News about the media and information technologies in Canada, in Toronto and Montréal. 

SlimCut Media tops ComScore rankings, placing 2nd in the Top 100 Video Properties overall in Canada. As Canada’s leading outstream native video provider, we are proud to support Canadian publishers. With over 3.6 million unique viewers counted in February for all of Canada, our reach continues to grow as we further onboard more of our nation’s premium publishers to the SlimCut network. More on Slimcutmedia.com (March 30)

Without immigrants, Silicon Valley would look very different. There would be no Amazon, no eBay. No Reddit, no Intel. Google, Tesla, and Yahoo? Gone. And you can say goodbye to your iPhone. These are just a few of the biggest names, but half of all billion-dollar U.S. startups were founded by immigrants. Silicon Valley would simply not exist, and the United States’ position as a global tech leader might never have come to fruition. More on Time (March 30, 2017)

Le gouvernement fédéral et celui de l'Ontario investissent ensemble 100 millions de dollars dans un tout nouvel institut indépendant de recherche sur l'intelligence artificielle, à Toronto. L'Institut Vecteur, inauguré jeudi, se spécialisera dans l'«apprentissage automatique et profond», un secteur qui utilise les logiciels et les algorithmes afin de simuler les circuits neuronaux du cerveau humain. A lire sur La Presse (30 mars 2017)

Selon une nouvelle étude Netendances du Cefrio, une majorité (57%) d'adultes québécois ont effectué des achats en ligne en 2016. Le commerce en ligne progresse de 6%. Les 18-44 ans et ceux au revenu supérieur à 60 000$ sont les plus nombreux à acheter en ligne. La presse et l'édition enregistrent un score honnête avec 21% des achats, devant le secteur des voyages et des transports. A lire sur le site de Cefrio (mars 2017)

Face à la perte de revenus des médias québécois engendrée notamment par le placement publicitaire sur Facebook et Google, le nouveau propriétaire du journal Voir et du magazine L'actualité croit qu’une coalition des joueurs d’ici est nécessaire pour être plus concurrentiels et éviter un dangereux monopole des GAFA. Alexandre Taillefer est associé principal de XPND Capital et propriétaire, par Mishmash Média des titres Voir et l'Actualité. il interviendra durant notre voyage d'étude à Montréal, le 19 mai. A lire sur Infopresse (27 mars 2017)

Les vidéos en ligne représentent la source de divertissement la plus répandue chez les francophones, selon le plus récent rapport de l'Observateur des technologies médias (OTM), qui analyse les activités sur Internet des Canadiens francophones. A lire sur Infopresse (24 mars 2017)

“Toronto was not considered an innovation center, but MaRs has put us on the map,” said Cory Mulvihill, in charge of policy and public affairs at MaRS. “We have investors coming here because they know medical assets are coming out of here.” Set up some 15 years ago, the initiative, a joint venture of the governments of Ontario and Canada, the City of Toronto and the University of Toronto, is today home to 100 startups and a total of some 200 entities including academic research bodies, VC funds and more established players who work in the fields of health, energy and environment, finance, commerce and education. The complex doubled its capacity a year ago and is now a 1.5 million sq. ft. complex, said Mulvihill. More on Times of Israel Start-Ups Israel (March 20, 2017)

Stitch Labs, the leading inventory management platform, announced their partnership with Lightspeed, the most robust and intuitive POS system and eCommerce solution for retailers. This integration will further simplify the operational challenges retailers face when growing an omnichannel business. More on wandtv.com (March 14, 2017

C’est à 17 ans que l’entrepreneur montréalais a fondé Luxury Retreats, une firme de location de villas de luxe sur l’internet, pour en faire un leader mondial dans son domaine avec un catalogue de plus de 4000 propriétés dans 90 marchés et un service spécialisé de conciergerie qui répond à toutes les demandes de ses usagers. Luxury Retreats réalise plus de 150 millions US de revenus par an. "Je ne peux pas commenter les détails financiers de la transaction. Mais Airbnb a payé en argent comptant et actions pour faire notre acquisition. Je me suis fait payer en actions et argent. Le fonds iNovia, qui était actionnaire minoritaire, s’est fait payer tout en argent », précise toutefois Joe Poulin. A lire sur La Presse (14 mars 2017)

Montreal based virtual reality production company UNLTD, presented the trailer for its first interactive, virtual reality sci-fi show, “Trinity.” Speaking at SXSW in Austin, company CEO and producer John Hamilton says, the series will consist of five fifteen-minute episodes. Trinity will be platform-agnostic to allow compatibility with all virtual reality headsets for viewing. More on Haptical (March 14, 2017)

Canada last overhauled its copyright law in 2012, bringing to a conclusion more than a decade of failed bills and lobbying pressure. The public debate over the Copyright Modernization Act was often framed by disputed claims that Canada was weak on piracy, with critics arguing that updated laws were needed to crack down on copyright infringement. As the government prepares to conduct a statutorily-mandated review of the law later this year, the landscape has shifted dramatically with court cases and industry data confirming that Canada is now home to some of the toughest anti-piracy rules in the world. More in The Globe and Mail (March 6, 2017)

À l’heure où Netflix multiplie les ententes avec les exploitants de téléphonie cellulaire et de câblodistribution pour étendre son marché à l'international, comment le marché québécois peut-il se positionner pour tirer son épingle du jeu? Olivier Trudeau et Christiane Asselin de Radio-Canada commentent. A lire sur Infopresse (6 mars 2017)

Thanks in part to a large-scale government commitment to supporting high-growth job-creating businesses, many homegrown start-ups are attracting financing from both Canadian venture capital firms and U.S. firms, which often invest alongside them. Last year Canada saw four venture capital deals above 100 million Canadian dollars (USD $76.3 million as of Feb. 23), compared to 2015, when there were none, according to the Canadian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association. "Tech is seen as an important sector for the country," says Zuckerman. It's a very visible one, too. "You routinely see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau show up in the same room where all the founders show up," said Ben Baldwin, founder of ScaleDriver, a Toronto management consultancy that advises executives on building innovation, and founder of The Founder City Project, a network of start-up and scale-up founders. More on CNBC (March 2, 2017)

One of the greatest start-up accelerators in Canada lies in the Waterloo Region. Communitech is nestled in a reclaimed factory building and is home to over 350 emerging companies. Our guest, Steve McCartney is the VP of Start-up Services at this powerful hub. Steve came to the AQ studio to tell us a bit about the business side of running an incubator. Steve walks us through the process of joining Communitech as a start-up, whether coming with an idea, a work in process, or a fully operational product. He explains the funding process, from early stage to venture capital and discusses big mistakes he has witnessed in young emerging companies. Steve remarks on the common denominator found in successful start-ups and how growing companies can find and keep talent. More on Youtube (Feb 24, 2017)

Le Fonds des médias du Canada vient de dévoiler son rapport sur les tendances médias de 2017. Sous quatre grands axes, l’étude se penche cette année sur les possibilités de créer de la valeur dans une industrie numérique en pleine mutation. A lire sur Infopresse (14 février 2017)

Comment tirer profit du big data, ces mégadonnées que nous générons à la tonne avec nos gadgets électroniques? Montréal est à l’avant-garde de la recherche dans ce domaine, qui permet des avancées spectaculaires dans plusieurs sphères du quotidien.  A lire sur Nouveau Projet

Microsoft is one of several major IT players racing to build the AI (Artificial Intelligence) startup community. In December 2016, the company announced a major step forward in its quest to “democratize” AI with the establishment of a new Microsoft Ventures fund specifically dedicated to funding investment in AI companies. Microsoft Ventures’ first investment was significant for Canada: Element AI is an artificial intelligence incubator and platform located in the heart one of Canada’s technology development hubs in Montreal. According to the investment announcement, Element AI funding was designed to support Element AI’s role in helping large corporations, world-class entrepreneurs and researchers solve hard problems with AI. More on insightaas.com (Jan 30, 2017)

Nish Samantray isn’t your typical banker. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and is a self-taught coder who in just two years founded and built a software startup and sold it back to his alma mater. After the acquisition, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. But after a chance meeting with a Bank of Nova Scotia executive, who pitched him on the storied institution’s digital transformation, his interest was piqued. Now he’s one of more than 200 employees who have already set up shop at the bank’s new 70,000-square-foot “digital factory” in downtown Toronto, which was officially unveiled late last month. More on Financial Post (February 6, 2017)

Thomson Reuters has officially opened Thomson Reuters Labs – Singapore. The innovation facility aims to collaborate with customers, tech startups, universities and the Singapore government to roll out products and solutions for professional markets in the Asia Pacific. The lab will also support Thomson Reuters’s financial & risk, tax & accounting and legal businesses across Asia Pacific. The facility, located in Singapore’s central business district, is the first Thomson Reuters Labs to open in Asia. Thomson Reuters’s other innovation labs are located in Boston, Cape Town, London, Waterloo (Canada) and Zürich. More on Fintech Innovation (February 22, 2017)

If we’re going to build an innovation economy, we need to rethink how we tackle immigration, entrepreneurship and education. We must develop and attract more talent faster. We also need to ensure that the highest-potential Canadian startups are equipped with the tools to grow with focused investment in incubators, accelerators and organizations committed to fostering innovative ideas – from Communitech to MaRS and DMZ to Notman House and CDL. And, of course, we need to nurture the next generation of Canadian technology builders. It’s time to talk seriously about integrating computer science and computational thinking into formal curriculum (98 per cent of Google engineers in Canada had some exposure to computer science before university). These issues don’t change the fact that the talent and the energy coming out of our startup community rivals the best the Valley has to offer. In 2008, I jumped at the opportunity to return to Canada and to grow Google’s presence in Waterloo. Google recognized something special was happening up here – the entrepreneurialism, the quality of higher education and the loyalty of the talented engineers who just want to invent great things. More in The Globe and Mail (October 28, 2016)

As BlackBerry fades to a shadow of its former self, a new generation of entrepreneurs is rising out of the Waterloo region. At its centre is an indispensable institution, talented inventors and a dedicated group of community leaders co-operating to support the hub’s ambition to become a world-class technology centre. More on The Globe and Mail (July 17, 2015)

Microsoft has acquired Canadian startup Maluuba, a company founded by University of Waterloo grads Kaheer Suleman and Sam Pasupalak that also participated in TechCrunch’s 2012 San Francisco Startup Battlefield competition. Maluuba focuses on natural language processing, in service of pursuing general artificial intelligence, or building computers that can think like people. The Montreal-based company focuses on using deep learning and reinforcement learning to increase the proficiency and effectiveness of computer-based systems that can answer questions and make decisions, and Microsoft notes in a blog post that its work will help with Microsoft’s broad goal of making AI more accessible and useful to the general public. More on Techcrunch (Jan 13, 2017)

Après son magazine interactif lancé en novembre dernier dans La Presse+, Urbania s’associe à Radio-Canada pour présenter du contenu original multiplateforme. Philippe Lamarre, président et fondateur d’Urbania Média, en explique les contours. A lire sur Infopresse (15 Février 2017)

When tech firm Lightspeed POS Inc. quickly outgrew its stylishly renovated warehouse space in Montreal’s trendy Mile-Ex neighbourhood, founder and chief executive officer Dax Dasilva, 39, got to thinking not only about where in his beloved adopted city to relocate but also about what to do with the digs being left behind. The mission of the centre is to create positive change in unity through culture. And culture takes many forms. The Globe and Mail