Plus: Cohere exec pledges AI firm will stay Canadian.
Former Shopify engineer Simon Hørup Eskildsen really hopes he isn’t leading Canada’s fastest-growing tech company.
The Turbopuffer co-founder and CEO said at the Build Canada reception in downtown Ottawa on Thursday that it would be good for the country if his company weren’t in pole position. “But unfortunately, I think we are.”
He’s likely right. Founded in Oct. 2023, Eskildsen claims the Ottawa company is profitable with “many 10s and 10s of millions” in revenue, and customers like Anthropic, Cursor, and Legora.
Despite an admitted love for Canada, Eskildsen came armed with a list of grievances (pictured above) about building in the country and its capital city. “Canada’s biggest problem,” in his view, wasn’t on the list: Turbopuffer is “by far the biggest company by revenue that’s ever come out of Shopify.”
While Valley companies beget more Valley companies, Eskildsen said it seems like historically large Canadian companies like Nortel, BlackBerry, and Shopify are all “a fluke.”
“Canadian startups do not compound, and the reason that they do not compound is because it’s high status in Canada to retire to the cottage,” he said. “That is the Canadian dream.”
Eskildsen is unlikely to receive any cottage invites this summer, but the Danish immigrant sounded too focused on Turbopuffer to accept them, anyway.
“If there’s one thing I care more about than Canada…it’s winning,” he said.
Alex Riehl
Staff Writer, Ottawa
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Cohere exec pledges AI firm will stay Canadian-headquartered amid merger reports
“I want to be unambiguously clear: Canada is our home and we will always remain headquartered here,” Cohere chief AI officer Joelle Pineau wrote in a post on X this week.
This vow comes amid reported discussions of a possible merger or acquisition between Cohere and fellow enterprise AI firm, Germany’s Aleph Alpha.
Wealthsimple partners with Elon Musk’s X for direct stock trading via social media
Stock tickers on X posts will now link to Wealthsimple’s trading platform for Canadian users, making it easier for users to trade stocks directly from their social media feeds.
The Toronto-based FinTech platform has also put in an effort to bring Canadian talent home through its North Star program, which has attracted over 6,000 job applicants since Thanksgiving.
Xanadu stock trades halted five times on TSX in two days, following price spike
Debuting on the exchange just last month, the quantum company saw its share price spike more than 300 percent in a single week. The rush was likely kickstarted by Nvidia announcing it had released a family of open-source quantum AI models.
Canada opens applications to build a public AI supercomputer
The approximately $890-million AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program looks to build a large-scale, Canadian-owned AI supercomputer to be used by Canadian researchers and businesses.
Leadership changes
- Wattpad president Aron Levitz has departed “to build a new thing,” leaving Webtoon CFO David Lee to take over the Toronto-based online storytelling and social media platform.
- Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes is back as interim CEO, replacing outgoing CEO Irina Novoselsky, just months after the company received backlash for a contract with ICE.
- Former Alberta Innovates exec Nicole Shokoples has joined Toast as COO, shortly after the Calgary-based recruitment platform launched a not-for-profit division.
Industry Minister Mélanie Joly wants to see Nokia invest more in Canada
Joly made the desire known in a fireside chat with Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, on Wednesday morning as part of a business forum at Nokia’s Ottawa facility.
“We’re not yet at the golden age of the Canada-Finland relationship … but we can definitely get there,” Joly said.
Credo paid $92 million USD in cash to acquire Hyperlume, SEC filing reveals
When the deal was announced in October, the financial details were not disclosed. Nasdaq-listed Credo said at the time that it thought Hyperlume’s micro light-emitting diode tech could help the company deliver the AI infrastructure of the future.
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How Finance Teams Actually Use AI on April 21
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🇨🇦 Weekly Canadian Deals, Dollars & More
BC – NorthX invests $2.2M in trio of BC wildfire tech startups
VAN – pH7 closes Series B to bring mineral extraction tech to mining
CGY – Mistral closes $75M round, sets up shop in Alberta
EDM – Fairly Staffing secures investment from Accelerate Fund
TOR – Common Wealth raises $12M for workplace retirement plans
TOR – Community event platform Wygo secures nearly $1.6M pre-seed
TOR – Harmix secures $1M to solve software fragmentation for SMBs
TOR – AppDirect acquires PartnerStack for upwards of $150M USD
TOR – Kepler to lead testing of European Space Agency’s data network
SHB – SBQuantum nabs $4M USD, new CEO for US expansion
The BetaKit Podcast — How StackAdapt quietly built an adtech giant
“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 that happened, and why AI has changed B2B software development.
BetaKit Most Ambitious: Town Hall is the marquee opening event of Toronto Tech Week 2026.
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Feature image courtesy Alex Riehl for BetaKit.
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