Video-calling in from Lyon, France to the CIX tech summit in Toronto, Gomez said on Tuesday that while it may be easy to get a startup off the ground in Canada, raising growth-stage capital to scale a “globally relevant” firm is especially difficult in this country. (The Logic)

Talking point: Cohere—whose AI technology is used by businesses to create chatbots, summarize documents and improve search results—is reportedly in the midst of raising growth capital of its own. Reuters reported last week that the company is seeking US$500 million at a US$5 billion valuation. Gomez said that while starting and growing a company may be easier in Silicon Valley, he felt compelled to build Cohere in Toronto, where he had interned at Google Brain under AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. “We invented AI,” he said. “This is where all the preliminary work was done.” Gomez said too few Canadians express that kind of pride, fuelling what he described as a “little brother complex” in relation to the U.S.