Plus: Everything you need to know about Toronto Tech Week and BetaKit Most Ambitious.
What a week!
Team BetaKit celebrated the first full week of summer with a rare Triple Crown: official media partner of Toronto Tech Week, host of our own event, and publisher of our first-ever print issue, BetaKit Most Ambitious.
Make sure to read Alex Kinsella’s excellent recap of our BetaKit Town Hall and then the rest of our extensive Toronto Tech Week coverage below. I am subletting my normal slot in this newsletter to select Most Ambitious stories we published digitally throughout the week. Email file size limitations (that’s actually a thing!) leave me without the kilobytes to say anything else.
Except this: more than any other, this week proved that Canadian tech is filled with stories of bold ambition. Read as many of them as you can. Know there are so many more. Remember that BetaKit is on the case to tell them all.
Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief
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BetaKit Most Ambitious selects
Savour some of the bold flavour from BetaKit’s first-ever print issue.
Rahul Goel wants to give Canada its Apollo moment
Markham-based NordSpace is prepping for Canada’s sovereign space future.
Boris Wertz thinks science is the new moat for Canadian tech
The Version One Ventures investor explains why he bets big on AI, robotics, and Web3.
Phil De Luna thinks Canada is the perfect place to store the world’s carbon
Deep Sky’s chief scientific and commercial officer on the rising stakes for carbon-capture technology.
Building Canada requires competition
Vass Bednar offers an ode to the ventures challenging our nation’s comfort zones.
This time, Eric Migicovsky won’t let anything get in his way
A decade after the death of Pebble, the company’s founder is still chasing his dream smartwatch.
Socratica’s IRL revolution is powered by the love of making
Georgia Berg on how the student-run organization makes space for messy.
What I Learned: Larry Smith
The legendary University of Waterloo professor shares wisdom gained from a half-century of studying entrepreneurship.
Everything you need to know about Toronto Tech Week
As the official media partner of Toronto Tech Week, the BetaKit team captured conversations, announcements, and insights from across the city. We also played pickleball. Here’s what you need to know.
The conversations:
Harley Finkelstein, Mike Katchen, and Aidan Gomez reject the pull away from building in Canada
Tech leaders told the next generation to learn to say “no” to acquisition offers and leaving Canada at flagship Homecoming event.
Waabi’s Raquel Urtasun calls for Canada to “wake up” to the physical AI revolution
The autonomous trucking startup CEO said that the country needs more regulatory frameworks: “Canada, wake up.”
“I don’t want the tree rings to show”: Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke says his company is embracing AI to prevent stagnation
Lütke and Social Capital chief Chamath Palihapitiya shared their excitement—and reservations—about building with AI.
Geoffrey Hinton says AI companies resistant to “regulations with teeth” in lively debate with Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst
The Nobel laureate and his former protégé headlined a public debate on AI at the University of Toronto.
“The end of the era of human data”: AI experts discuss new frontiers at CDL Super Session
Turing Award winner Richard Sutton, CIFAR AI chair Patrick Pilarski, and Sanctuary AI co-founder Suzanne Gildert shared their visions for the future—and how we might get there.
The announcements:
“Light, tight, right” regulation: Minister Evan Solomon unpacks how Canada plans to support domestic AI and quantum computing
On the day Minister Solomon announced applications were open for the AI Compute Access Fund, he shared how the government plans to regulate and support the AI and quantum sectors.
Build Canada appoints Lucy Hargreaves to CEO as tech think tank expands mandate
Policy platform unveiled plans to open-source its projects and fund Canadian initiatives at Homecoming.
The activities:
Meeting people is easy at Toronto Tech Week
What do cold plunging and pickleball have to do with Toronto Tech Week? We sent our Chief Fun Correspondent to find out.
The insights:
Techstars founder Brad Feld says you should give more without knowing what you’ll get back
Feld shared how a personal philosophy begets richer mentorship at an intimate TechTO event.
What making music taught David Usher about running an AI startup
Four-time Juno winner and Moist frontman taps into digital immortality with his startup Reimagine AI.
9Bio Therapeutics’ Philipe Gobeil wants to “resurrect” clinically validated cancer therapies that failed due to toxicity
Québec biotech startup is developing a platform for designing drugs that target tumours and spare healthy tissues.
Bridgit’s Mallorie Brodie explains why Canadian startups need to think globally from the start
Co-founder and CEO Mallorie Brodie unpacks Bridgit’s pivot, mitigating risk in construction tech, and looking up to firms like Axonify, Knix, and Jane.
Canadian FinTech community mourns Equitable Bank CEO Andrew Moor
Members of the Canadian FinTech industry are sharing their grief following the unexpected death of Equitable Bank CEO Andrew Moor last weekend at the age of 65.
Equitable board chair Vincenza Sera said in a statement that the death was a “tragic loss,” and that Moor campaigned for “change and innovation” in Canadian banking. Wealthsimple co-founder Michael Katchen said in a LinkedIn post that he was “heartbroken” by Moor’s passing, calling the executive one of the “original champions” of Canada’s FinTech space.
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The BetaKit Podcast – Telling the stories of Canadian tech’s Most Ambitious
“I want to put ambition in people’s hands. You say it doesn’t exist—you’re going to hold it, you’re going to flip through it, you’re going to see it.”
BetaKit CEO Siri Agrell joins to discuss today’s launch of BetaKit’s Most Ambitious: our first-ever print issue, telling stories of bold ambition in Canadian tech.
This episode comes packed with highlights of some of our favourite stories from the inaugural issue, alongside a behind-the-scenes peek at how it was made.
Congratulations to Kate Grant from Fasken for winning The BetaKit Quiz: Live! at the BetaKit Town Hall this week. Check back next week for a new edition!
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Feature image courtesy Toronto Tech Week.
