WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK
IMPORTANT
Will America's $100K visa fee steer more tech talent to Canada? RBC CEO Dave McKay certainly thinks so. Last week's seismic change to the U.S.'s H-1B visa program creates a “material opportunity,” he says, for Canadian companies to attract more highly skilled foreign tech workers. And doctors and scientists too, yes — but especially tech: 60% of current H-1B visa holders work in tech, and in the first half of this year alone, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft used the program to bring more than 20,000 workers into the U.S. All three of those companies have Canadian offices. Now they have a $2-billion reason to hire the next 20,000 here.
Constellation loses its north star. Constellation Software is the best-performing Canadian investment of the past 20 years, and much of its success (as we covered on an episode of the TLDR podcast) is credited to “Canada’s Warren Buffett,” founder and CEO Mark Leonard. Last week the stock plunged by 15% after Leonard resigned from the company due to health reasons, with analysts calling his leadership “irreplaceable.” His insightful shareholder letters have also become a staple for investors — read some highlights here.
INTERESTING
Understanding how batteries work = understanding how to invest. Batteries are the “hidden plumbing of the modern economy” — they're in our phones, laptops, earbuds, cars, solar panels — and right now, two types of batteries make up 98% of the market: lithium iron phosphate, which is cheap and durable but requires a bigger cell, and nickel manganese cobalt, which is lighter but costlier. This Daily Brief essay makes a compelling case that understanding this difference — including where the two minerals are mined and which companies are betting on them — helps illuminate who stands to benefit from the industry’s growth. Canada’s working on becoming a larger source of the world’s lithium, but we're not a hot spot for cobalt, which is mostly mined in the DRC (although we’re working to refine some here). And when a tech product takes off, its battery type tends to follow: EVs, for example, want the lowest price for the most power (lithium!), while consumer electronics need the smallest storage possible (cobalt!). See, high school chem was good for something!
Useful AI use-case sighting! A startup that reduces health-care waits. With so much of the global economy kinda sorta riding on AI paying off, we're always on the lookout for evidence of promise, and Yukon-based PeerSupport.io might be on to something: it uses AI to pre-fill medical forms, suggest referral opportunities, and help patients navigate an often labyrinthine records system. In a pilot test, addiction patients got care 27 weeks sooner than usual, and form-completion time dropped from 18 minutes to two.
—Sarah Rieger