State Of The Race

Driving The News

Self-driving truck company Gatik raised $107 million to scale up their business. 

What’s Gatik? Based out of Toronto and Palo Alto, Gatik develops self-driving trucks designed to travel fixed routes to transport goods to and from distribution centres and retail locations.

Gatik operates trucks for Loblaws in Toronto and for Walmart in Arkansas and Louisiana.

What’s next: Gatik plans to use the Series B funding to grow their team and scale up production. Gatik is following in the lead of Alphabet’s Waymo by expanding into Texas.

Why Texas? Self-driving companies like Waymo and Aurora expanded to Texas because 1)  the Lone Star state passed legislation to allow vehicles to operate without a driver behind the wheel, 2) it’s a prime shipping hub, and 3) its weather conditions are ideal for testing self-driving vehicles. 

American athleisure brand Athleta is coming to Canada for the first time.

Yoga pants > slacks: While other clothing retailers experienced a lag in sales during the pandemic, people who wanted more comfortable WFH clothing options headed to Gap’s Athleta and Vancouver-based Lululemon.  

Athleta launched its Canadian website yesterday, with plans to open a retail store in Vancouver next month and a Toronto store in November. 

The pandemic has fast-tracked the athleisure trend’s growth: the market was worth US-$300 billion in 2018 and is projected to hit US-$518 billion by 2025.

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Uber wants to introduce a new worker model in Canada.

Catch up: Labour groups have been urging Uber and similar app-based companies to designate gig workers as employees. Earlier this month, the Ontario Superior Court certified a lawsuit bringing Uber drivers one step closer to being classified as employees. 

But Uber has something else in mind:  Uber wants to work with other app-based companies—like DoorDash and Lyft—to build a fund that will then be used to distribute money and benefits to workers based on their hours. The benefits include health, dental, vision care and RRSP contributions.

What’s next: Uber is still pitching the work model to provinces, but could face significant pushback from courts and labour groups.

South Korea became the first country to target Google and Apple’s app store fees under new legislation.

App store 101: Whenever you buy an app or make an in-app purchase through Google or Apple’s app stores, the tech giants take up to a 30% cut of the sale. Some of these apps can be bought through other payment platforms that wouldn’t take the same cut, but developers aren’t allowed to advertise those methods. 

But those changes aren’t coming to other countries. South Korea's new bill makes it illegal for Google and Apple to force developers to charge for their apps through their respective app stores.

Bottom line: South Korea's bill could set precedent for U.S. and European regulators that want to break up Google and Apple’s app store dominance. If their efforts are successful, both tech giants would stand to lose a significant chunk of revenue.

Facebook is expanding a test to limit how much political content is in your news feed, which will make room for more engagement announcements from your high school friends. 

Refresher: In February, Facebook launched a pilot project in several countries, including Canada, to make its news feed less political. 

What’s happening: Facebook said the pilot project produced promising results and is now expanding it to Spain, Costa Rica, Ireland, and Sweden.

Big picture: The tech giant thinks reducing the amount of political content, which Facebook claims accounts for 6% of its overall content, will shield it from greater criticism and scrutiny from politicians and regulators.