Two Small Fish Ventures

TSF is an early-stage deep tech VC focusing on the next frontier of computing and its applications: AI, robotics, semiconductors, smart energy, protocols, etc.

[Two Small Fish Ventures @twosmallfishvc]

What we do at TSF, in one line: We invest in the next frontier of computing and its applications, reshaping large-scale behaviour, driven by the collapsing cost of intelligence and defensible through tech and data moats.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/3 Software is not dead. It is about to be everywhere.

GitHub is seeing 275M commits per week, versus about 1B commits in all of 2025. That implies a pace of roughly 14.3B commits this year, or about 14x last year’s total.

Software creation is exploding.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/2 Canada arguably invented modern AI. We trained the talent, helped build the science, and produced many of the key researchers, yet most of the important AI companies ended up being built and owned elsewhere. That was Game 1, and we lost it.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/ As a founder, I attended many founder summits. Now, as an investor, I am hosting our own.

If I had to pick one thing that helps founders get the most out of a summit, it is peer-to-peer learning from other founders who are on a similar journey.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/ My blog Allen’s Thoughts is almost a decade old.

I have been writing there on WordPress because I wanted more control.

WordPress is open source. I can host it myself. I can DIY. I am not at the mercy of any one platform.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

"Stop Supplying. Start Owning." was one of my most engaging posts in recent weeks. One part I did not go deep enough on: the banana analogy.

[Eva Lau @MrsEvaLau]

1/4 Everyone asks me: are LLMs hitting a dead end?
Wrong question.
The better one: why are we still pretending one architecture solves every problem? Latency, privacy, cost, always-on resilience — none of it fits neatly into the default stack.
Here's what I actually think. 👇

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

Stop Supplying. Start Owning.

Last week, I spoke at the Deans of Engineering Conference in Winnipeg. I wanted to share the core message from my talk, so I turned it into a blog post.

P.S. I went bananas, but not in the way you might think.

https://t.co/wBNkD2p679

[Eva Lau @MrsEvaLau]

“If this researcher is the CEO, I’m never funding this company.”

I’ve watched that sentence destroy the confidence of some of the most brilliant people I know.
Here’s what investors aren’t telling you when they say it.
1/3

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

We are super excited to announce our investment in @heyglif!

The US$17.5M round was led by @a16z and @usv.

What is Glif?

Think Claude Code for AI creatives.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

We are excited to share our investment in @tiptreesystems!

Founded by two @Mila_Quebec researchers, @martincsweiss1 and @nasim_rahaman, Tiptree is building an AI-native researcher and knowledge network: infrastructure for how researchers share, exchange, and advance knowledge.

[Tiptree Systems @tiptreesystems]

Tiptree Systems is launching an open research commons for the humans and AIs advancing the science of AI.

AI became what it is today because of open research and a culture of sharing knowledge freely. But in 2026, that openness is under pressure from some of the biggest beneficiaries of the commons, who are taking without giving back.

The stakes are too high for this to continue. This technology will determine the course of human civilization, and we cannot afford to have this foundational knowledge hoarded by a few. So we’re using the technology itself to tend to the commons, revive it, and grow it. For everyone.

The Open Research Commons is our contribution to this effort, and it works like this:

Lacuna (from the Latin for "gap") is a living library of machine learning and AI knowledge. It breaks research down into conceptual elements, connects them into research directions, and points out empty shelves: the gaps in our collective understanding, and the hypotheses worth investigating to fill them.

Althea is the scholar who lives in that library: navigating the collection, synthesizing across fields, and working alongside researchers on open questions. When a problem calls for broader expertise, Althea brings people together to close the gaps.

We’re opening the commons to the research community today. Researchers with an academic affiliation can get started right away; everyone else can browse Lacuna freely and request access to Althea.

This wouldn't exist without the people who believed early: Manuel Wüthrich (@manuelwuethrich) , Sherjil Ozair (@sherjilozair), Chris Pal (@chrisjpal), Bernhard Schölkopf (@bschoelkopf), Hugo Larochelle (@hugo_larochelle), Tegan Maharaj (@tegan_maharaj), Li Erran Li (@erranlli), Dino Di Palma; Madison Jacox (@madijacox) and Molly Fowler (@themollette) at Dorm Room Fund (@DormRoomFund); Eva Lau (@MrsEvaLau) and Allen Lau (@allenlau) and the team at Two Small Fish (@twosmallfishvc). Or without our academic mentors, who built the kind of open research culture we're trying to protect: Yoshua Bengio, Bernhard Schölkopf, and Chris Pal.

The commons belongs to all of us. Come tend it with us.

[ByteShape @ByteShape]

GPUs are consistent. CPUs are not.

With our ByteShape Qwen 3.5 9B quants, the same models perform well across GPUs, but CPUs each have their own “favorites”.

No one-size-fits-all. Optimize for your hardware.

https://t.co/RSX3iK3vgh

[ByteShape @ByteShape]

Run your own local AI coding agent

We just published a beginner guide for using @opencode with local models (@lmstudio, llama.cpp, @ollama).
Mac, Linux, WSL2, full setup + API + config.

https://t.co/TzgNNTxU49

From “I have a model” → “I have a working coding agent”

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

Thanks @Joe_Castaldo for interviewing me for this
@globeandmail piece on AI superusers and the widening productivity gap. My quote in the story: “This is an iPhone moment. AI can take action now.”

https://t.co/hh2BELkjDJ

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

Every VC says they back high-quality companies.
That is like saying humans need to sleep, eat, and drink. True, yes. Useful, no.

The real question is: what does “high quality” actually mean in venture?

@twosmallfishvc, it means the potential to become uniquely world class.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

ByteShape was quietly launched just before the year end. Two weeks ago, we announced our investment in the company. Since its launch, and with minimal fanfare on purpose, @ByteShape cumulative downloads have easily blown past 100,000. No small feat for a new startup!

[BetaKit @BetaKit]

As #AI agents generate more and more machine activity, YScope wants to become the infrastructure layer keeping track of it all.

The Toronto startup just raised $3.9 million USD in its first external financing, led by @twosmallfishvc.

https://t.co/TNNpeaD9PI

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

We are super excited to share that @twosmallfishvc led YScope’s US$3.9M financing, with Snow Angels (the @Snowflake alumni investment syndicate), Next Wave NYC, UTEST, and other successful founders participating.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

Thanks for calling us Babe Ruths!!! Seeing the future is our superpower. It feels good to be RIGHT! 😂

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

This is insane! Thousands of people are lining up to install #OpenClaw on their devices. They should have used @Genseeai Crate instead. One-click install in 60 seconds! 😂😂😂😂 https://t.co/V0DXvHEWcM