Avery Pennarun is the co-founder and CEO of Tailscale, a secure connectivity platform. Canada has an advantage we don’t say out loud often enough: most of the world still wants to work with us. That sounds soft, so it’s easy to underrate. It isn’t. Infrastructure runs on trust. If customers in Toronto, Frankfurt, Tokyo, London,…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Most Alzheimer’s research goes after the toxic proteins directly. This study asks a different question: what if the brain’s own clearing system could be fixed instead? Research from Monash University’s Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, found that a copper compound called Cu(ATSM) repaired a waste-clearing…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM You know that thing where you sit down to find one photo from last summer, and somehow it’s thirty minutes later, and you’re in 2019? Digital clutter does that. A chaotic phone or a laptop full of half-forgotten downloads creates the same low-level stress as a messy room: you…
Companies at the top of Canada’s banking, financial services, and telecommunications industries have teamed up with a startup consultancy to take on their AI infrastructure problems together. The news: Scotiabank, Sun Life, Telus, and Lightworks announced a new industry group with a straightforward name, The AI Consortium, on Tuesday morning. The group says its members…
Vancouver-based clinic network and healthtech company Well Health will spin out and list its Wellstar subsidiary on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) later this year. The news: Well Health announced on Tuesday that its pure-play software business has entered a deal to combine with a BC-based shell company before applying to list its shares on…
AI voice startup ElevenLabs announced on Tuesday that it has officially launched in Canada. The news: London, UK-founded, New York-headquartered ElevenLabs, which helps businesses deploy interactive voice and conversational AI agents, sees room to grow north of the border. The company revealed on Tuesday that it plans to open a Toronto office over the coming…
The Government of Alberta has spent the last year and a half refurbishing its digital systems, largely using US AI tools. Now, it’s telling other governments exactly how it did it. The news: Alberta’s government has released a collection of technical white papers outlining how the province used AI tools from Anthropic and Google to…
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has approved the legal framework for Canada’s real-time rail (RTR) payments system, paving the way for a launch in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to Payments Canada. The news: Last week, Payments Canada announced that the bylaw and rules for the RTR system received all necessary approvals and will officially…
InBC Investment Corp. is evolving. Established in 2021 with $500 million CAD from the Government of British Columbia (BC), the evergreen, stage-agnostic fund was tasked with providing startups and other funds with “patient capital”—long-term investments where InBC isn’t expecting immediate returns. Now, with new leadership at the helm, the organization is becoming more of a…
Canadian consumer FinTechs have a new competitor as alternative mortgage lender Haventree launches a digital bank. The news: Toronto-based Haventree Bank, a Schedule 1 Canadian bank, announced on Tuesday morning that it’s launching a direct-to-consumer online banking product and app, expanding on its existing mortgage-lending solutions for customers who may not meet traditional banks’ eligibility…
