Raif Barbaros

Technical founder turned VC. Partner at AI Newsletter: Husband, dad, futbol nut. Queen's and UC Berkeley alumni.

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

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[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Generative AI can be novel or good. Not both.

That's not a skeptic talking. It's Richard Sutton, the father of reinforcement learning and a Turing Award winner, on the technology behind this entire boom.

But that wasn't the only story this week.

It was Toronto Tech Week, a record CANSEC, and a ton of AI news from both. A Montréal fintech raised a big Series A to automate banks' back offices. A Fredericton startup raised to defend critical infrastructure. And Canadian venture funding data from Osler confirmed what we all knew: it's all about AI.

All of it in this week's Canadian AI Newsletter, Issue #16.

Link in comments 👇

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

read and subscribe here: https://t.co/BSQ2gLqy2Q

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Three Canadian VC funds closed in one week.

Canadian AI a centrepiece of all three.

But that wasn't the only story this week.

Ottawa dropped $66M into 44 Canadian AI SMEs via the AI Compute Access Fund. PacifiCan put $17.3M into 8 BC AI companies. Clio crossed $500M ARR. Nutanix announced its global agentic-AI Centre of Excellence in Vancouver. And the Bank of Canada formally named AI Canada's next productivity story.

All of it in this week's Canadian AI Newsletter, Issue #14.

Link in comments 👇

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Read and subscribe here: https://t.co/BSQ2gLqy2Q

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

$1.3B went into Canadian AI this week.

Sanofi committed $294M to expand its Toronto AI Centre of Excellence, with 50 new AI/ML/data-science roles by 2028 and global mandates for the Toronto team. Telus and the federal government unveiled a three-site B.C. AI cluster scaling to 60,000 NVIDIA GPUs by 2032. Moment Energy raised US$40M to turn retired EV batteries into data centre power, with In-Q-Tel on the cap table.

But that wasn't the only story this week.

Canada's four privacy commissioners ruled OpenAI broke PIPEDA training on Canadians' data, with BC and Alberta landing on a principle that should rattle every model trainer: you can't fix a consent violation after the fact. La Presse broke the story that a major Canadian telecom is using AI to mask offshore call-centre agents' accents on customer calls. And Solomon promised the federal AI Strategy is "coming very soon," for the third issue in a row.

All of it in this week's Canadian AI Newsletter, Issue #13.

Link in comments 👇

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Read and subscribe here:
https://t.co/BSQ2gLqy2Q

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

CanadianAI this week:

A $20-billion AI company headquartered in Toronto.

The most valuable sovereign AI champion outside the US-China duopoly.

That's what Cohere's merger with Germany's Aleph Alpha created this week, with major new funding.

But that wasn't the only story.

BDC opened a $500M loan window to get Canadian SMEs off the AI sidelines. Manitoba moved to ban under-16s from AI chatbots, a first in Canada. Toronto's Biossil exited stealth with US$70M from OpenAI's Startup Fund and Founders Fund to resurrect failed drug candidates with LLMs. Mila and Vector together fielded 118 papers at ICLR 2026 in Rio. And Float launched an agentic AI that codes Canadian sales tax with 90% accuracy.

All of it in this week's Canadian AI Newsletter, Issue #11.

Link in comments 👇🏼

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

https://t.co/BSQ2gLr5So

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

This week in Canadian AI:

• $4.75B exit in Calgary (bought for $270M three years ago)
• $1.7B AI data centre in Saskatchewan — Canada's largest
• Cohere signing defence deal with Saab
• A sovereign AI factory in Rimouski on 99% renewable energy

Infrastructure week. Issue #6 is out ↓

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Full issue: https://t.co/P5UJApl1kB

This week: OpenAI-Ottawa fallout, $50M sovereign defence AI, $615M Kraken acquisition, 6G security frameworks, and why Alberta rejected a $10B data centre.

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Next issue of the Canadian 🇨🇦 AI Newsletter is out!

The vertical AI consolidation is here. Spellbook's scooping up competitors on its way to $100M ARR. NationGraph raised $18M to map gov't contracting.

Plus: Ottawa vs OpenAI, $50M for Canadian defence AI, and UofT's AMD partnership.

Link in comments and bio👇

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Love 🇨🇦

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Full issue: https://t.co/BSQ2gLqy2Q

Subscribe for the Canadian AI Newsletter 🇨🇦

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

Launched the Canadian AI Newsletter a few weeks ago.

A weekly rundown of Canadian AI in 5 minutes.

This week in 🇨🇦 AI:

→ $7.2M for SMS insurance in 3 min (General Magic, Toronto)
→ $5.4M to cut cloud costs AND emissions (JetScale, Montréal)
→ $1.5M shipyard robots (Confined Space Robotics, Alberta)
→ Ottawa summoned OpenAI over Tumbler Ridge

Full issue #3 → link in bio

#CanadianAI #VentureCapital #AI #Startups

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

@Beje_keli Vay Hakan vay.

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

@Noahpinion If you had said China instead of Sinofuturism, it would've won. So please write about Sinofuturism ;)

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

@bryce Congrats! Can't wait to see the companies you back!

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

@chamath I interviewed people in the field recently looking for enterprise use cases of Gen AI and the best case studies today seem to be in customer service thru chatbots. 40% cost savings, 80% first touch no human resolution etc.

[Raif Barbaros @raif]

@fnthawar @theallinpod @chamath @friedberg @Jason @DavidSacks agreed.