The U.S. Department of Defence’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) awarded contracts worth up to US$200 million each to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI. The firms will “develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas,” the CDAO said. (The Logic)
General Catalyst led the all-equity round for the Toronto-based startup, with participation from new investors Creative Artists Agency (CAA), CoreWeave and Comcast Ventures as well as past backers Khosla Ventures and YCombinator. (The Logic)
Glasswing Ventures and Core Innovation Capital led the round in the Toronto-based company, with additional investment from Montreal-based Panache, Redbud and MGV. Canadian firms Ripple Ventures and Front Row Ventures provided follow-on support. (The Logic)
Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Mélanie Joly on July 2 asking for a meeting about the federal government’s order requiring the social media platform to shut down its Canadian operations. While the app would remain available in the country, Chew said TikTok would have to fire more than 350 Canadian employees under the plan. (The Canadian Press)
Spot gold prices hit their highest levels since mid-June, nearing $4,600 on Friday, before easing slightly Monday. The S&P/TSX Composite Index hit a record high Monday, with mining stock Aya Gold and Silver gaining as much as 3.7 per cent in mid-day trading. (The Logic)
Frontier, a coalition between Shopify, Google, JPMorgan Chase and others, reportedly plans to buy US$1.7-million in carbon credits from three companies. pHathom Technologies, which gathers and stores carbon dioxide from coastal biomass facilities, is among the firms supplying the credits. (Reuters, The Logic)
“The Chinese military—no different [than] the American military—will not seek each other’s technology out to be built on top of,” since each country could cut off the other’s access to the hardware, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said. China already hosts a lot of computing capacity, he added. (CNN)
In a letter posted to social media, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose 35 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods that enter the U.S. starting Aug 1. A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the tariff plan, said this latest threat wouldn’t apply to energy, potash, or goods covered under the current North American trade pact. (The Logic)
The Chamber’s Business Data Lab found less than one per cent of the 9,103 businesses surveyed in April and May had established operations in the U.S. Only five per cent of companies that export goods and eight per cent of service exporters had moved south. (The Logic)
The crypto giant promoted USD1, a digital asset pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar launched by the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial—and its developers also wrote the code behind it, Bloomberg reported, citing three unnamed sources. Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s Canadian founder, later applied for a presidential pardon after pleading guilty in 2023 to failing to put policies in place to prevent money laundering at the crypto firm. (Bloomberg)