Payments Canada’s annual Canadian Payments Methods and Trends Report was released today and it is no surprise that new technology and payments innovation are transforming the way Canadians pay. In pursuit of more convenient, faster and secure payment experiences, Canadians are rapidly adopting newer digital channels, such as contactless (tapping card or mobile), e-commerce, mobile […]
Moving Picture Company Closes Vancouver Visual Effects Studio
Visual effects powerhouse Moving Picture Company (MPC) has shut down its Vancouver studio effective immediately. At its peak in 2013, more than 800 artists worked out of MPC’s Vancouver studio. It is not clear at this point how many people are affected by the shutdown. MPC Vancouver’s employees were told of the closure during a […]
AI Platform Eli Report Better Informs Condo Buyers
Vancouver-based Eli Technologies announced today the launch of Eli Report, an artificial intelligence platform that assists real estate professionals in reviewing and uncovering potential issues contained in condo and strata documents. Eli Report uses machine-learning to extract critical information from years’ worth of strata and condo documents, increases transparency by identifying potential building issues, by-law restrictions […]
Vistara Growth Closes Oversubscribed Technology Growth Debt Fund
Vistara Capital Partners announced today the oversubscribed final close of its Vistara Technology Growth Fund III LP, reaching its hard cap of CAD $150 million. This quickly follows the fund’s second close of US$75 million in July of this year. Vistara has already committed approximately 30 percent of the fund across five companies and will […]
D-Wave Partners With NEC To Accelerate Commercial Quantum Computing
D-Wave Systems has announced a partnership with Japanese industrial giant NEC today to build what they call “hybrid apps and services” that work on a combination of NEC high-performance computers and D-Wave’s quantum systems. D-Wave and NEC plan to market and sell D-Wave’s Leap™ quantum cloud service, which includes hybrid tools and services, as well as […]
Harbour Air Flies World’s First Commercial Electric Airplane
Aviation history was made in Canada this morning as the world’s first electrically-powered commercial passenger aircraft flew a four-minute test flight at the Vancouver International Airport (YVR) floatplane terminal. Harbour Air President Greg McDougall was at the controls of the 63-year-old six-passenger DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver floatplane powered by an advanced MagniX electric propulsion system. […]
FORM Augmented-Reality Swim Goggles Now Support Polar Heart Rate Monitors
Vancouver’s FORM has added heart-rate monitoring to its $200 augmented reality goggles that let swimmers track their lap-swimming data. Today the sports tech startup announced the release of a free firmware update for the FORM Swim Goggles that enables support for Polar’s optical heart rate monitors, giving swimmers the unprecedented ability to view their real-time […]
ACUVA Technologies Wins New Product Innovation Award
Frost & Sullivan has recognized Vancouver’s ACUVA Technologies with the 2019 Global New Product Innovation Award for its IntenseBeam™ optical lensing technology. Acuva’s IntenseBeam technology is featured in its Strike UV-LED Module Platform for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), as well as Acuva’s consumer UV-LED water purification systems – the Arrow and Eco series of products. […]
Picovoice Unveils Platform for Building Voice Assistants Without the Cloud
Following the launch of its real-time speech recognition engine that can run offline anywhere, Vancouver AI startup Picovoice has announced a new platform that lets you easily create and train your own voice models. Picovoice’s new web console supports training universal wake words and domain-specific natural language understanding (NLU) skills that run entirely offline—even on […]
BCIT Launches Electric Vehicle Maintenance Training Program
Vancouver will have a new electric vehicle (EV) training program for automotive technicians in 2020. The EV Maintenance Training Program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has successfully completed its first pilot and will be available as a part-time studies course in the new year. The newly developed program will make sure the […]