Take backsies

Good morning. The Toronto Raptors open their season today at home against the Chicago Bulls. With the return of championship talisman Kawhi Leonard and another leap projected from young star Scottie Barnes, expectations are higher than they’ve been in many years.

Personally, we believe this team has what it takes to go all the way and are ready to get hurt again.

Today’s reading time is 6½ minutes.

Markets: Two big earnings reports from yesterday set the stage for today. SpaceX went up in after-hours trading after beating revenue estimates thanks to its AI biz. Meanwhile, Netflix shares dropped after hours as it reported its slowest revenue growth in nearly three years.

The U.S. prez has grounded a potential Canadian planemaker ban before it could take off. 

Driving the news: In a campaign rally speech for Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall ahead of upcoming midterm elections, Donald Trump walked back a threat he made on Truth Social last month to ban the sale of Bombardier jets to the U.S. While he didn’t mention Bombardier by name, it was clear he was referring to the company, which houses its U.S. HQ in Kansas.

Why it matters: Trump’s reversal here is indicative of how the White House’s trade war with Canada has become a decisive factor in the midterms — particularly for states with strong business and cultural ties to Canada, such as Maine, New Hampshire, and Michigan.

By the numbers: As is, the tariffs have (unsurprisingly) eaten into economic growth. A new forecast from the parliamentary budget officer trimmed projected GDP growth for this year and next even further from its last estimates to 0.9% and 1.5% growth, respectively.—QH

TikTok reportedly ignored internal concerns over child safety.  According to previously unreported court documents obtained by NPR, employees of the social media giant were frustrated by the company’s lack of response to their warnings about minors appearing in sexual content on the app and users under 18 finding loopholes to avoid age restrictions. TikTok is currently engaged in several ongoing lawsuits pertaining to child safety violations. (NPR)

Grifols begins reopening Canadian donation centres. After a voluntary two-month pause and coordination with Health Canada, the company will recommence commercial blood plasma donation at two of its sites, with plans to gradually reopen more of its 17 locations. However, the licence of a Winnipeg centre linked to a post-donation death remains suspended. (Globe and Mail)

Alleged OpenAI spy has (also alleged) links to Saudi royals. U.S. federal prosecutors claim that Abdulrahman Alfozan — the former OpenAI worker accused of bugging a restricted conference room — had previously discussed job opportunities with the Saudi royal family. He has been denied bail after being deemed a flight risk. (Wall Street Journal)

📡 What else is on our radar:

Six in 10 Canadians say online advertising annoys them. As consumers become more selective about the advertising they engage with, marketers have an opportunity to rethink how different channels work together to build attention, trust, and action.

Out-of-home advertising tells a different story. New research from Vistar Media found that 50% of Canadians trust out-of-home advertising, while 39% have taken action after seeing an out-of-home ad.

Vistar's latest Canadian consumer report breaks down what's driving this shift and what it means for your next campaign:

View the report.

🤝 Meet Teresa Resch. She’s the president of the Toronto Tempo, Canada’s only WNBA team, and spent a decade as Masai Ujiri’s right hand in the Raptors front office. We sat down with Teresa to talk about the Tempo’s inaugural season, how the Raptors almost had a champagne-free championship celebration in 2019, and what she’s learned from over a decade in Canadian basketball. 

The Tempo sold out pretty much every home game last season. How did you build excitement around a team that’s so new?

I would say there was an incredible fan base for the WNBA and women’s sports before the Tempo existed, and that really served as our core. From there, those people shared their excitement, and we delivered a great product. We were very fortunate to be in a league that’s 30 years young, which is pretty established for a women’s sports league, and we definitely believe we’re enhancing the league as a whole. But really, it’s continuing to ride that wave of momentum the league has had since the pandemic.

You were one of Masai Ujiri’s first hires when he came in to run the Raptors. How did working in that front office help prepare you for running the Tempo? 

With the Raptors, I started as director of basketball operations and player development and ended as vice-president of basketball operations. I was there for 10 seasons, and it was an incredible learning process. With this role, there were definitely things that prepared me really well, but in general, the goals are very different. Being a startup expansion team in its first season, in what’s still a growth league, is very different from being an established team in an established market. So there were a lot of differences. But it’s all perspective — it’s not like going from being a doctor to a pilot. It’s within sports, within team sports, within the same sport of basketball.

How did you celebrate the 2019 Raptor Championship win?

There’s actually a funny story. We had the draft the next week, so the front office actually did a draft workout with players in Toronto and then flew out with a bunch of other people to get to Oakland for Game 6. We came with literally just the clothes on our backs and what we were going to wear to the game, because we knew we were coming back no matter what: either champions or for Game 7. The ops team was there just ahead of us and realized they needed to buy stuff for the celebration. So they took the team bus to the liquor store, and it was closed. They knocked on the door and begged them and said, “We need bottles of champagne.” It was like buy one, get one $5 or something like that, and they said, “We need 250 of them.” Then they brought it to the arena and they were ready for the locker room celebration.

The celebration was awesome because there was so much family there, and it felt really intimate because it wasn’t the entire city celebrating with us at that moment. They were having their own party in Toronto, for sure. But it was pretty cool to have the people who were part of the very tight circle, who had been through the highs and the lows, celebrate together at that restaurant. It was a fun night. And then the parade on that Monday was a whole other experience.

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

A group of financial researchers took a crack at novel drug development without having any prior experience. Thanks to AI, the results weren’t a complete embarrassment… far from it.

Driving the news: Influential financial newsletter Citrini Research worked with Anthropic to develop molecules that could help create a new scorpion antivenom. Citrini developed 17 designs that met its criteria, and while none have been tested yet to see if they actually stop scorpion toxin, the experiment showed promise for drastically reducing research times. 

Zoom in: The ultimate goal of this experiment wasn’t to create a new biotech juggernaut, but to test the viability of investing in AI drug discovery-focused life sciences businesses. Citrini’s takeaway: these companies could soon make great strides, and in turn unlock a lot of value.

Why it matters: Investment in life sciences is way down from its pandemic peak with so much cash tied up in the AI boom. If more of these companies make themselves part of the boom, that trend could reverse. And hey, maybe some nifty new drugs will come of it.—QH

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🚙 20,000. Self-driving robotaxis that Waymo aims to have in operation globally by the end of next year, quintuple the current size of its fleet. The company recently borrowed US$5 billion and will use some of that cash to achieve this ambitious goal. Eventually, some of these cars will be in Toronto.

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