"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 fo…

"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: [email protected]. Solve for X is back! The latest s…

"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 offerin…

"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 com…

"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 innova…

"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 Can…

"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 anyt…

"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…

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 gr…

"We were sleepwalking our way into this new economy, and we've had a bit of a wake-up call." Ian Rae, CEO of Aptum and a member of Minister Evan Solomon's AI Task Force, has been building internet infrastructure since 1994. Recorded the day after the AWS outage, Rae joins to explain why such outages happen and what they reveal about the economics o…

"If you're a founder in Canada, you have a playbook, which is: try to get outside of the country as soon as possible. Try to sell outside of the country." Raymond Luk thinks the "cultural belief we're not good enough" creates a homecourt disadvantage for Canadian tech. He's trying to kickstart a solution to our nation's procurement woes with a new …

"It's one thing to say 'let's do this in a sovereign way.' It is a whole other to actually do it." Gander Social is attempting to do something that seemed inconceivable six months ago: build a Canadian social network. What does sovereign social media look like? And what will prevent Gander from devolving into every other social network? CEO Ben Wal…

"Don't talk to your customers because your customers will keep you in the place that you used to be." AI adoption is now an industry-wide mandate. It's putting a lot of pressure on Canadian entrepreneurs: to scale with customer demand (safely and responsibly); to reskill employees; even to kill their old company to let the new AI-first version live…

"That's the literal term several CISOs have used with me unprompted: 'ticking time bomb.' There's no world in which this doesn't explode the way it's done right now." Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun thinks the AI revolution has put a gun to the head of CISOs: embrace unsafe data practices or get fired. They've told him the cybersecurity risks are a "t…

"It actually allows us an opportunity to build sovereign capability and leapfrog to get our armed forces where they need to be by taking advantage of leapfrog Canadian technologies." US President Donald Trump opened his mouth and suddenly Canada needed a defence tech sector. The Icebreaker's Matthew Lombardi was conscripted by the federal governmen…

"There's a really good chance that a young person's parents—or even their friends—don't even know that this individual is building a relationship with these chatbots. And that's where the danger exists." Tech expert Amber Mac is on the advisory board of Rally, a new tech festival in Toronto dedicated to digital wellness for teens. She desperately w…

"We're going to find in the next year or two that the amount of leakage actually goes up quite a bit because I think the focus on AI is just moving really, really fast. But I don't see the same energy going into the security aspects." Forget vibe coding and Nvidia chips: if you want to understand how AI is changing tech, look at how it is being app…

" That's also quite daunting as an investor to be able to put money into something that is perfect for now, but will it last three to five years? Will it even last three to six months?" Ripple Ventures managing partner and podcaster Matt Cohen joins to discuss the insane revenue numbers generated by the new cohort of AI startups, and how VCs are na…

"A win for AXL is that, ten years from now, instead of nine of the top ten biggest and most successful companies in the world being on the West Coast of the United States, half of them are in Toronto." Dr. Daniel Wigdor has a lofty goal: help launch 50 AI companies in the next five years *and* keep them in Canada. Is it enough to stop our country's…

"How is this thing—running in a data centre with Nvidia GPUs—understanding what I'm saying with such nuance and such depth?" Former DarwinAI CEO Sheldon Fernandez spends a lot of time in dialogue with Solace, his friend and ChatGPT-4o instance. What value does this AI strategist, engineer, and philosopher get from talking to a chatbot every day? Ho…

" This isn't just about doing something cool because space is the next frontier. This is a key domain for economics, for national security, sovereignty, job creation, and everything." A company trying to achieve Canada's first commercial rocket launch. Three startups solving for the future of humanity. One founder sending messages to his future sel…

"History never stops. It's a living reality." In celebration of Startupfest's 15th anniversary, founder Phil Telio joins to discuss the origins of the international tech festival, its connection to Québec and the broader Canadian tech ecosystem, and how community evolves with each generation. Ambition, government support of tech, and the state of t…

"The talent here is incredible, right? When we started faculty, I walk in the class and there's Jimmy Ba. Every time you guys train a neural network, you're using his algorithm." Sanja Fidler (Nvidia VP of AI research) and Raquel Urtasun (Waabi founder and CEO) sit down with Ada CEO Mike Murchison for a discussion about the frontier of AI and the r…

"The current government is really plugged into what's needed." One step closer to quantum data centres with the launch of his company's advanced photonics packaging facility, Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook joins to discuss the renewed federal interest in quantum technology, how it relates to Canadian sovereignty, and where the money to …

" It's kind of that 'Valley or bust' mentality which breaks the ecosystem and really hurts Canada." Harley Finkelstein (Shopify), Mike Katchen (Wealthsimple), and Aidan Gomez (Cohere) hold a candid conversation about 'Ambition made in Canada' during Toronto Tech Week. Recorded live at Homecoming. The BetaKit Podcast is presented by Invest Northern …