The BetaKit Podcast Channel

"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 follow someone else's. Those are the choices we've got as a country." It's a special Canada Day edition of The BetaKit Podcast! Canada's Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, joins for an extended conversation to discuss the country's refreshed AI str...

"If your entire technology is coming from a single country, and that country decides that every now and again they're going to shut off access to you, that's not a foundation you can build on." The US government just ordered Anthropic to ban access to its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Seems like now is a good time to talk about sovereign AI. Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst joins to...

"You guys have done what you've done with the wind in your face. Imagine if you had the wind at your back. Wow." Couldn't attend BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall? Don't worry. Enjoy Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun explaining how the future of transportation will be driven by physical AI before sitting down to discuss Canada's AI ecosystem with University of Toronto president Melanie Woodin. Then we have...

"Everywhere I go, BetaKit is there. They grill me. Every time I say something, I say 'I wish I didn't say that' because BetaKit recorded it." Couldn't attend BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall? Don't worry. Enjoy our Vantage Points panel on Canadian defence and dual-use tech, featuring leaders from Dominion Dynamics, Sentinel R&D, and Xanadu, followed by a fireside chat with AI Minister Evan Solomo...

"You could start your day paddleboarding on Lake Ontario, then you could go to a workout class, then you could go to a session on what VCs want to hear." Last year, a decentralized community experiment led to 15,000 people attending over 300 events in the middle of June. With nearly 600 events welcoming people from around the world set to begin Monday, this year's Toronto Tech Week promises to be...

"I know people with amazing ideas, but they don't have the right investment to take their idea to the prototype stage. At the prototype stage, they don't have the ability to take it to the manufacturing stage. So guess what happens? Another company from outside the country comes and snatches 'em up. It was heartbreaking to see that our amazing talent is being sucked away." After decades in public...

"There's a lot in this document… Do we feel the urgency and the threats are covered here?" After months of waiting, the Defence Industrial Strategy offers clarity for $7 billion worth of spending commitments in Budget 2025. Is that enough? What's missing? What comes next? Vass Bednar (Canadian Shield Institute) and Matt Lombardi (The Icebreaker) join to evaluate the strategy, the spending, and som...

"With AI, it should bring down the barriers to how you quickly adopt new software without having to become masters of the software." When StackAdapt started with its adtech solution, competition was fierce and investors didn't see the opportunity. A decade later, StackAdapt is one of Canada's largest and most profitable private companies. CEO and co-founder Vitaly Pecherskiy joins to discuss how t...

"We have a collective action problem. Somebody has to take the first step and say, 'Hey, we're going to deploy a lot of capital here in Canada. We're gonna bet that Canada is going to grow more over the next 20 years than it did over the last 20 years." Recent data shows that the bottom has fallen out of Canadian venture capital, erasing any post-pandemic highs and taking the country back about a...

"Speed is of the essence. This is a super dynamic marketplace. Canada is losing entrepreneurs, we're losing the next generation of founders, and we need to do things, quick." More than a decade ago, Canada launched the Start-up Visa program to attract entrepreneurial talent from around the world. After years of complaints of delays, fraud, and abuse, the program was suspended while featuring a who...

 "BDC is powerful in the sense that it can make or break a fund… And a lot of people are trying to close funds right now." In 2022, the federal government commissioned a report asking Canada's VCs what they thought about Crown corporation BDC. The report was effectively forgotten, and the feedback was never actioned. Why? What did the report have to say about Canada's largest venture investor? And...

"If we don't get our AI ducks in a row at some point and we miss that boat to shore up our industries right now, it's not really going to matter what regulations we have on the table. Because we won't have control." The federal government has released the results of its public consultation on AI, including over 30 submissions from Minister Solomon's AI task force. Former ISED senior policy advisor...

"It's important for the success of Y Combinator to see people investing at a very, very early stage. And if it means, to keep them happy so that they're investing in YC companies, they will do what it takes." Globally recognized tech accelerator Y Combinator will no longer directly invest in Canadian-domiciled startups. Is the change a huge blow to Canada, a big nothingburger, politically motivate...

"You have just seen control of one of the most popular social media platforms in one of the most influential countries in the world switch from one foreign power relative to you to another." Canada and the US have both claimed national security concerns over TikTok. Our country's (unclear) response might not matter in the face of US-mandated corporate restructuring. As Grok's unchecked deepfake im...

"How do I create the 'wow' moment for my end user? And slowness never creates the wow moment." PolarGrid founder and CEO Rade Kovacevic believes GenAI video and voice will be killer apps once they can function in real-time. Enabling real-time GenAI requires uncorking the inference bottleneck that the hyperscalers have helped build. The BetaKit podcast is presented by Fasken Emerging Tech, supporti...

"The workweek will continue until morale improves." Jared Lindzon and Joe O'Connor's new book, Do More in Four: Why It's Time for a Shorter Workweek , argues that the future of work will feature more productive employees working fewer days. How is that supposed to happen when boomers still run the world, Gen Z is still Gen Z, and AI is coming for all of our jobs anyway? Let's dig in. -- Solve for...

"Maybe we will see the robots that we want in our lives in 2026. But be prepared: they will definitely be controlled by people in India with Xbox controllers." Robots, and IPOs, and AI, Oh My! Managing editor Sarah Rieger joins to ask the biggest tech questions of 2026, after evaluating which 2025 tech questions were definitively answered. Solve for X is back! The latest season of the MaRS podcast...

"2025 is the year that we committed to the bit, and all pretences went away." Special guest star Rob Kenedi (Decelerator) joins for The BetaKit Podcast's annual tradition: stuffing your holiday stocking with the biggest tech stories of 2025. Have a different take on tech this year? Let us know:  podcast@betakit.com . Solve for X is back! The latest season of the MaRS podcast is exploring more worl...

"Can you imagine a quarter—25 percent—of Canada isn't sure if they'll be employed next year? That is a wild statistic." Kevin Kliman, president of Canadian business at Employment Hero, joins to explain why Canada's workforce is underemployed and anxious about 2026. He also shares data indicating things are particularly bad for Gen Z, before offering tips on how they can make their mark in the mode...

"It seems irrational, and irrational behaviour is where drama lives, it's where comedy lives. It's where all the fun is." A communications tycoon built an empire turning airwaves into cash. Now, his son, long dismissed by his father, is fighting for control of the family business. Meanwhile, one shrewd public servant is determined to derail the company's billion-dollar takeover. Is this a plot poi...

"It used to be that Silicon Valley was the kind of Mecca of the entrepreneur. What's happening is everyone has got the tools that used to be crowded in there. Now what we need to do is get the capital." Minister Evan Solomon sits down with C100 Executive Director Michael Buhr to discuss the country's future in AI and the feds' commitments to innovation. Recorded live on the BetaKit Keynote Stage a...

"The technology is there, and everyone loves cool technology, but it doesn't need to be a party trick. It needs to be something that's driving a meaningful business outcome, so pick your challenging problems."  OpenText's Shannon Bell (EVP, Chief Digital Officer & Chief Information Officer) explains how she rolled out AI systematically at one of Canada's largest tech companies. As OpenText embrace...

"In the beginning, we were like, 'this must be a scam' because with the way things move in Waterloo and Toronto, it seemed way too fast." A chance pitch competition connection took Colare co-founder Nain Abdi from Waterloo to Silicon Valley. He explains what pulled his company south, why his peers are eager to make a similar leap, and what (if anything) could convince him to return to Canada. The...

"Too many American subs dominate this market.  Eighty percent of what we buy is from American companies. We wanna reverse that. We wanna make 80 percent of what we buy from Canadian companies. So we frankly don't care what we do as long as we are a Canadian defence company." Dominion Dynamics founder and CEO Eliot Pence wants to build Canada's first "defence prime." On this episode of The BetaKit...

It's a power-packed post-Budget panel podcast featuring a plethora of Canadian policy wonks! Vass Bednar (Canadian SHIELD Institute), Benjamin Bergen (CCI), and Jaxson Khan (Aperture AI) join to explore the story Budget 2025 tells of Canada, and what juicy nuggets of tech policy and financial commitments need to be dunked in the dipping sauce of greater detail. Let's dig in! The BetaKit Podcast is...