Fighting shape

Markets: Canada’s main stock index fell yesterday as optimism around a potential U.S.-Iran peace deal wasn’t enough to offset concerns over spiking inflation and falling gold prices.

Canada’s premier AI company is taking a run at the pharmaceutical industry. 

What happened: Cohere is buying Montreal-based life science startup Reliant AI, which specializes in building AI tools for drugmakers. The deal is Cohere’s second acquisition of the year, after merging with German AI company Aleph Alpha last month. 

Why it matters: Cohere has put together a winning playbook for building industry-specific AI tools. The company is betting that it can apply the same model that’s worked for it in finance, healthcare, and government to a lucrative life science sector. 

Yes, but: Cohere’s bread and butter is customization, but its competition is getting stiffer. After initially focusing almost entirely on general-purpose models, frontier AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have started to hone in on the enterprise market with sector-specific tools for finance, law, and software engineering.—LA

Inflation ticked up to 2.8% last month. Thanks to soaring gas prices, Canada’s annual inflation rate jumped 0.4% from March — the second straight month it’s ticked up. Overall energy prices jumped over 19%, while gas prices specifically were up 28.6% compared to the same month last year. Excluding gas, the inflation rate has actually fallen from 3% in January to 2% last month. (CBC News)

Nissan is looking to export Chinese-made EVs to Canada. The Japanese automaker is reportedly looking into shipping low-cost electric cars into Canada through a joint venture with its Chinese partner, Dongfeng Motor Group. In January, Ottawa agreed to allow up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs into the country annually at a 6.1% tariff rate (down from 100%). Since then, a number of automakers — including one of the world’s top EV makers, BYD — have expressed interest or announced plans to expand into the Canadian market. (Bloomberg News)

Google is ditching its trademark search bar. Alphabet unveiled a product overhaul at its developer conference yesterday, including swapping its patented search bar and link page for an interactive AI similar to a chatbot. The company also debuted what it called custom “information agents,” which can work in the background to collect and compile specific content (such as mentions of a certain company or sports team). Alphabet told The Peak that usage of its AI Mode has doubled every quarter and now has over one billion monthly active users. (TechCrunch)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

New research from Shopify finds 89% of U.S. founders would start their business all over again in 2026, and 39% say running one feels more financially secure than a traditional job. The data  breaks down:

If you're building something now, or thinking about it, this research is worth your time.

Read the research.

🤝 Meet Paul Keable. He’s the Chief Strategy Officer at Ashley Madison, a Canadian dating app that, rather infamously, once billed itself as a service for having affairs. It has recently shifted its marketing focus to what it calls “ethical discretion,”, so we talked to Paul about what motivated that change, what exactly “ethical discretion” is, and why they decided to keep the company’s name.

How is the Ashley Madison of today different from the Ashley Madison of 10 years ago, which leaned heavily into marketing itself as a website to have affairs?

We are now in the business of discreet dating because what we've noticed over the past year is that 57% of all our new sign-ups were actually single people. They weren't coming to us for our original reason. But what has been at our core is discretion. That's what enabled us to be successful for all these years, and it's the reason why so many other single people were coming to us because they were tired of their traditional dating app experience, which asked them to put all their pictures and content online for anyone who has access to that platform to see regardless of their interests, and which created a really uninspiring experience for a lot of people, particularly women, so we've made a decision to shift.


So what exactly is “ethical discretion”?

The idea that one who comes to a dating app should have a little bit more control over who has access to their content, their images, their identity, and the conversations they have. Imagine this: a woman puts up her profile on a traditional dating app, she puts up her pictures, she's flirty, she's got a great dress on, she looks fantastic. She spends time and energy putting that profile together, and then Bob in accounting sees her profile and he's not the intended target — not that he intends to be cruel or malicious, but he makes a comment to her in the office and that feels awkward to her. He's not the person she’s looking to attract.

There’s now more general acceptance about, let's say, non-traditional relationships. Do you see that as a positive factor because it creates more potential customers?

There was a memoir put out a couple of years ago by Molly Rhoden Winter. She was a married woman, strong career, journalism, and she wanted to open up her marriage, and she actually chose Ashley Madison as one of her first forays. Discretion was her core goal because she wasn't sure how far she was going to take this — it was an unknown entity to her. And so we gave her a platform that allowed her to explore that. But I think it's beyond just people looking for [ethical non-monogamy] or kink. Certainly that's a function of it, but I think the larger scale trend that we're seeing is ‘I can be incredibly proud of what I do, but I don't need the whole world to be involved in it.’

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full Q&A here.

Canada’s army is getting a makeover.

Driving the news: A leaked chart from the Canadian Forces detailed plans to create a Manoeuvre Division, one of three new divisions the Army has in the works. Per the document, it will include battalions and brigades specialized in combat and long-range firepower.

Catch-up: The Army announced the reorganization last year, emphasizing the need for a modern structure based on operational needs rather than geography like the current one. The other two new divisions will focus on home defence and infrastructure support.

Why it matters: Ottawa has dramatically boosted military spending, domestic defence manufacturing is getting a lift, and even enlistment has picked up. The next step in the defence push is to get the Army into fighting shape in case combat breaks out (either at home or abroad).

Our take: A reality where Canada’s army actually uses any of these capabilities is not one we’d like to see, as it would likely mean World War III or (gulp) a U.S. invasion. That said, we’ll abide by the mantra “better safe than sorry” when it comes to these matters.—QH

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🧳 17. Airline passengers flying out of Canada who have been detained for drug smuggling in the past year after being caught in the crosshairs of a baggage tag swap scheme. The drug trafficking scheme involves corrupt airport workers unsticking the luggage tag from an unsuspecting passenger’s bag and reattaching it to a suitcase filled with drugs. Six workers at Toronto’s Pearson Airport have been arrested in connection to the operation.

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