Toronto Tech Boom

[AlbertC]

Twitter to launch engineering hub in Canada with dozens of hires this year​

March 4, 2021

Twitter Inc. will be bulking up on Canadian talent this year with a hiring spree meant to add dozens of engineers in the country to its staff.

The San Francisco, Calif.-based social media giant said Thursday that it plans to form its first Canadian engineering hub with at least 24 workers it will soon hire.

"We have folks that are from Canadian schools or have Canadian backgrounds and they've just been really successful in growing their careers here," said Tristan Jung, a senior engineering manager involved with Twitter's hiring, in a video call from the Bay Area.

"The thought process was why don't we just go to the source instead of having to pull them all into the Bay Area? Toronto was the best place to do so."

Twitter to launch engineering hub in Canada with dozens of hires this year

TORONTO — Twitter Inc. will be bulking up on Canadian talent this year with a hiring spree meant to add dozens of engineers in the country to its staff. The San Francisco, Calif.-based social media giant said Thursday that it plans to form its first Canadian engineering hub with at least 24...

ca.finance.yahoo.com

 

[AlbertC]

Enthusiast Gaming Signs Integrated Partnership with TikTok​

March 22, 2021

TORONTO, March 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enthusiast Gaming Holdings Inc. (TSX:EGLX)(OTCQB: ENGMF)(FSE:2AV), (“Enthusiast Gaming” or the “Company”) the largest gaming media platform in North America, reaching over 300 million monthly video game and esports fans worldwide, is excited to announce that it has signed an integrated partnership deal with TikTok, the leading destination for short-form mobile video. TikTok will leverage Enthusiast Gaming’s vast platform of video game and esports fan communities to help drive adoption and bridge the integration of TikTok within the gaming and esports industry.

The deal is building on the recent success of TikTok’s and Enthusiast Gaming's partnership at EGLX Digital 2020 virtual expo in November 2020. The expo drew over 12 million views across 53 hours of livestreaming content from November 10-13, 2020.

Enthusiast Gaming Signs Integrated Partnership with TikTok

Partnership to create custom content leveraging media advertising, esports sponsorships, influencer marketing, and entertainment activations across...

www.globenewswire.com

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

From the Globe:

Reddit to open Toronto office as U.S. tech firms expand in Canada

The company said its Canadian user base is growing at a rate of more than 40 per cent year over year, and that they don’t necessarily overlap with traditional social-media users

www.theglobeandmail.com

AoD

 

[afransen]

From the Globe:

Reddit to open Toronto office as U.S. tech firms expand in Canada

The company said its Canadian user base is growing at a rate of more than 40 per cent year over year, and that they don’t necessarily overlap with traditional social-media users

www.theglobeandmail.com

AoD

Non-paywalled story:

Reddit opens new office in Toronto | IT Business

This morning, Reddit announced that its new office in Toronto is officially open. The new headquarters boasts Canadian management, sales, community and engineering teams to help foster and grow its third-largest user base after the U.S. and U.K. "Canada is the next natural place for Reddit to...

www.itbusiness.ca

 

[AlbertC]

IPO market reopens ‘with a vengeance’ as 15-plus Canadian companies look to go public, including Q4, Coveo​

May 6, 2021

Canada’s market for initial public offerings has shaken off recent investor fears and is set to roar back, with at least 15 issuers preparing to go public in the next few months on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The potential offerings span a wide spectrum of industries, including technology, mining, health care and consumer products, say 10 sources familiar with impending deals. Software names dominate following a strong year for new issues from innovative Canadian companies. The Globe is not disclosing the identities of the sources as they are not authorized to speak publicly on the impending issues.

Several companies have hired investment bankers and started gauging interest from institutional investors – a process known as “testing the waters” – or are set to do so with hopes of going public by summer. The list includes Toronto-based software providers Q4 Inc., Softchoice Corp., VerticalScope Inc. and LifeSpeak Inc.; Quebec City-based Coveo Solutions Inc.; and Calgary’s Circle Cardiovascular Imaging Inc.

IPO market reopens ‘with a vengeance’ as 15-plus Canadian companies look to go public, including Q4, Coveo

Canada’s potential IPOs span a wide spectrum of industries, including technology, mining, health care and consumer products

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[Northern Light]

The boom continues apace. In The Star article below, the lead is a new 50-person engineering unit for Door Dash in the City; but in the body of the article you get a rhymed off list of some of the other recent announcements, and it does make quite the statement seeing them together.

How a Toronto tech boom is keeping the local economy going — despite the pandemic

DoorDash is just the latest big name in the tech world to expand its presence in Toronto.

www.thestar.com

 

[Northern Light]

Article (opinion piece) in the Globe on Canada being the next Silicon Valley.

Its by:

Opinion: Is Canada in line to be the next Silicon Valley?

As the California tech hub stagnates and becomes uncompetitive, attention has been gradually shifting to the northern contender

www.theglobeandmail.com

From the article:

This bit also got my attention:

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Canada really excels in several factors. First and foremost, being a stable democratic government with a free market-economy, high-quality of life, and relatively high level of social welfare (Canadians do not have to worry about access to health care or a decent standard of public education), are all inherent qualities that give Canada a step-up over our peers.

Next up is a highly educated population and the concentration of many high-quality universities churning out productive workers in in-demand sectors. I took issue with the Amazon HQ2 Toronto brochure only mentioning UofT, Ryerson, York, and OCAD, as that doesn't paint the full picture. In reality, it is the entire province's university system that is feeding the tech industry in the Toronto area with talent. Universities in secondary markets such as London, Kingston, Waterloo, and Hamilton, are largely populated by GTHA-area residents, whom upon graduation, return to the Toronto area to find employment. In terms of raw numbers, the number of new university graduates entering the in-demand industries each year in Ontario dwarfs most other North Americans markets, and they largely concentrate to jobs in Toronto, Waterloo and Ottawa.

Third huge advantage has to be our immigration policy, which caters towards attracting top talent across the globe.

The fourth major advantage (which is not completely unrelated from the first one) is the existence of large amounts of institutional capital in Canada that is willing and able to invest in growing markets and industries. They might not always be there in the venture capital stages, but there is a lot of investment capital in this country investing in growing Canadian companies, as well as in understated but important ways such as expansion of commercial real estate (which ultimately houses the emerging economies with new supply or adapted reuse of existing commercial space), supply chains, and logistics economies.

I think we've got the right mix here to be really competitive on the global stage, either by accident or by design.

 

[Northern Light]

Microsoft snapping up a couple of larger properties in the inner/outer burbs.

Speculation that these may be data centres.

Microsoft buying GTA land and retail? What’s up with that? | RENX - Real Estate News Exchange

GUEST SUBMISSION: When you think of Microsoft in the context of commercial real estate, you think of the firm as a global technology player and as an occupier in gleaming downtown high-rise office towers or sprawling suburban office campuses. However,

renx.ca

 

[AlbertC]

Enthusiast Gaming Partners with Coldplay on New ‘Higher Power’ Remix Launch​

May 18, 2021

Enthusiast Gaming Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:EGLX) (TSX:EGLX), (“Enthusiast Gaming” or the “Company”), announced today it has teamed up with Grammy-award winning international music superstars Coldplay to bring fans a fresh and unique musical experience to celebrate the band’s new single ‘Higher Power’.

The tie-up will provide unique musical and gaming content to the fan communities across the entire Enthusiast Gaming platform, with the band also being made honorary members of Team Luminosity.

--------
About Enthusiast Gaming

Enthusiast Gaming is building the largest media platform for video game and esports fans to connect and engage worldwide. Combining the elements of its four core pillars; Media, Talent, Esports and Experiences, Enthusiast Gaming provides a unique opportunity and integrated approach to reach and connect with its coveted GenZ and Millennial audience. Through its proprietary mix of digital media and entertainment assets, Enthusiast Gaming has built a vast network of like-minded communities to deliver the ultimate fan experience.

Enthusiast Gaming Partners with Coldplay on New ‘Higher Power’ Remix Launch

Launch will include a performance by Luminosity Gaming content creator and Grammy nominated artist ZHU, to celebrate his official remix of the band’s new...

www.globenewswire.com

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

From the Globe:

Demand for storage space in the cloud creates a land rush

Data centres have become a prime driver of industrial real estate deals

www.theglobeandmail.com

Cooling is a major cost for data centres - I want to see deep lake water cooling tied to this at some point (say maybe somewhere in the Portlands?)

AoD

 

[Admiral Beez]

Twitter to launch engineering hub in Canada with dozens of hires this year​

March 4, 2021

Twitter Inc. will be bulking up on Canadian talent this year with a hiring spree meant to add dozens of engineers in the country to its staff.

What would a Twitter engineer do all day? AFAICT the website hasn't changed in ages.

Twitter Adds More Users, but Revenue and Profit Fall

Twitter reported strong user growth but experienced lingering impacts from the coronavirus pandemic in its latest quarter, as the platform will have to navigate a rocky advertising climate and the fallout from a security breach.

www.wsj.com

 

[Admiral Beez]

From the Globe:

Demand for storage space in the cloud creates a land rush

Data centres have become a prime driver of industrial real estate deals

www.theglobeandmail.com

Cooling is a major cost for data centres - I want to see deep lake water cooling tied to this at some point (say maybe somewhere in the Portlands?)

AoD

Instead of wasting the heat, could we use it to drive turbines or otherwise convert to energy?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Instead of wasting the heat, could we use it to drive turbines or otherwise convert to energy?

It's low temperature heat, useful for space or maybe warm (ok, tepid) water heating in winter but probably not much else.

AoD

 

[AlbertC]

Wayfair Expanding Canadian Operations with New Office

May 25, 2021

Wayfair Inc., one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home, is opening three new Engineering sites in Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and Austin, Texas.

“We will be opening office space for roles in Wayfair’s Engineering organization, which includes software engineers, product managers, experience designers, analysts, and data scientists. Our expansion of the engineering organization to sites in Toronto, Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area is intended to provide more opportunities for talented technologists in these markets to join our growing team as we execute our ambitious roadmap as we continue building the leading destination for shopping for the home,” said Jeremy King, General Manager of Wayfair Canada.

-------
The company plans to hire approximately 1,000 technologists to its world-class Engineering organization globally over the next year. Wayfair is expanding its Engineering footprint to locations outside of its technology hubs in Boston and Berlin for the first time to further advance its innovative technologies. Wayfair said it will initially hire for up to 200 positions at each new Wayfair Engineering site over the next year.

“We looked at a variety of cities for these new locations. Toronto is a world-class city with high-calibre universities, infrastructure and community institutions. We’re thrilled to contribute to the energy and culture of the city, and have been impressed by the strong technical talent in the area. We’ve built a best-in-class engineering organization across our two technical home bases of Boston and Berlin, and expanding the team into rich tech hubs like Toronto will help us meet our ambitious goals for the Wayfair platform and expand upon the level of technology excellence seen in our U.S. and E.U. hubs,” said King.

Wayfair Expanding Canadian Operations with New Office

The US-based online home furnishings retailer is growing its presence in Canada as consumers update their homes during the pandemic.

retail-insider.com