Here’s a round-up of news for Canadian investors this week.
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Shopify shares to trade on Nasdaq, moving from New York Stock Exchange
Shopify Inc. (SHOP/TSX) is moving its U.S. stock exchange listing to the Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange, beginning March 31.
The Canadian technology company says its TSX listing won’t be affected, and its SHOP stock ticker will remain the same. The company did not provide a reason for the move.
Last month, Shopify listed a U.S. address alongside its Canadian headquarters for the first time in an annual regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. At the time, TD Cowen analyst Peter Haynes said the move could help Shopify gain membership to certain U.S. indexes. However, a Shopify spokesperson said it was simply a way to align Shopify’s disclosures with its software peers.
Google to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion in the biggest deal in company’s history
Google (GOOG/NASDAQ) has struck a deal to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion in what would be the tech giant’s biggest-ever acquisition at the same time it’s facing a potential breakup of its internet empire.
The proposed takeover is part of Google’s aggressive expansion into cloud computing during an artificial intelligence boom. The frenzy is driving demand for data centres that provide the computing power for AI technology and intensifying the competition in that space among Google and two other tech powerhouses, Microsoft and Amazon.
If the all-cash transaction is approved by regulators, Wiz will join Google Cloud—an increasingly important part of its business separate from the search and advertising operations that account for most of the $350 billion annual revenue at Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Tap to read more about Google’s buy and Wiz
With the advent of AI, however, the cloud division has become a rising star at Google. Annual revenue in the division was $26.3 billion in 2022, and soared 64% to $43.2 billion last year.
What is Wiz?
Wiz, a five-year-old startup founded by four longtime friends who met in the Israeli army when they were still teenagers, is on track for an estimated $1 billion in revenue this year. After getting its start in Israel in 2020, Wiz now oversees an operation that makes security tools protecting the information stored in data centers from its current headquarters in New York.
“Wiz and Google Cloud are both fuelled by the belief that cloud security needs to be easier, more accessible, more intelligent, and democratized, so more organizations can adopt and use cloud and AI securely,” Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in a blog post.
Google’s plans for Wiz
In a Tuesday conference call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai predicted Cloud division’s addition of Wiz will result in even better security at a lower cost than can be provided now. That prediction may have been aimed as much at regulators likely to scrutinize how the deal will affect competition and pricing, as much as at prospective customers.
Google had been courting Wiz for some time before finally settling on a price that’s much richer than a reported $23 billion bid that was rejected last July. At that time, Wiz signalled it would instead pivot back to a previously-planned initial public offering. But recent volatility in the stock market has chilled the IPO market, and now Rappaport said Wiz expects to “innovate even faster” by becoming a part of Google.
What do analysts think of the acquisition?
Wedbush analysts called Google’s move to buy Wiz “a shot across the bow” at other tech giants, particularly Microsoft and Amazon, who have already made big bets on cyber security as the fight to dominate cloud computing intensifies. Google had fallen behind its competition in the cloud space, Wedbush said, but the acquisition of Wiz could alter the parameters.
The bid Tuesday easily eclipses the current largest acquisition in Google’s 26-year history—a $12.5 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility in 2012 that didn’t pay off the way that the Mountain View, California, company had hoped. The $32 billion purchase of Wiz would also go down as the biggest-ever cybersecurity acquisition and rank among the 20 most expensive takeovers of a software company in history, according to Mergermarket, a financial intelligence service.
How did investors react?
As often happens with high-priced acquisitions, investors reacted coolly to Tuesday’s news. Alphabet’s shares declined 2% to close at $160.67. Some of GoogleÆs other acquisitions have turned into gold mines, most notably its $1.76 billion purchase of online video pioneer YouTube in 2006 and its $3.1 billion takeover of advertising technology platform DoubleClick in 2008. A $5.4 billion purchase of another security firm, Mandiant, in 2022 also helped fuel the recent growth of Google’s Cloud division, which posted an operating profit of $6.1 billion last year.
Google’s DoubleClick deal is now part of an antitrust case filed by the U.S. Justice Department targeting Google’s technology for distributing ads across the internet. A ruling in that case, involving allegations that Google illegally abused its power to manipulate digital ad prices, is expected this year.
Regulators in the U.S. and abroad are targeting Google on other fronts, too.
Last year, a federal judge in another case brought by the Justice Department last year concluded Google had turned its ubiquitous search engine into an illegal monopoly. The penalization phase of that trial begins next month.
The Justice Department is seeking a rebuke that would include a requirement for Google to sell its Chrome web browser and would ban the company from making agreements with Apple and other companies to make its search engine the default tool for finding online information on the iPhone and other devices.
What’s next for the Google-Wiz deal?
The Wiz deal will also get a close look from antitrust regulators. While many expect the Trump administration to welcome more dealmaking than occurred during the previous years, it has also expressed leeriness about Big Tech getting any bigger. Andrew Ferguson, the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission Chairman, has been particularly outspoken about his resolve to keep Big Tech on a short leash.
The deal raises antitrust concerns due to the potential impact on standalone cyber security vendors, as well as potential disruption for bigger rivals.
Still, Wedbush’s analysts note the industry is “ripe for consolidation”—which could pose “massive growth opportunities on the horizon heading into this AI Revolution.”
Antitrust worries were also believed among the reasons Wiz called off sales talks with Google last year while President Joe Biden’s administration was seeking to block a variety of tech deals.
Agreeing to a sale now indicates both Google and Wiz are more confident the deal will gain U.S. approval under the Trump administration, Mergermarket analysts Kevin Ketcham and Kevin McCaffrey wrote in a Tuesday note.
“The two sides likely wouldn’t have struck the deal if they didn’t at least see a potential path to closing,” Ketcham and McCaffrey wrote.
But the business watchdog group Demand Progress Education Fund urged the Trump administration to block Google’s takeover attempt. “It’s time to show the public whether they have the guts to step in and stop a big fish from being gobbled up by one of the biggest fishes in the pond,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, the group’s director of corporate power.
If they get the regulatory greenlight and meet several conditions spelled out in their agreement, Google and Wiz expect the deal to close in 2026.
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Telus, Nvidia announce plans to develop “sovereign AI factory” in Quebec
Canadian telecommunications giant Telus (T/TSX) and U.S. artificial intelligence tech heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA/NASDAQ)have announced plans to build what they call a “sovereign AI factory” in eastern Quebec.
Tap to read more about Telus and Nvidia deal
The companies they will provide Canadian businesses and researchers with the supercomputers and software they need to train and run AI programs while keeping their data within the country’s borders.
Vancouver-based Telus aims to deploy Nvidia’s latest-generation AI semiconductors at its data centre in Rimouski, Que., by this summer, with plans to expand at its Kamloops, B.C., facility once the initial capacity is exhausted.
The data centre will receive 500 graphic processing units to begin with, but Telus chief information officer Hesham Fahmy said that could over several years scale up to tens of thousands, depending on demand. “We want it to be really, really big,” he said in an interview from San Jose, Calif., following a keynote speech from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at that company’s annual flagship GTC AI conference. He said he would love it if Telus was the catalyst that brought almost all of Canada’s AI computing within its borders, even if the company itself doesn’t capture all of that business.
“We really think that AI is going to get infused in every aspect of business” Fahmy said. “Every knowledge worker is going have some sort of AI assistance, we believe, in the near future.”
The Vancouver-based firm says it will be the first North American service provider to become an official Nvidia cloud partner, gaining access to the U.S. tech giant’s research and development, engineering talent and other resources.
What kind of energy will the new factory use?
AI data centres tend to be voracious energy users, raising environmental concerns. The Rimouski site is to be powered 99% by renewable energy sourced from Hydro-Quebec. It will use natural cooling, which Telus says cuts water use by more than three quarters compared to traditional data centres.
Telus says the Quebec facility, 250 kilometres from a major urban centre, is highly secure and a good option for customers seeking a core or disaster recovery site.
Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has a stock market value of almost US$3 trillion and is second only to Apple on the S&P 500 index.
“Sovereign AI infrastructure is critical for every nation to advance their society and economy, while preserving their own data, enabling them to drive a local intelligence revolution with global technology advancements,” Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice-president of telecom at Nvidia, said in a news release.
At GTC 2025—dubbed the “Super Bowl of AI”—Nvidia CEO Huang focused his keynote on the company’s advancements in AI and his predictions for how the industry will move over the next few years. He said he expects Nvidia’s data centre infrastructure revenue to hit US$1 trillion by 2028.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveils new Rubin AI chips at GTC 2025
Nvidia founder Jensen Huang kicked off the company’s artificial intelligence developer conference on Tuesday by telling a crowd of thousands that AI is going through “an inflection point.”
Tap to read more about the new Rubin AI chips
At GTC 2025—dubbed the “Super Bowl of AI”—Huang focused his keynote on the company’s advancements in AI and his predictions for how the industry will move over the next few years. Demand for GPUs from the top four cloud service providers is surging, he said, adding that he expects Nvidia’s data center infrastructure revenue to hit $1 trillion by 2028.
Huang’s highly anticipated announcement revealed more details around Nvidia’s next-generation graphics architectures: Blackwell Ultra and Vera Ru