We’ll take it from here

Good morning. In what’s been hailed as a robotics breakthrough, Sony’s AI-powered table tennis-playing robot named Ace has defeated multiple elite human players during testing. While bots have long been able to beat us humans at cognitive games like chess, it would seem they’re now coming for athletics more broadly.

For the time being, we’re still taking Team Human over Team Robot. We’re pretty sure Marty Mauser would have whupped Ace, anyway.

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes.

MARKETS

▲	TSX	33,955.11	+0.43%
▲	S&P 500	7,137.9	+1.05%
▲	DOW JONES	49,490.03	+0.69%
▲	NASDAQ	24,657.57	+1.64%
▲	GOLD	4,758.3	+0.82%
▲	OIL	92.87	+3.57%
▼	CAD/USD	0.73	-0.03%
▲	BTC/USD	78,598.77	+4.01%

Markets: Canada’s main stock index rebounded yesterday, while shares in Rogers were up 13.5% after the telco met quarterly earnings expectations and announced cuts to its capital spending.

TECH

Meta workers are training their AI replacements

Source: Meta AI.

Thanks for all the hard work everyone, but we’re gonna let the AI agents take it from here.

Driving the news: Meta will begin tracking its U.S. employees’ mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and take random screengrabs of their computers as part of an initiative to build out AI agents that can perform workers’ jobs autonomously, per Reuters.

Speaking about the new employee tracking tool, Meta’s chief technology officer wrote in a memo, “The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve."
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already built an AI agent to be his co-CEO and is reportedly working on a 3D animated avatar of himself for employees to interact with (not creepy at all).

Catch-up: Human data is essential to building top AI models, so much so that Meta paid US$14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, a startup that specializes in turning human-generated data into training material for AI models. Scale AI’s founder, Alexandr Wang, is now leading Meta’s AI superintelligence team.

Why it matters: Meta might be early to the AI agent party, but other companies won’t be far behind. The real question is, once these white-collar workers have trained the AI models on how to do most of their job, what’s stopping them from being laid off?

If workers truly become de facto babysitters for an army of AI agents (as Meta envisions), it seems likely companies would significantly cut their workforces.

Yes, but: There’s still a lot of risk in outsourcing too much responsibility to AI tools. To name a few recent blunders: Air Canada’s autonomous AI bot offered a customer a refund policy that didn’t exist, Meta’s in-house agent went rogue and compromised large sets of sensitive customer data, and just this week, the Wall Street firm Sullivan & Cromwell admitted that its filing in a high-profile court case was riddled with errors thanks to AI hallucinations.—LA

BIG PICTURE

Source: MarkJCarney / X.

U.S. demands “entry fee” to begin CUSMA talks. According to people familiar with the negotiations, the Trump administration is seeking an “entry fee” from Ottawa to begin trade discussions on a revised Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Speaking to reporters yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the U.S. does not get to set the terms of free trade talks. Ottawa has already made several key concessions in trade talks with the U.S., including lifting counter-tariffs and killing the digital services tax. (CBC News)

Anthropic’s Mythos model was leaked. A group of unauthorized users have reportedly gained access to Anthropic’s newest model, which the startup only released to a select group of cybersecurity groups and large companies, citing fears it could hack even the world’s most sophisticated computer systems. Anthropic, which is investigating the source of the leak, has previously said the new model won’t be released until safeguards are in place to prevent it being used for cyberattacks. (Bloomberg News)

Alberta and Ottawa hone in on Pacific oil pipeline routes. The province is considering three different routes to build an oil pipeline through B.C. that would transport over one million barrels of oil per day to the Pacific port. The pipeline, which has been opposed by the B.C. government, is part of a push to boost energy exports to China, South Korea, and other Asian markets. Ottawa and the Alberta government are also reportedly closing in on an agreement on an industrial carbon price. (Bloomberg News)

📡 What else is on our radar:

Iran seized two container ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the first time it has done so since the war began.
An Air Canada plane was involved in a near-miss incident at JFK airport on Monday.
The TSX’s parent company is buying the Canadian and Australian units of the stock exchange Cboe for $409 million.

IN THE LAB

Experimental drug offers hope against pancreatic cancer

Source: Scientific Animations Inc. / Wikimedia Commons.

Pharma company Revolution Medicines has released new data about its pancreatic cancer treatment, daraxonrasib — part of a new class of drugs that target a specific type of protein mutation in cancers. According to the company, patients who took its pill lived a median of 13.2 months, compared to 6.7 months for patients who only received chemotherapy.

Why it matters: A drug that nearly doubles the life expectancy of a cancer patient sounds like a good start for future treatments that could potentially be even more effective in improving survival rates for one of the deadliest types of cancer.

BUSINESS

Lobby groups battle to define future of Canadian startups

Source: Canadian Startup Capital Association.

There’s a civil war brewing in the land of Canadian startup investments.

What happened: A new lobbying group for startup investors launched yesterday called the Canadian Startup Capital Association (CSCA). Comprised of 18 founding members, it will seek to shape the debate around how federal money should be used to support startups.

Catch-up: In last year’s budget, Ottawa set aside $750 million to bolster startups and scaleups in the “early growth-stage.” This maddeningly vague descriptor has facilitated a schism between Canada’s two top VC lobbying groups: the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) and the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO).

CVCA has focused on the “growth” part, arguing the money should go to startups in Series B and later stages. According to its own research, CVCA has pointed out that domestic funding in these stages is scarce, with U.S. firms typically stepping in.
Meanwhile, NACO is all about the “early” aspect, arguing early-stage startups are struggling the most. It wants Ottawa to set up a $500 million matching fund program for said startups and use the rest to “professionalize” early-stage investors.

CSCA’s take splits the difference between these two competing visions, focusing on both sides of the equation. However, the group feels that the main problem that needs to be addressed isn’t a lack of funding, but a lack of coordination between founders and investors.

Why it matters: How this debate shakes out will significantly shape Canadian innovation in the future. Underfunding early-stage startups could mean fewer homegrown companies, but neglecting later-stage gaps could lead to the most promising startups leaving town.—QH

ONE BIG NUMBER

🇮🇪 63%. Increase in Americans applying for Irish citizenship last year compared to 2024. More U.S. citizens with ancestral ties to other countries have been seeking so-called plan B passports, including for Canada. American applications for Canadian passports jumped nearly 50% in January compared to the same period in 2025.