Happy Canada Day! On this special day, we have another special episode of The BetaKit Podcast just for you: an hour-long sit-down with Canada’s AI Minister, the Honourable Evan Solomon. “Either we build the innovation here with our entrepreneurs, or we buy it from someone else. And either we make the rules here, or we…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Mosquitoes don’t pick targets randomly. They run a multi-stage sensory scan, and new research is beginning to explain what that scan detects and why it favors some people over others. “It’s not a misconception: mosquitoes are attracted to some people more than others,” said Frederic Simard of France’s Institute…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Finally, Nepal has marriage equality. On June 18, 2026, the Supreme Court issued a binding directive ordering the government to guarantee equal marriage rights for gender and sexual minorities. The legal fight took nearly 20 years. The court also dismissed a counter-writ petition opposing the rights, filed by Yuvraj…
Stathera has raised $55 million USD ($78 million CAD) to boost production of its semiconductor clock technology amid an AI-fuelled push for compute power. The news: The Montréal startup, founded in 2020 as a spin-out of Nxtsens Microsystems, announced on Tuesday that it had raised an oversubscribed Series B round led by new investor San…
Talent acquisition company Toast is making it easier to hire women for tech roles with a new, AI-powered recruitment platform. The Calgary-based company’s founder and CEO, April Hicke, announced the rollout of the Toast Talent Marketplace in a LinkedIn post late last week. While still in beta, Hicke told BetaKit the platform is a business-to-business,…
San Francisco-based banking, lending, and investing app SoFi has acquired Toronto-based FinTech startup Composer for an undisclosed amount. The news: Last week, SoFi revealed Composer by SoFi, a new AI-powered investing platform within its financial app, built on its acquisition of Composer. The new tool will allow SoFi’s 14 million members to turn their investing…
The federal government is injecting $5.6 million into organizations that support Black entrepreneurship in Alberta. The news: Funding comes via Prairies Economic Development Canada’s (PrairiesCan) Black Entrepreneurship Program (BEP) and will go towards three Alberta-based organizations to support training, mentorship, and business development programming tailored for Black entrepreneurs. Included in the announcement is $2.6 million…
Spellbook wants to change how contracts are drafted and signed in the age of AI software. “Behind every data centre, every rocket launch, are thousands of agreements.” Scott Stevenson, Spellbook The Toronto-based company released its Spellbook Autonomous Contract Management (ACM) product on Tuesday to a limited number of customers; the company hopes the product will…
There’s now an open-source tool to help detect biased language in writing and AI datasets, developed by a Canadian research hub. The news: Toronto’s Vector Institute released UnBias-Plus on Tuesday, a free tool that Vector research scientists say can detect and rewrite biased language, both in written content and within AI training data. Its developers…
Halifax-based Floqer began as a simple Google Chrome extension. Now, the less-than-two-year-old software startup is helping big-name companies like Perplexity and Wise gather and review client data. Floqer revealed on Tuesday that it closed just over $2 million CAD in previously unannounced funding last September to build out some of the customer relationship management (CRM)…
