FedDev Ontario’s funding will pay for new equipment, some of which will allow companies remote access to the facility. Venturelab also announced the second, eight-company cohort for the program. (The Logic)

Talking point: Canada’s domestic semiconductor capacity has shrunk considerably since its heyday, with foreign competitors buying up firms in the early 2010s and exports of electronic-component makers falling. Southern Ontario has particularly felt the decline of hardware manufacturing and development. Employment in “hard tech”—making and wholesaling computers and their peripheral devices, communications equipment and semiconductors—fell by 21,585 or 29.6 per cent between 2006 and 2016 in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region around Toronto, per a Neptis Foundation report. Markham was particularly affected.