The Linux Association of Canada has launched an open-source library it says will support digital sovereignty in Canada. The news: The Saskatoon-based association told BetaKit the library was launched on June 2, with the intent of bolstering Canadian access to digitally sovereign, open-source software. At press time, the library contained just 25 entries, but founder…
Canada is looking to increase economic productivity by stimulating commercialization and adoption in its new national AI strategy. The strategy, titled AI for All, was announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday morning in Toronto. The strategy is intended to help Canada foster trust, provide opportunity, and safeguard sovereignty as AI becomes part of…
Canadian AI darling Cohere says it’s not partnered or working with Palantir, following recent social media speculation arising from a 2024 TechCrunch report. The news: The TechCrunch article, published in December 2024, claimed that Cohere was working with Palantir to deploy its AI models. It was based on a now-unavailable video posted by Palantir that…
Kitchener-Waterloo-based Scispot, which wants to help life sciences labs move faster using AI, has secured $8 million USD ($11.1 million CAD) in Series A funding to bring its platform to more companies. Scispot has developed AI-powered software designed to help workers in life sciences labs—such as research facilities that focus on drug development or pathology—centralize…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Street trees reduce urban heat. That much is established. What’s less settled is whether they’re enough on their own, or whether the way a city plants matters as much as how much it plants. New field research from Melbourne, Munich, and Hong Kong, led by Mohammad A. Rahman at…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In 2014, researchers placed exercise wheels in two natural outdoor settings and left them there. Wild mice found the wheels and ran on them, sometimes for up to 18 minutes at a stretch, with no training and no food reward. The running continued long after all the bait was…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a 500-patient trial at American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, a daily pill called daraxonrasib doubled average survival time in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Those on the drug lived for an average of 13.2 months. Those on standard chemotherapy lived for 6.6 to…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Zebra striping, the practice of alternating each alcoholic drink with a non-alcoholic one, is catching on: 34 percent of UK adults reported trying it in 2025. The strategy does help. Just not quite in the way people think it does. The actual mechanism: total consumption The body processes alcohol…
Calgary-based cleantech software company SensorUp announced today it has closed a growth financing round. The news: The round was led by Pender Ventures, with participation from Climate Investment, Evok Innovations, and US-based petroleum company and SensorUp client, Occidental. Neither SensorUp nor Pender Ventures gave a dollar figure or funding stage. But Pender Ventures partner Cheri Corbett…
For many startups, the biggest challenge with claiming Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit isn’t innovation. It’s documentation. “With increasingly powerful generative AI models, the [Canada Revenue Agency] now audits your process more than anything.” The evidence behind months of development can be spread across different systems that weren’t designed to work…
