting and refining the world’s lithium…
Two years after hitting $100 million USD in annual recurring revenue (ARR), Ottawa-based centaur Assent has made its first-ever acquisition, buying German sustainability software provider IPoint in an effort to expand its compliance offerings. The news: Assent announced it acquired IPoint on Thursday morning. The two companies both provide software that helps manufacturers and distributors…
Canada has a technology deficit problem in high-stakes, hard-to-reach places. Whether it’s a remote mine in northern Ontario, an oil field in Alberta, critical infrastructure across the Rockies, or defence operations in remote parts of the country, these environments still depend on systems that support complex operations—even when networks are unreliable and conditions are harsh….
MDA Space is purchasing a controlling stake in Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), a French earth observation company, for 567 million euros ($920 million CAD) in cash. The news: Brampton-based MDA announced it will acquire an approximately 70- percent stake in CLS following market close on Wednesday evening. France’s national space agency, Centre national d’études spatiales,…
After a decade that saw it begin as an online travel agency and evolve into a consumer “savings super app,” Toronto-headquartered Super.com has officially become a unicorn and, the company says, saved its users more than $1 billion USD ($1.4 billion CAD) in the process. Super.com announced on Tuesday that it has closed $65 million…
The federal government has tabled a flurry of tech-related legislation and policies recently—and Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence has been at the centre of it. From Canada’s AI strategy to new laws that govern privacy, deepfakes, social media, and online surveillance, Minister Evan Solomon is one of the key players in Ottawa defining what Canada’s…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM California just closed a gap that’s been undermining its clean energy numbers for years. Governor Newsom signed SB 1350 into law, qualifying green hydrogen electricity as a renewable source under the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard. Power plants that use it now earn financial incentives. Worth paying attention to. What…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Nobody watches the World Cup to think about footwear. But the shoes on the pitch at the 2026 tournament are the end result of about 500 years of iteration, and the story is stranger than you’d expect. It involves a family feud, kangaroo leather, and at one point, someone…
