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Quantum startup Photonic raises $137 million CAD, strikes strategic partnership with Microsoft (BETAKIT)

Quantum startup Photonic has raised a $137-million CAD ($100 million USD) funding round from a pool of investors that includes new strategic partner Microsoft.

“We believe we have correctly identified the breakthrough that will allow us to offer a scalable, distributed, and fault-tolerant solution within five years, significantly ahead of industry expectations,” Photonic CEO Paul Terry said in a statement.

Photonic’s partnership with Microsoft will see the companies work together to create and offer technology that can send quantum information safely over long distances.

Exclusive: IBM debuts $500 million enterprise AI venture fund (AXIOS)

IBM is dedicating $500 million to invest in generative AI startups focused on business customers.

IBM is particularly interested in startups focused on tools for specific verticals (like healthcare) or on a specific business process — as long as the startup doesn’t compete too much with IBM’s own businesses.

VentureLab’s latest HardTech Summit explores barriers, opportunities facing Canadian deep tech startups (BETAKIT)

At VentureLab’s third HardTech Summit, speakers discussed challenges and opportunities facing deep technology startups across the country and offered entrepreneurs advice on navigating them.

HardTech 2023 featured panels on topics ranging from the hardware that powers artificial intelligence (AI) to the state of medtech and what investors consider when weighing whether to back deep tech startups, which face a slightly different path compared to their software counterparts.

POWERED BY: INTELHow to get hybrid work right for the long term

Did you know 89% of workers and decision-makers are onside for hybrid work?

As evolving working arrangements become a reality for more organizations, there are concerns about sustaining productivity, avoiding employee burnout, and anticipating the impact of new technologies like generative AI.

With employees working from anywhere at anytime, hybrid work is straining the capacity of IT teams and budgets, while introducing new security risks that can’t be ignored.

What can Canadian companies do to solve the challenges and take advantage of the rewards of hybrid work over the long term?

Download this article featuring a conversation with a hybrid work expert discussing best practices to ensure that businesses in 2023 are getting hybrid work right for the long term.

Read the article.

GM’s Cruise is recalling 950 robotaxis after pedestrian collision (CNBC)

Cruise, the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, has issued a recall effecting 950 of its robotaxis following a pedestrian collision in San Francisco last month.

The Oct. 2 collision triggered a federal probe. The collision, along with Cruise’s disclosures around it, led to California regulators stripping the company of its permits to operate driverless vehicles in the state, unless there is a human safety driver aboard.

NGen commits $19 million to 12 new AI manufacturing projects (BETAKIT)

Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) has announced $19 million in innovation cluster funding across 12 projects aimed to aid the commercialization of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) across Canada’s manufacturing sectors. Combined with industry partner contributions from each project, NGen said the program carries a total value of $55 million.

Andreessen Horowitz would like everyone to stop talking about AI’s copyright issues, please (INSIDER)

Andreessen Horowitz is warning that billions of dollars in AI investments could be worth a lot less if companies developing the technology are forced to pay for the copyrighted data that makes it work.

“The bottom line is this,” the firm, known as a16z, wrote. “Imposing the cost of actual or potential copyright liability on the creators of AI models will either kill or significantly hamper their development.”

At the same time, OpenAI announced it’ll step in and defend businesses using OpenAI products if they face claims around copyright infringement as it pertains to OpenAI apps and services.

Sanctuary AI, RainStick among #CDNtech companies named to TIME’s 2023 Best Inventions list (BETAKIT)

Canadian tech companies Sanctuary AI, RainStick, Li-Metal, and Naqi Logix, have had their solutions named to TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023 list.

This year’s list features 200 inventions: Canadian solutions were named among inventions like OpenAI’s GPT-4, Spotify’s AI DJ, and Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset.

Stability AI Gets Intel Backing in New Financing (BNN BLOOMBERG)

Stability, the artificial intelligence startup best known for the popular Stable Diffusion image-generating software, raised just under $50 million in the form of a convertible note in the deal led by Intel, which closed in October, according to people familiar with the matter.

The news follows a challenging period for Stability, which has recently shed more than a half dozen senior employees, including the head of human resources, Bloomberg earlier reported.

Dapper Labs, Nesto, Certn, top Deloitte’s 2023 Technology Fast 50 list (BETAKIT)

Deloitte has announced the 2023 winners of its Technology Fast 50, a list meant to highlight Canadian companies demonstrating rapid revenue growth.

Deloitte said this year’s Technology Fast 50 winners have an average three-year revenue growth rate of 2,213 percent, a significant reduction from last year’s average of 3,093 percent, while Dapper Labs topped the list at a whopping 16,910 percent.

This year’s top three was rounded out by Noibu, an error-detection startup for e-commerce websites, in second place with a 12,865 percent three-year growth rate and BioRender, a Canva-like platform for scientific-modeling, in third.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI hosts its first big tech showcase as the AI startup faces growing competition (BNN BLOOMBERG)

Less than a year into its meteoric rise, the company behind ChatGPT unveiled the future it has in mind for its artificial intelligence technology on Monday, launching a new line of chatbot products that can be customized to a variety of tasks.

At the event held in a cavernous former Honda dealership in OpenAI’s hometown of San Francisco, the company unveiled a new version called GPT-4 Turbo that it says is more capable and can retrieve information about world and cultural events.

Report: Diversity gap persists in senior ranks of Canadian VC firms (BETAKIT)

Despite year-over-year gains in the representation of women and visible minorities at Canadian venture firms, senior-level diversity in the industry is still lagging, according to a new report from BDC Capital.

BDC Capital’s report found that overall, diversity at the senior levels of the private asset industry remains low—almost half of venture firms are entirely male owned, while eight percent are entirely visible minority owned and two percent are entirely woman or Indigenous owned. Only 31 percent of venture firms reported having gender parity.

Fei-Fei Li Started an AI Revolution by Seeing Like an Algorithm (WIRED)

Early in the pandemic deep learning researcher Fei-Fei Li went to write a book about making an indelible mark on the field of artificial intelligence by heading a project in 2006 called ImageNet. Li churned out a draft. But when her colleague, philosopher Jon Etchemendy, read it, he told her to start over—this time including her own journey in the field.

“He said there’s plenty of technical people who can read an AI book,” says Li. “But I was missing an opportunity to tell all the young immigrants, women, and people of diverse backgrounds to understand that they can actually do AI, too.”

Tax Court disqualifies government loan spending from SR&ED, with potentially devastating implications for Canadian tech (BETAKIT)

In late May the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal application seeking to overturn an earlier decision by the Tax Court, which deemed below-market federal loans a form of government assistance, excluding them from being used in conjunction with SR&ED.

As such, Canadian organizations may see some of what previously qualified for SR&ED benefits no longer eligible for the widely used tax incentive program if those expenses were paid for via a low or no-interest loan from a federal institution. According to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), SR&ED provides more than $3 billion in tax incentives to 16,000 businesses annually.

Silicon Valley’s Big, Bold Sci-Fi Bet on the Device That Comes After the Smartphone (THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Humane, a company started by two former Apple employees, says its new artificial intelligence pin can stop all the scrolling. Can it live up to the hype?

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