From AI to the Final Frontier: Tech Trends Shaping 2025

Sonia Sennik: John, it feels like just yesterday we were recording the teaser for this series. Now Canada is nine Taylor Swift concerts older and seven episodes into this season of Disruptor’s The Innovation Era.

John Stackhouse: We didn’t convince Taylor Swift to add another era to her tour. The innovation era, that is, but we did cover a lot of ground from the rise of AI and the biotech boom to the bold frontier of commercial space and the EV revolution.

It’s been a whirlwind, but Sonia, I have to ask any personal favorites from the season?

Sonia Sennik: That’s definitely a tough one, but I’d have to say the space economy episodes were otherworldly. There’s something so thrilling about [00:01:00] imagining Canada as a leader in commercializing the final frontier. And listening to Commander Hadfield talk about the opportunity we have with exploring the moon, with advanced technologies and robotics, it just sparked curiosity and imagination in the best way.

John Stackhouse: And to add to that, the entrepreneurs we got to talk to who are adding real economic value to space exploration right here from Canada. I also loved the episode on how AI is transforming education. There’s so much fear out there about what things like chat GPT may do to our ability to learn. And yet we were able to hear from education pioneers, Janice Stein and John Baker, among them, about how generative AI may create the best days yet for learning.

Sonia Sennik: Absolutely, and a one to one tool that can enable personalized learning, leaving time for teachers and educators to spend time in relationship, getting to know their students, and supporting them I loved how the theme of that episode ended up circling around this idea of generative AI and AI as [00:02:00] tools that complement the need for connection and the relationship between the teacher and the student and peers in shared learning environments.

And that was a really unexpected gem out of that conversation. And now as we close out the year, we’re going to take a step back and look at the big picture, the trends that shaped 2024 and the ones we’re keeping our eyes on for 2025.

John Stackhouse: That’s right, Sonia. Joining us for this conversation. is someone who knows the Canadian innovation landscape better than almost anyone else.

Sean Silcoff is the Globe and Mail’s technology reporter and a widely respected speaker and author on all the big tech stories in this country. He’s been tracking the ups and downs of tech this year, and he always brings such sharp insights. Sean, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me on. It’s great to be in conversation with you, especially about the extraordinary year that we’ve just had, and probably an even more extraordinary one that lies ahead.

Sean, I want to start first with a simple question about what in your mind is [00:03:00] the tech story of 2024.

Sean Silcoff: Well, I think it’s probably the election of Donald Trump. I don’t think we can deny that particularly considering he has Elon Musk and Peter Thiel in his corner. Of course, two of the giants of tech both came out of the PayPal mafia.

It’s probably pointless to discuss Elon Musk. He’s at the moment anyway, Donald Trump’s right hand person. He’s going to be leading this Doge experiment. And of course, as a business person, Elon Musk made headlines all over the place. SpaceX capturing that rocket on the way down. Probably one of the most significant things in any industry or science of the year.

There’s no denying that. Continued evolution of the EV business. And there’s perennial questions about Tesla and, uh, of course X and people leaving X, what X has become the fact that all the people leaving X seems to have made blue sky a big thing. So we’ll see. So I think maybe that actually makes Elon Musk the tech [00:04:00] story of the year, but.

I think Donald Trump, we don’t know what is going to come with his election. Of course, on the Canadian side, we’re waiting for all kinds of tariffs, but I think looking ahead, there’s big questions like, will he ban Tik Tok? You’ve got all these efforts underway. DOJ, the FTC are really going after big tech.

It’s not just Tik Tok. It’s also Meta. It’s Amazon. It’s Google. And I guess the question is, what does Trump do? Does he continue that? Does he keep Lina Khan? Does he fire her at the FTC? So I think where this is all going is probably one of the biggest questions.

John Stackhouse: You’re making me think, Sean, of an old adage that in the next decade, Washington is going to take over Silicon Valley, unless Silicon Valley takes over Washington, that may be playing out right before us.

I’m fascinated all year, but especially now, just to look at. Tech valuations through this year, the total asset value of Silicon Valley is probably bigger than the district of Columbia right now. [00:05:00]

Sean Silcoff: Yeah, no, it’s incredible. And it wasn’t long ago that tech was important, big and valuable, but now it’s really central to everything.

And I think this election and the people behind Trump and Vance point to that. Now, if we look at Canada, this is kind of the year of the comeback. I’ll give you a few examples, wealth simple, you know, a year, two years ago, we were writing about how they were laying people off, how their valuation was being slashed.

They weren’t growing. Well, this year they’re back up to $5 billion valuation. This is one of the most successful years a Canadian tech company has ever had. A few other examples is a company called Clutch. We were writing about them. Being a death store, you know, maybe a year or two ago. Well, they cut deeply.

Their revenues are back up ahead of where they were. A company called D2L, the old Desire2Learn. It was, I think, the last company to go public in 2021. Share price crashed. Well, it’s now trading above its issue price for the first time in three years. Even quantum [00:06:00] computing, I mean, D-Wave, which, you know, the very first quantum company to go public.

Of course, CDL people will know about D-Wave. Suddenly, its share price is spiking along with every other quantum company out there. It’s almost like a meme stock. The other thing I would say, and I think we’ll talk about this later in the podcast, is one of the big stories of the year in Canada is the very cranky mood of the ecosystem.

People are really not in a great state of mind. I think the whole capital gains tax really left a sour taste in the mouth of a lot of people. Valuations are still down. It’s still a very difficult fundraising environment. A lot of companies that were public have gone private because they just couldn’t get the good valuations.

And there’s a lot of people who are threatening to move away from Canada. They’ve kind of had it here. So they say they don’t want to come back until they see some sea change in the government and the government’s attitude toward tech, toward productivity, toward prosperity. So I think there’s a lot of anxious people in the ecosystem who’d like to [00:07:00] see the channel change.

Sonia Sennik: Folks must be throwing their opinions at you all the time with regards to, you know, what is the problem here and how can we fix it? What would you say is the most commonly cited reason for the perceived issues that we’re having here in the Canadian tech ecosystem?

Sean Silcoff: I think a lot of Canadians would say this, and I think it’s even more extreme in the tech community.

The Trudeau government is tired and needs to be put out of its misery is what you hear from a lot of Canadians. But I would say that that is an extremely highly held view. opinion among tech people. You can’t find a person in tech who doesn’t want to see the back of this government. And I mean, the super clusters kind of came.

Nobody really talks about it. Nobody’s very excited about it. The AI strategy, a lot of people would argue, we wrote a piece about this last year of the scene is. Not really doubling down on the things that mattered in [00:08:00] terms of building prosperity. You sort of need a whole of government approach and a prosperity agenda to wealth creation.

And I think a lot of people are frankly disappointed in a government that came out strong and said, you know, we’re the innovation government. It just hasn’t delivered on a lot of the promises.

John Stackhouse: Sonia, is that the kind of mood you’re hearing at CDL? Is tech become the kind of cranky pants of our land?

Sonia Sennik: I don’t know if they’re an Oscar or a Cookie Monster but I’d say that there’s a lot of conversation about talent and how we have just the incredible talent based researchers, and that’s fantastic. But in order to scale large commercializable businesses, as you know, you need folks that understand how to execute and be truly operationally excellent to build sustainable businesses that can last decades and innovate and dynamically change with the times.

And so I’d say in a marketplace like the United States, where you have thousands of people who have run [00:09:00] companies over 500 or whatever it may be. That pool is just smaller here. So how do we continue to attract those folks that can be a complement to our great research community and help us build these companies, these internationally relevant and significant companies in Canada?

I’d say the tone is very much on how can we execute better? How can we be operationally excellent? How can we inspire and motivate? I think John, you and I discussed, it’s not a lack of ambition and big goals. The pathway between having an idea and bringing it to life is execution and operational excellence.

A lot of conversation is around sharpening that here.

John Stackhouse: Can I seize on that word, ambition? Because Harley Finkelstein, who we all know from Shopify, stirred the pot by saying Canadian tech. Doesn’t have enough ambition, Sean. What’s your take on that?

Sean Silcoff: Well, I just spent the better part of the year putting together a story to refute that.

I’ve been collecting the names of companies that have hit a hundred million or [00:10:00] more in revenue in Canada for some time. And I started to think early this year, you know, it’s an awful lot. Let’s try and find out how many there are. And it was a lot larger than I thought it might be. I thought it might be 20 or 30.

When I started out, I hit 71 and I know there’s more. These are real large companies. There’s the new term. It’s not unicorn. Now it’s a centaur, the idea that, you know, sent its play on words, sort of a hundred million in annual recurring revenue. And you have to remember how far this ecosystem has come.

When I started writing about this stuff, 13 years ago, Nortel was dead. BlackBerry was on the way down and the companies were small. They were undercapitalized. They were being picked off by foreign acquisitors. Tech was like 1. 6 percent of the index. And what I found with the story, which was very refreshing is there’s a ton of these companies.

They’re doing really well. They’ve got optionality. If even a fraction of that 71 that I did found goes public, we’re going to see a transformative effect on the public markets. We’re doing pretty well. It’s [00:11:00] hard to be next to the world’s largest economy. And, you know, if you compare us not to the United States, but to Britain or France or Germany or Norway or big successful economies, I think you’d find we’re doing pretty well, even Israel, which of course is a tech powerhouse.

And sometimes I think, well, we need to be a little bit patient and a little less cranky, and to stand back and realize and celebrate what we do have. And that was the point of the article. Fortunately, it’s been very well received and well read. And I hope it helps to change the narrative a little bit and maybe give people pause next time they say, Oh, to hell with Canada.

I’m going to move to the States where I can do what I want and create unlimited wealth for myself and, and just be happy. We need to be more of an Ernie. Yes.

John Stackhouse: So interesting and fair comments about the liberal record polls suggest that we will see a Polly of government in 2025 and probably one with a strong mandate, Sean, what’s your read of the conservative party’s view of technology and what they have to say.[00:12:00]

Sean Silcoff: Well, you know, of course they’ve been sticking closely to their talking points, which seems to have worked well for them, you know, axe the tax, build the homes, their slogans. They haven’t really said much about tech, except they seem to be very pro unleashing the competitiveness of entrepreneurs and getting out of the way and that sort of thing.

I don’t think we’ve yet seen what their platform is, but let’s not forget it was the conservatives who gave us two major policies that really set the stage for the comeback of the tech scene. One of them was section 116 change to the tax code that made it a lot easier for foreign venture capitalists to invest in Canada.

And that really unleashed a lot of investment here. And then, you know, we talk about the Vicky program, the venture capital catalyst initiative. That was actually a conservative program, a different name, venture capital action plan. So. Conservatives have authored some successful programs that have helped the innovation landscape and, you know, Poilievre was part of that government.

I know that [00:13:00] he’s got quite a few senior tech leaders in the country speaking to him on a regular basis. So, I know he’s hearing their concerns. It would be nice. If this was a pro entrepreneur, pro business building, pro prosperity election, and if all the parties had robust programs to bring into it, conservatives, liberals, NDP, whoever, I have no doubt there’s going to be something in the Poilievre platform about this.

But he’s kept that fairly close to the vest so far. So it’d be nice to see whatever change is coming happen as soon as possible.

Sonia Sennik: Sean, I’m curious, you, of course, wrote your incredible book about RIM at their peak, losing the signal, and what they missed when they were at that top of the mountain. Sitting here in December 2024, What might some of the big tech companies today be missing?

Sean Silcoff: Oh, that’s a great question. I like this concept [00:14:00] of the hidden defect.

You’ve heard the term core competence, right? It’s, it’s sort of a thousand types of books written about this subject core. The what’s your core competence. And I like the, uh, the question, what’s your core incompetence? You know, what’s the hidden defect inside your company? What’s the thing you can’t even see that if it suddenly shows up on the horizon could, uh, upend you completely.

Okay. How are you constantly looking to tear yourself apart and put yourself back together? Jeff Bezos did this in 2003 for the first time, I think in 2003, the revenues growth dropped below 30%. And he said, Oh my God, we like, how do we find the digital versions of everything we sell and how do we get into that business?

And the amazing thing about that is Amazon. It wasn’t even a 10 year old company. It was probably one of the most innovative companies in the world. And this small group he put together to try and figure out how to go after digital markets. They couldn’t get anyone in the rest of the company to join that group.

Think about that. Like already people were entrenched in their ways in a nine year old [00:15:00] innovative company like Amazon. Well, we’re selling books, you know, we’re selling videos, we’re selling DVDs. This is the business that we’re in. And so even the most innovative companies, this kind of incumbency, this sort of comfort can settle in.

And the only way to overcome that is to just make everyone uncomfortable all the time. It probably isn’t going to get you the best employee engagement scores necessarily, but I mean, this is what success is built off, right?

John Stackhouse: 2024 was a very big year for AI and even greater expectations for AI in 25. How confident are you that the AI rocket ship is going to continue to soar through the year ahead?

Sean Silcoff: Well, adoption of AI is continuing. KPMG I think just came out with a survey that showed the number of Canadians using generative AI in their jobs is, is nearly 50%. That’s more than double a year earlier. A lot of companies are testing it out. They’re going from pilots to putting [00:16:00] into production. The technology is getting better and better.

I think there’s still some reticence on the part of companies, consumer facing companies to. Letter rip with the chatbots, you know, nobody wants a LLM fueled, uh, chatbot to, to say something that’s just untrue or weird to customers. And I think there’s questions about whether this big promise of AI is actually going to deliver real productivity gains.

I mean, so far the people using AI in their jobs say, well, it’s creating more work, but it’s not necessarily cutting my workload in half. I think we need to see a real strides made in, in the LLMs. Like this whole hallucination problem. I don’t, I don’t know how you get around that. I mean, Sonny, maybe you have some better ideas, but I think there’s been a big bill of goods that’s been sold.

I think also AI has to solve this enormous power usage problem. I don’t know if they make processors more effective or suddenly we bring nuclear power online and that’s not going to be suddenly either. I see some real constraints to the growth. For [00:17:00] men. The moment you start to see that maybe it’s not an infinite horizon, there’s probably going to be a giant pullback and a huge sell off in some of these stocks.

I don’t know what it means for Nvidia, but maybe we’re going to have a little bit of a hangover, an AI hangover in 2025. What do you think?

Sonia Sennik: So I’d offer that I think we’re only going to see more of it, the move from large language models to small language models, where you have the ability to control the inputs and effectively create more trust in the content that’s in those smaller fit for purpose models.

So I think we’re going to see a big increase in that. Also in 2025, a lot of people will be talking about agentic AI, this idea of orchestrating tasks. So right now, you know, let’s say John wants to go implement a model. He’ll pick model one for one task, pick model two for another task, pick model three for another task and so on.

This idea of orchestration and the coordination of tasks. which model to use when and for what purpose. [00:18:00] That’s going to be an evolution we’re going to see in 2025 where I think it’s going to become even more profoundly powerful. And your point about people feeling like there’s changes on the margins, that’s likely very true for existing processes.

I think businesses are going to start thinking, how do we transform the way we function, that now in a world where AI is available to us, we would design our processes completely differently. So being able to clear the deck and have blue sky thinking with this new impactful tool available to us, what would we do differently?

So, the adoption rate is something we’d love to see increase. I mean, CDL has something called our Putting AI to Work program, where we work with enterprises on their journey to adopt AI. The purpose of the program is to build the muscle within the enterprise of how to identify great use cases, and how then to apply craftsmanship and thoughtfulness to where and how you use these tools, because it very much is a [00:19:00] fit for purpose environment.

A lot of times we can fall into the conversation of, well, we can sprinkle AI on that, or just add AI to this, as in just add water, the Betty Crocker version. And I think we’re going to see a lot more conversation around agentic AI, as well as enterprises being very thoughtful about specific use cases that have process changes within their organization and enable those process changes.

Sean Silcoff: I agree with all of that. I think. Where AI is now is kind of like where the internet was in ’97, ’98, you know, amazing new technology, human imagination probably had not caught up to where the technology could take us or how we could use it. Web pages were very static. You couldn’t really do much e commerce.

There wasn’t much in the way of embedded video, but you knew that there was immense potential here. And then, you know, it probably took five to 10 years, maybe even more for things to fully catch up. So there’s no question, you know, the technology is going to get better. There are amazing things you can do with [00:20:00] it, but I think.

As long as there’s this mismatch between all the money that’s going into AI and the output on the other side that matches it, if you can’t see the return from all this investments in AI, I think that’s the hiccups I talk about. And certainly, I mean, the dot com bust was terrible. A lot of value was destroyed, but just look at the internet economy now.

I mean, you don’t call it the internet, it’s the economy, like the entire world, pretty much a big portion of the world runs through the internet. That was the dream, that was the hope in 98 when people were really streaming onto the internet for the first time in large numbers. And, and I have a feeling that we’re going to see something very similar to that in AI.

Sonia Sennik: Exactly. I think the term AI enabled will become obsolete.

John Stackhouse: So a couple of other crystal ball questions. One is crypto. Is ’25 going to be the year of crypto? [00:21:00]

Sean Silcoff: You know, I have such a hard time with crypto. It’s like, it’s, I still see it as a solution looking for a problem.

John Stackhouse: But we’re now going to see a U. S. government administration that is. Hyper enthusiastic about crypto.

Maybe that doesn’t do anything for that fundamental challenge of it possibly being a solution looking for a problem, but that’s going to focus a lot of resources and perhaps even regulatory space for more innovation with crypto.

Sean Silcoff: Well, you know, if, if they can take all the, uh, the complications out of Ethereum network, for example, so that you don’t have to have one entity in one country, another entity in another country, you know, People not allowed to buy and sell the stuff in, in certain countries that opens up a whole world of possibility.

I mean, I think being able to build business processes onto the blockchain is interesting given how much the price of the thing goes up and down. It’s still the plaything of speculators and. You’re right. I don’t think we’ve ever seen an [00:22:00] administration that seems to be as dedicated to making the strides towards bringing legitimacy and modernization to this interesting emerging area of technology.

Ask me in a year. I really don’t know what to expect. I mean, if it just makes it easier to trade Bitcoin and that’s it, well. It’s just going to make things a little crazier, but you know, there’s a lot of potential in these technologies and it would be nice to see more dedication to making it easier to use, to experiment with and, and to build business processes onto these blockchains.

It’s not much of an answer, but I think that was Sean saying best wishes and warmest regards to crypto.

Sonia Sennik: Thank you.

John Stackhouse: I’m curious what we all think are going to be the most interesting companies and trends to watch in 2025. Sonia, maybe you can kick it off.

Sonia Sennik: Yeah, something at the core of what we’re experiencing right now is trust.

I think what you can trust, how do we establish verification and trust in this very dynamic and ever changing [00:23:00] world? We’re going to have more conversations about the concept of trust, whether it’s the information that you’re reading, whether or not AI can manipulate an article that I read differently than the way John reads it.

Who you’re interacting with on the other side of a digital transaction or communication. I see a big conversation and lots of technological advancements around trust. And then, of course, that leads into dual use technologies. So the concept of dual use, what does that mean? What does that mean in a world where almost anything can be considered dual use?

I see 2025 being a year where we’re really thinking about those questions and where innovations are needed to evolve us into this world of an increased space of trust.

John Stackhouse: Sean, what, uh, what’s top of mind for you looking at the year ahead?

Sean Silcoff: Well, I’ll tell you the thing I would like to see, and I don’t think we will see it sadly, a huge focus on trying to protect kids from being sucked even further into their smartphones and toxic social media sites.

Kind [00:24:00] of an all hands on deck approach to a banning smartphone use in school, keeping kids off social media. I think there’s some hope there. I just wish this was a top of mind focus because as a mental health crisis everywhere, frankly, and I think social media excessive use of smartphones is probably at the heart of it.

And I think it’s one of our biggest crises right now. Financially, I think we’re going to, we’ve seen a lot of secondaries this year, which is the secondary has kind of replaced the IPO and the big M and a transaction. I think we’re going to see a lot of that because until the markets roar back, I mean, this year, Clio did a $900 million secondary that’s bigger than almost every tech IPO ever in Canada.

I think we’re going to see some more big stuff like that. And I think that’s kind of holding the line until the markets open up more for that kind of financing.

John Stackhouse: So you’re not seeing next year being a year for IPOs. Not yet.

Sean Silcoff: I think we’re heading toward them maybe toward the [00:25:00] back half of 2025. I mean, the economy is doing its work.

It’s slowed down, unfortunately, but that has meant that inflation has come down. Interest rates are coming down. This is the moment when things start to kind of turn up. It may not feel like that for a lot of Canadians, for a lot of. A lot of people in the global economy, but this is the moment when you start to see a more optimistic horizon.

John Stackhouse: We’ve talked mostly about software. One of the things I’m thinking about for the year ahead is hardware and particularly military technology. We’re going to see a lot more money going into defense, both in the United States, but also here in Canada and Europe. You hear a lot about NATO commitments and that’s one important part of it.

But a lot of that spending it’s yes, of course, for warships and icebreakers and maybe submarines, but a lot of it is going to go for technology. We’re seeing that with the dronification of our border and all that will go with that, which is going to be fascinating to watch a lot of opportunity there for innovators, for entrepreneurs.

Big customers [00:26:00] there in defense departments, but also a lot of concerns for society to think through in terms of surveillance, in terms of the possible dual use of these technologies and particularly civilian applications. We’ll see. Concerning times, great opportunities come with that, but something we all need to remain alert to.

Sean Silcoff: Right. We’ve all been worried about, , AI, , Skynet, Terminator stuff, but I think the new tech boogeyman is going to be the drone, the armed drone. We’re already seeing stories about it. It’s kind of freaky, especially if these things can fly under radar and do a lot of damage. It raises a lot of interesting and troubling questions.

John Stackhouse: I think warfare has always been a catalyst of technology and I’m not defending war, but it’s, I think it’s a fair observation and we’re starting to see some extraordinary tech advancements in both the Ukraine war and what’s going on. In the Middle East and over the next few years, we’ll probably see more of that to come.

Sean, it’s been great to [00:27:00] have you on the podcast.

Sonia Sennik: Thanks, Sean.

Sean Silcoff: Thank you for the invitation. Really enjoyed this.

Sonia Sennik: Thanks so much for joining us today. And special thank you to Sean for sharing his thoughts and insights on the tech landscape in Canada.

John Stackhouse: If you’re interested in how disruptive technology, and especially AI, will continue to shape our world from the opportunities to the challenges, stay tuned for more episodes in 2025.

Sonia Sennik: As always, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And if you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what topics you want us to explore next.

John Stackhouse: This has been Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse.

Sonia Sennik: And I’m Sonia Sennik.

John Stackhouse: Thanks for listening.

Talk to you soon.

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