Author: Editor-in-Chief

Two Canadian companies have been selected for the second phase of a NATO defence tech accelerator program that aims to develop dual-use technologies. Outside of Canada, investors have increasingly poured money into defence tech. Longueuil, Que.-based Reaction Dynamics and Ottawa-based Tactiql have advanced to Phase 2 of NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), and will each receive 300,000 euros ($482,000 CAD). Just 15 companies advanced to Phase 2II of DIANA, narrowed down from 76 finalists and 2,600 proposals from global defence tech companies. DIANA aims to support the development of technologies with military and civilian uses across…

The Government of Ontario has launched a new, streamlined system for reviewing and adopting healthtech solutions. It’s called the Health Innovation Pathway, and it allows vendors to submit proposals for tech that potentially improves patient outcomes and increases efficiency in Ontario’s health system. The Ontario government claims the program, which is already accepting applications, will accelerate the adoption of new tech in the province and prioritize “made-in-Ontario” technologies. “Ultimately, we will judge the success of this innovation pathway based on whether it lets Canadian companies get their foot in the door.” “By providing a pathway for these Ontario-made solutions and…

Ottawa-based defence tech firm Dominion Dynamics is partnering with the Arctic Training Centre (ATC) in Whitehorse to develop and test its systems designed to help defend the Canadian North. “We are ultimately planning on building a sovereign defence prime [contractor] for Canada [that] can compete with the American primes and European primes.” Mitch Carkner, Dominion Dynamics The three-year partnership agreement provides Dominion Dynamics with access to the ATC’s testing facilities in the Yukon, where it will use the “unique northern environment” to test and validate its sensing, autonomy, and communications technologies purpose-built for extreme operations. The partnership is “absolutely critical,”…

Like many startups, climate tech companies often face a “valley of death” that lies between early-stage funding and growth capital that helps proven technologies reach commercial scale. But because climate tech startups are often hardware focused — physical problems tend to require physical solutions, after all — this valley of death tends to be a lot wider. Financing a first-of-a-kind power plant or factory can cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Now a new fund hopes to bridge this financing gap, also known as the “missing middle.” Called the All Aboard Coalition, it aims to raise $300 million by October…

X’s long-awaited encrypted DM feature, XChat, is becoming more widely available. Though the feature shipped in beta in May, XChat is now accessible for more users, including those who do not subscribe to X Premium. Separate from the existing DM inbox, XChat is end-to-end encrypted. The chat system supports media uploads, group chats, pinned messages, and the ability to mark messages as read or unread. Vanishing mode has been rumored to be in the works as well. Right now, users can only access XChat if they opt into using it. On desktop, XChat is accessible to some users from…

The luxury membership platform Vivrelle, which allows customers to rent high-end goods, announced Thursday the launch of an AI personal styling tool called Ella as part of its partnership with fashion retailers Revolve and FWRD. The launch is an example of how the fashion industry is leveraging AI technology to enhance customer experiences and is one of the first partnerships to see three retailers come together to offer a personalized AI experience. Revolve and FWRD let users shop designer clothing, while Revolve also has an option to shop pre-owned. The tool, Ella, provides recommendations to customers across the three retailers…

Francesco Cacciatore is a self-proclaimed skeptic. Yet after spending two decades in the European aerospace industry and hitting, as he put it, a “crisis,” he made an undeniably optimistic bet: he started a space company. “You ask yourself, ‘What am I doing?’” he said in a recent interview. “I got offered some interesting opportunities, but then I kind of collapsed and realized I wanted to try and build something myself.” That something turned out to be one of the most challenging problems in aerospace: reentry. Along with his cofounder Víctor Gómez García, Cacciatore founded Orbital Paradigm, a Madrid-based startup building…

Inspired by his grandparents, who were apple farmers in China, Charlie Wu got the idea to apply technology to agriculture while studying computer science at Cornell University, a top agriculture school. “I got to meet fruit professors who are the best in the world at what they do,” Wu told TechCrunch. “Through talking to them, I realized even the largest farms in the nation basically have no idea what is actually growing out in their fields.” He dropped out of Cornell, became a Thiel fellow, and in 2022 began building Orchard Robotics, a startup that uses cameras and AI…

Pornhub owner Aylo will pay a $5 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Utah over allegations that the company knowingly profited off of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM). Formerly MindGeek, Aylo made some significant changes to the way it moderates content in late 2020, when The New York Times published an exposé showing how Pornhub — Aylo’s most popular portfolio website — failed to prevent and remove uploads of CSAM and NCM. It was only after pressure from credit card operators that the company began to verify the ages of all actors in…

Amid lawsuits alleging child safety concerns, online gaming service Roblox announced on Wednesday that it’s expanding its age-estimation technology to all users and partnering with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to provide age and content ratings for the games and apps on its platform. The company said that by year’s end, the age-estimation system will be rolled out to all Roblox users who access the company’s communication tools, like voice and text-based chat. This involves scanning users’ selfies and analyzing facial features to estimate age. This age-estimation tech is combined with other systems, including ID age verification and verified…