Evaluating our technology forecasts for 2024 as we approach the fourth quarter.

It's now September and that means the year is almost over. The kids are back in school, the long weekends at the holiday homes are long gone and the fourth quarter is just around the corner. It seems like the best time to reflect on what has happened so far in 2024 before we welcome 2025.

Fortunately, the BetaKit podcast has released two episodes of 2024 predictions and big technology questions, providing an easy perspective to look at the year and, most importantly, evaluate my colleagues' assessments.

AI dominated both conversations. As podcast co-host Rob Kenedi correctly predicted, companies are investing a lot of time and resources to find use cases for a technology that hallucinates. Big Tech has invested more than $150 billion in capital expenditures in the last 12 months, and AI companies continue to secure large rounds in an otherwise cool market. The most recent examples are Radical Ventures' $800 million fund, Cohere's $500 million round, and OpenAI's ongoing $6.5 billion fundraise.

But what about return on investment? One of BetaKit editor-in-chief Douglas Soltys' big questions for 2024 was whether AI will be “de facto or banned.” That Apple and Google are both relying on AI to launch their flagship smartphones suggests the former, but Sequoia's quest for revenue growth has become a $600 billion question. Nvidia can't remain the only company making money from AI.

The podcast also addressed the question of whether IPOs in the tech sector will return in 2024. This year, almost as many publicly traded companies have gone private as during the boom times of 2021. Investors have told me that founders don't like dealing with the stresses and scrutiny of an IPO, but a recent report from The Globe and Mail suggests structural problems in bringing Canadian companies public.

After nearly nine months, it all seems to reflect what BDC called “uncertain market conditions” in our article below. What is your year-end forecast? My inbox is open.

Bianca Bharti

Newsletter Editor

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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

BDC appoints Geneviève Bouthillier as Head of BDC Capital

This announcement comes less than three months after BetaKit announced the resignation of Jérôme Nycz as EVP and head of BDC Capital after more than a decade at the helm. Nycz left the company in July. Following his sudden and unexpected retirement, BDC CFO Christian Settano took over Nycz's role. Bouthillier will take the reins going forward.

Bouthillier takes over the reins of BDC Capital at a particularly difficult time for Canada's VC market and, by extension, the country's tech startups. BDC's latest annual report reflects this: The state-owned company cut the value of its VC portfolio by $220 million and noted that its results for fiscal year 2024 were “below plan,” in part due to “uncertain market conditions.”

Scientists and nonprofits clash over data consent as AI companies push for access to copyrighted works

While major artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI, Cohere and Anthropic are looking for more copyrighted works to train their models on, academics, nonprofits and early-stage AI startups in particular are having a hard time finding material they are allowed to use, experts told BetaKit.

Restrictions are rapidly being added or enforced on a significant portion of the data that companies use to train their models. OpenAI, Microsoft, Stability AI, Anthropic, Udio and Suno are facing copyright lawsuits from newspapers, authors and some of the world's largest record labels. And a growing number of web publishers are trying to prevent AI web crawlers from scraping their content.

“For organizations and AI developers that respect the Robots.txt settings, this means that the quality of the models they create will be worse,” said Shayne Longpre, head of the Data Provenance Initiative.

Paper tutors' union threatens legal action after mass layoffs

Earlier this year, COPE Local 131 in Ontario and SEPB-Québec Local 574 were approved to represent Paper tutors in collective bargaining after a secret ballot. Both unions were still preparing for initial negotiations when Paper laid off all tutors, SEPB-Québec told BetaKit in an email.

“SEPB-Québec will take all legal action it deems necessary to ensure that workers are treated fairly,” the union said in a statement.

OMERS Ventures will be placed under Michael Block’s new private capital group

After Damien Steel, Managing Partner and Global Head of Ventures at OMERS Ventures, moved to a portfolio company, industry observers told BetaKit that the Canadian pension fund would soon put its venture capital arm under the leadership of Michael Block. Almost a year ago to the day, that prediction came true.

On September 10, OMERS announced the promotion of Block, previously Senior Managing Director at OMERS Private Equity, to head the newly created Private Capital group. In this new role, Block will oversee the firm's ventures, growth, green tech, life sciences, private equity in Europe and Asia Pacific, and global fund strategy.

Report: Employment in Saskatchewan's technology sector doubled in four years

Employment in the province's technology sector grew nearly 109 per cent to 5,489 workers from 2019 to 2023, according to data presented Tuesday at a press conference by the government's innovation agency in Saskatoon. Between 2016 and 2023, the technology sector accounted for 10 per cent of all new jobs created in the province, more than mining and manufacturing, even though those sectors are larger.

Saskatchewan's technology sector has created an average of 715 new jobs annually since 2016, putting the province on track to exceed its goal of 7,893 new jobs by 2030.

AI learns quickly, do we also learn quickly?

At St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, healthcare professionals will soon use AI-powered tools to identify patients at highest risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit.

In radiation oncology, researchers are using AI to accelerate treatment planning, hoping to deliver faster, more precise care.

You might think that training artificial intelligence models to solve big medical challenges would be the hardest part of these workplace initiatives. But it turns out that programming humans is even harder.

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Financing, acquisitions and layoffs

SFO – Land Base – $12.5 million
VAN – DIGITAL invests 53 million CAD in 11 projects
VAN – Teal acquired by Mercury
VAN – Catalera BioSolutions – $8.8 million CAD
VAN – Spare Part – $42 million
TOR – Ecomtent – ​​CAD 1.15 million
TOR/PHL – Radiant Biotherapeutics – $35 million
MTL – Luge Capital – 96 million CAD
OTT – Kahi – $2.3 million CAD
HFX – Iris Booth acquired by Rundle Partners

The BetaKit Podcast

Pablo Srugo wanted to become “insanely rich.” That was the ruin of his startup.

“It was mine. It was done. I was going to be the next Steve Jobs, I was going to be rich – everything was going on. And now they've taken it away from me.”

As a young co-founder of Ottawa-based Gymtrack, Pablo Srugo had one goal: to “get insanely rich.” Today, he's a partner at Mistral VC and joins the podcast to share what went wrong and warn founders against becoming their own worst hypebeasts.

Cover image courtesy of Cohere.