Plus: AI Is New but Not Immune From Old Rules, Bank Regulators Say.
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Penny AI raises $33.9 million CAD Series B to expand direct sales solution (BETAKIT)
Maria Osipova, chief marketing officer at Penny, told BetaKit that this investment brings Penny’s total funding to date to $40.8 million CAD ($32.5 million USD). Penny previously raised a $650,000 seed round in 2018, and a $5 million Series A in 2020.Osipova declined to disclose the amount of secondary capital included in the $27 million financing.
Canadian company Xanadu achieves ‘big leap forward’ in quantum computer race (THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
In a paper published Wednesday in the research journal Nature, the Canadian company described how its machine, a quantum computer dubbed Borealis, achieved “quantum advantage” – a term that means it delivered a result beyond the practical reach of a conventional computer system.
Able Innovations announces $7.5 million to take the pain out of patient transfer (BETAKIT)
In an interview with BetaKit, Puri described the typical patient transfer process as “pretty crude,” adding that it can cause pain to patients and result in hospital staff experiencing injuries. Amid an already short-staffed healthcare system during COVID-19, the issues associated with this routine task have become magnified.
Singapore’s Quincus sets up second HQ in Toronto, looking to AI to solve supply chains (THE LOGIC)
Digitizing supply-chain management sounds like a yawn until you’re looking at soaring prices for scarce goods because factories can’t get the parts they need and food can’t get from farms to market. Quincus, a Singapore-based player that aims to help companies deal with their obsolete logistics, is setting up in Toronto because of its dense ecosystem of AI specialists who know how to do the big-data crunching that industries need.
POWERED BY: RBC Capital MarketsThe pendulum swings back to the private market
With Canadian tech IPOs on pause, private markets face a higher bar.
Yep. Billions—and a lot of it goes unused.
It wasn’t that long ago that the “pandemic effect” helped drive a record-breaking IPO boom among Canadian technology companies. Fast forward a year, however, and the landscape has completely changed with private market growth capital once again the financing pathway of choice for tech firms.
Learn if the ‘rule of 50’ might be the new rule for Canadian tech.
Why Canalyst’s Damir Hot thinks every entrepreneur should have a co-founder (BETAKIT)
“Every time I left the company, I joined the next one in an earlier and a more senior role, and less cash comp and more stock,” said Hot. “And then eventually there was nowhere to go but start from ground zero, and so I found an amazing co-founder and then off we went.”
Meta reorganization aims to decentralize Facebook’s AI efforts (AXIOS)
Like rivals Google and Microsoft, Meta is looking to make sure that machine learning and AI are used broadly throughout the company, not locked away in research units.
Elon Musk to Workers: Spend 40 Hours in the Office, or Else (THE NEW YORK TIMES)
“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Mr. Musk said. “That is why I spent so much time in the factory — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, SpaceX would long ago have gone bankrupt.&rdquo
Worximity secures $14 million for smart factory analytics tech (BETAKIT)
The financing comes from Investissement Québec and existing Worximity investors, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Marel, a multinational food processing company based in Europe that has strategically invested in the startup since 2019.
Tension Inside Google Over a Fired AI Researcher’s Conduct (WIRED)
Satrajit Chatterjee, a more senior researcher at Google, used the cover of scientific debate to undermine the women personally, the employees claim. They spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss company matters. Multiple complaints about Chatterjee’s behavior toward the women were made to Google’s personnel department, and he received a written warning, some employees said, but he continued to criticize the women’s results.
Flying Fish Partners appoints Tiffany Linke-Boyko as principal for Canada, secures $7.5 million from AEC (BETAKIT)
Founded in 2016, Seattle-based Flying Fish makes seed-stage investments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet-of-Things (IoT), cloud computing, as well as speech and natural language tech startups.
AI Is New but Not Immune From Old Rules, Bank Regulators Say (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
Financial institutions’ use of artificial intelligence should have risk controls in place to address possible drawbacks, senior bank regulators said, warning that old rules could be applied to the novel technology. Even without AI-specific guidance from federal bank regulators, institutions could run afoul of existing rules, officials at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Friday.
Michael Edgar
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