Exactly 20 years ago, Canadian chipmaker ATI was snapped up by American giant AMD. ATI was, at the time, a dominant player alongside Nvidia—the kind of company that could have anchored a Canadian AI hardware industry. And Taalas is just the latest ina growing listof promising early-stage Canadian semiconductor startups snapped up by larger US players, alongside Hyperlume, Untether AI, and chip-adjacent CentML. Later-stage peers Alphawave Semi, GaN Systems, and Tenstorrent have also redomiciled, sold to foreign firms, or both. Paul Slaby, managing director of Canada’s Semiconductor Council, called the Taalas acquisition “a real vote of confidence” in domestic talent.