Author: Editor-in-Chief

Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced that the government is working on changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). In an address to the Liberal caucus in Edmonton on Sept. 10, Carney said that moving forward the TFWP “must have a focused approach that targets specific, strategic sectors, and needs in specific regions,” and that the government was actively working toward these objectives. Join the Angus Reid Forum and get $5 in points! Carney did not provide any details on the nature of the potential changes. The TFWP is Canada’s flagship program for issuing work permits to foreign…

After blocking its service in Mississippi over its new age-assurance law, the social networking startup is taking a different approach to comply with laws in South Dakota and Wyoming. Instead of requiring Bluesky to restrict access to all unverified users, users in South Dakota and Wyoming can verify their ages through the Kids Web Services’ (KWS) solution. The service allows users to choose from multiple methods to verify their ages, which may include payment cards, an identity document, an anonymous face scan for facial age estimation, or other alternatives. Bluesky is using the same service to comply with the U.K.’s Online…

The fintech giant sold shares at $40, above its announced range of $35 to $37, and came out of the gate with a $15 billion valuation. Shares popped, opening at $52, though quickly settling down to around $46 mid-day. It’s been a long road for the 20-year-old fintech Klarna to make it to an IPO. But on Wednesday, the company successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, having raised $1.4 billion, largely for its existing investors, rather than itself. Of the 34.3 million shares Klarna sold, only 5 million were sold by the company, it said. The rest were…

Perplexity, the AI-powered search startup that competes with Google by providing conversational answers to user queries, has secured $200 million in new capital at a $20 billion valuation, The Information reported. The fresh funding comes just two months after the company raised $100 million at an $18 billion valuation, according to a July report in Bloomberg. Since its founding three years ago, the rapidly growing AI company has raised $1.5 billion in total funding, according to PitchBook data.  It’s unclear who led Perplexity’s latest capital injection. Bloomberg reported that the July financing was an extension of a previous $500 million…

The California State Assembly took a big step toward regulating AI on Wednesday night, passing SB 243 — a bill that regulate AI companion chatbots in order to protect minors and vulnerable users. The legislation passed with bipartisan support and now heads to the state Senate for a final vote Friday. If Governor Gavin Newsom signs the bill into law, it would take effect January 1, 2026, making California the first state to require AI chatbot operators to implement safety protocols for AI companions and hold companies legally accountable if their chatbots fail to meet those standards. The bill…

Last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Side Events drew hundreds of founders, investors, and operators after hours — from intimate roundtables to lively happy hours to full-on pitch competitions. Each event unlocked new opportunities for the hosts: investor deal flow, talent connections, and brand exposure with the startup community. This year, you can do the same. As a Side Event host during “Disrupt Week” (October 25–31), you’ll tap into an audience of 10,000+ attendees, plus the broader Bay Area tech community. Why host a Side Event? Visibility: Your brand featured in Disrupt 2025 Side Event listings on the event site, event app,…

Streaming giant Plex is urging its customers to change their passwords after it disclosed a data breach of one of its user databases. The company said in a post on Monday that it was aware of a security incident involving the theft of Plex customer account information, including user names, email addresses, scrambled passwords, and unspecified authentication data. Plex said while the passwords were scrambled in a way that made them unreadable to humans, it’s unclear if the passwords can be deciphered or if the stolen authentication data could be used to gain access to customer accounts. The company said…

On a farm near Manchester, New Hampshire, I was recently treated to a gusher of dirty water, not exactly the sort of thing that most startups will show a reporter. But for Dig Energy, the mud is a feature, not a bug, of its compact drilling rig. The startup, which has been operating in stealth for the last five years, developed the water-jet drilling rig in an effort to make geothermal heating and cooling so inexpensive that it will displace fossil fuel boilers and furnaces. The rig is central to that, promising to slash drilling costs by up to…

Two current and two former Meta employees disclosed documents to Congress alleging that the company may have suppressed research on children’s safety, according to a report from The Washington Post. According to their claims, Meta changed its policies around researching sensitive topics — like politics, children, gender, race, and harassment — six weeks after whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents that showed how Meta’s own research found that Instagram can damage teen girls’ mental health. These revelations, which were made public in 2021, kicked off years of hearings in Congress over child safety on the internet, an issue that remains…

On Monday, Anthropic announced an official endorsement of SB 53, a California bill from state senator Scott Wiener that would impose first-in-the-nation transparency requirements on the world’s largest AI model developers. Anthropic’s endorsement marks a rare and major win for SB 53, at a time when major tech groups like the Consumer Technology Association(CTA) and Chamber for Progress are lobbying against the bill. “While we believe that frontier AI safety is best addressed at the federal level instead of a patchwork of state regulations, powerful AI advancements won’t wait for consensus in Washington,” said Anthropic in a blog post. “The…