To share a perspective on it, why is it that OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic are all based in Silicon Valley and there is no Canadian equivalent?
I'm a start-up founder veteran. I built all my start-ups in Silicon Valley; I didn't build them in Canada. I was born and raised here, and I've lived here basically the whole time. I moved to Mountain View to build my start-ups early on, and then I moved back, but I still based them there.
There are some regulatory factors. It's nice to have a Delaware C corporation, but that's not the fundamental reason. The fundamental reason these companies are based in the Silicon Valley area is just that the best investors in the world are based there. That's it. That is literally the single most important factor by far.
When I go to Y Combinator, I hear the best advice on start-up building on planet Earth. There is no equivalent to Y Combinator in Canada. This is the world's best start-up accelerator, full stop.
The best investors are in Silicon Valley, the Vinod Khoslas and the Sam Altmans. That is why this is happening there.
There are, at the margins, regulatory things going on here, but as a start-up founder who has done this multiple times and has been faced with this exact decision many times, whether it's with AI or other things, there's a kind of talent delta there in terms of the best VCs, the best angel investors. That's the ecosystem.
Tobi Lutke from Shopify started his company here in Ottawa, but there's a reason that their cap table is filled with Silicon Valley money. It's because that's where the best investors are.
At the end of the day, it's the same story over and over. I think we're just seeing it replicated in AI. I don't think there's anything too different there.