As they did with shirtless hippies in the ’60s, psychedelic drugs are having a moment—but this time around, it’s investors (with their shirts very much on) swooning over ‘shrooms.

Driving the news: Start-ups developing psychedelic drug treatments had a milestone January, bringing in US$163 million in investments, marking the second-biggest month of fundraising ever recorded for the sector, per the Financial Times. 

Think twice before sending that disparaging Slack message about your manager. Someone—or rather, something—could be watching. 

What happened: A growing number of large employers are using AI tools to monitor the messages employees send on company systems.

 On this week’s episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we sat down with Polly Mitchell-Guthrie, VP of Industry Outreach at Kinaxis, a Canada-based supply-chain management platform. 

The firm behind the company that’s most commonly known as “Russia’s Google” is looking to get out of the whole ‘Russian’ aspect of its business.

Catch-up: Like several non-Western nations, Russia has its own websites that mirror more globally popular ones like Yandex (Russian Google) or VK (Russian Facebook).

In news that will surely upset French soccer parents (or parents de football), it will soon be a lot pricier to drive an SUV in Paris. 

Driving the news: Paris has declared war against SUVs after the city voted to triple parking charges in the city centre on out-of-town gas-powered and hybrid vehicles weighing over 1.6 tonnes. The move aims to cut pollution, free up space, and make life safer for pedestrians.

The Gemini AI model-slash-chatbot isn’t just Google’s effort to catch up with OpenAI — it's an experiment that could totally change the company’s future.

C2PA is a group started by Adobe and Microsoft to find ways to certify online media’s provenance: where it comes from and how it was created. This information includes if an AI platform was used to create a piece of media, helping companies curb deepfakes and disinformation. The C2PA acronym also sometimes refers to the metadata standard the coalition created.

The government might need to step up its game if Canadian startups are going to keep up in the AI race.

What happened: Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne signed a letter of intent with Nvidia. Details have not been released, but Champagne said in an X post that the government and chip maker would “explore opportunities” to create AI computing power in Canada.

Months after a consumer boycott that lost Bud Light the status as America’s top-selling beer to Modelo, the beer brand has chosen the Super Bowl as the next stop of its comeback tour. 

Driving the news: Per The Wall Street Journal, Bud Light is banking on a 60-second Super Bowl ad slot to get back in with the guys. The brand is attempting to recover from backlash for its campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which led to a slump in sales. 

Now that Google and the federal government have squashed their beef over paying news publishers, the search giant is giving Canadians access to its shiny new chatbot. 

What happened: After snubbing Canada on the initial rollout of its first chatbot, Bard, Google will offer its improved and renamed AI chatbot, Gemini, to Canada.

At the height of the pandemic, nothing could be more frightening than repeatedly touching a germ-infested item hundreds of other strangers had handled. Now, we can’t get enough of it! 

In case you couldn’t tell, we’re talking about bowling.  

Driving the news: U.K.-based bowling operator Hollywood Bowl Group (HBG) is pursuing an aggressive expansion in Canada — with plans to open up to 10 new alleys within the next five years — as it posts yearly revenue gains better than a game-winning strike. 

Like anyone under the age of 40 trying to buy a house, Canadian miners will need a little bit of financial help if they want to set themselves up for the future.

What happened: As prices for critical minerals like lithium and nickel plummet, miners are warning that if the federal government doesn’t step up to help fund new projects, Canada could fall behind in production to rivals like China for good, per The Globe and Mail. 

We have a recommendation for a special advisor on the Canadian housing crisis: the Count from Sesame Street. 

Driving the news: The widely cited estimate that Canada will need 3.5 million extra housing units by 2030 to achieve housing affordability could be short by as much as 1.5 million, per a new report from CIBC economist Benjamin Tal, due to underestimated population growth. 

Professional athletes, they’re just like you and me: They eat, they sleep, and they hate paying taxes. 

Driving the news: Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares is in a heated face-off against the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). The hockey star claims the tax body miscalculated what he owes on the US$15.3 million signing bonus he got when joining the Leafs in 2018.

Bluesky is ditching invite codes, but what it’s about to let developers do could be more important for its future.

The problem: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider hasn’t made many major discoveries since the Higgs boson in 2012. One breakthrough many scientists were hoping for was in the area of dark matter and dark energy, which could explain the behaviour of the 95% of the universe that isn’t covered by existing theories of physics.

The solution: Build a bigger particle collider. 

If you want your company’s AI adoption to go smoothly, maybe you should put it in a corner office.

Driving the news: Companies across sectors have been hiring chief AI officers (CAIOs), from Accenture and GE HealthCare to eBay and Ashley.

As provinces play the part of ‘parents trying to keep the energy bills down,’ crypto miners are playing the part of ‘little brother who stayed up all night gaming with the lights on.’

What happened: New crypto mining projects in B.C. will continue to be temporarily barred from tapping into the province’s energy supply after a recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling. 

With AI deepfakes becoming more common on Facebook than old high school classmates promoting their multi-level marketing schemes, Meta has decided it’s time to step in. 

Driving the news: As deepfakes impersonating the likes of U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Canadian treasure Michael Bublé, and pop star Taylor Swift come into the mainstream, Meta will roll out AI detection and labelling features across its platforms.