Business

Southeast Alberta businesses have opportunities to connect with new markets, industry leaders, and potential partners through a trade missions program promoted by the Southeast Alberta Chamber of Commerce. The Alberta Chambers of Commerce Trade Missions program gives businesses opportunities to attend industry events, site visits, networking sessions, and business-to-business meetings across Alberta and Canada. The Chamber says the program can help local businesses find new customers and suppliers, explore different industries and identify investment opportunities as economic conditions continue to change. Lisa Dressler, executive director of the Southeast Alberta Chamber of Commerce, said trade missions are about creating opportunities, not just travel.

An Interview With Chad Silverstein11 min readOct 8, 2026--Press enter or click to view image in full sizeThe industries that feed us, house us, and serve us like agriculture, property, customer experience are still running on decades-old operating models. AI is the first technology capable of modernizing them from end to end and that’s what we deliver to our customers. In today’s tech-driven world, artificial intelligence has become a key enabler of business success. But the question remains — how can businesses effectively harness AI to address their unique challenges while staying true to ethical principles? To explore this topic further, we are interviewing Natraj Balasubramanian. Natraj Balasubramanian is CEO of Braiin Limited, a global AI platform company, listed on NASDAQ, delivering automation and predictive analytics across precision agriculture, customer experience, and property technology. He is an experienced technology entrepreneur with a strong background in SaaS, AI, and scaling businesses across multiple industries. He has successfully raised capital, led acquisitions, and built high-growth technology platforms.

An Interview With Chad Silverstein11 min readOct 8, 2026--Press enter or click to view image in full sizeAI has redefined scale in a different way. It has not just changed how fast something is possible. It has changed what is possible at all. In today’s tech-driven world, artificial intelligence has become a key enabler of business success. But the question remains — how can businesses effectively harness AI to address their unique challenges while staying true to ethical principles? To explore this topic further, we are interviewing Brad Birnbaum. Brad Birnbaum is a 30+ year entrepreneur and C-suite leader in customer service tech. He co-founded Kustomer (acquired by Meta, now independent), Assistly (acquired by Salesforce as Desk.com) and eShare Technologies (acquired by Melita International). He holds a B. S. in Information Systems from SUNY Stony Brook. Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path in AI? I have always been an engineer and a builder.

Skip to mainThu, October 8, 2026 at 4:19 p.m. UTCDespite pressure from the federal government to keep its workers employed, Stelco is moving ahead with layoffs at its plant in Hamilton, Ont., according to the president of the union representing the workers. That story and more in Business Matters for Oct. 8, 2026.

The Women Focus Canada Team held an event called the AI Advantage Experience on September 26, offered to small business owners and entrepreneurs that were interested in learning more about AI. The event brought together several entrepreneurs, professionals, community leaders, and technology experts to share their knowledge.

An Interview With Chad Silverstein17 min readOct 8, 2026--Press enter or click to view image in full sizeThe product is what your team is still fighting with three years later, after the person who configured it has moved on and the runbook points at a server nobody can find anymore. In today’s tech-driven world, artificial intelligence has become a key enabler of business success. But the question remains — how can businesses effectively harness AI to address their unique challenges while staying true to ethical principles? To explore this topic further, we are interviewing Rajeev Jaswal. Rajeev Jaswal is the Virginia-based CEO and Founder of Argo Intelligence, an enterprise AI automation platform powered by Graytitude. He has 25 years of enterprise technology leadership experience, including CIO roles at Rapid7 and Red Hat. He founded Graytitude in 2018. Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path in AI?

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path in AI? My background is in software engineering. Before VoiceBit, I worked at Microsoft on Azure and at Visa on payments and loyalty technology. That background shapes how I approach AI: an impressive demonstration is not the same as a dependable product. What interests me is turning technical capability into something people can trust with everyday work. At VoiceBit, that means applying AI to a concrete problem: helping restaurants handle customer interactions without constantly pulling employees away from other responsibilities. The appeal is not simply making a machine conversational. It is making a difficult part of running a business easier. Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started working with artificial intelligence?

Fears of AI-driven job loss loom over the professional services industry, but at EY, depending on where you work, you needn't worry. The Big Four consulting and accounting firm reported on Thursday that it added nearly 10,000 jobs globally in its 2026 financial year, as revenue from AI-related services surged almost 50%. The rise in head count brings EY's workforce to 415,000. Much of that rise was concentrated in a category that EY calls its global entities, which added more than 10,000 staff. The group, also known as EY's global delivery services, includes its offshoring centers. In the firm's Americas division, the workforce decreased by roughly 4,500, or 5%. Workforce shifts come as EY and its global boss Janet Truncale have bet big on AI under its "All-In" strategy. The firm has invested billions to transform its operating model and evolve the services it offers clients. The 50% surge in AI-related sales, up from a 30% rise for the year before, suggests the AI bet is paying off.

Conning analyst suggests the simplest small commercial accounts could be vulnerable, although business owners are proving surprisingly reluctant to give up human advice AI shopping agents have opened a new front in personal insurance distribution. Small commercial could eventually be next, although agents appear to have a stronger defensive moat than many once expected.

The traditional boundaries of business applications are disappearing. For decades, people went to their customer relationship management (CRM) to find customer context, take action, and move work forward. AI is inverting that model. This shift creates two complementary opportunities: greater individual productivity and organization-wide process transformation. Customer context, expertise, and actions can now come directly into Copilot and Microsoft Teams, helping sales and service reps get work done where they already work. At the same time, autonomous agents can move defined processes across teams and systems, bringing people in when judgment, approval, or specialized input is needed.

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An Interview With Chad Silverstein10 min readOct 8, 2026--Press enter or click to view image in full sizeThe move from Reporting to Reasoning is something I am particularly excited about and believe this will revolutionize the finance and business world over the next decade. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Rohit Gupta. Rohit Gupta is the founder and CEO of Auditoria. AI, which builds intelligent applications for the Office of the CFO. He founded Auditoria in 2019 to build finance-specific AI that can understand business documents, conversations, and context, then act within the controls finance teams require. Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path in AI? I had spent about 20 years watching companies try to automate enterprise work. Business process management and robotic process automation made important contributions, but they were usually effective only when the process followed a predictable path.

The US economy is top of voters’ minds ahead of the November midterms with food and gas prices remaining high, the job market unstable, consumers angrier than ever, and a new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, in place. We’ll be hosting a live midterm election Q&A on Thursday 15 October 2026 at 12pm EDT on the Guardian US site with a panel of our business, labor and consumer rights reporters: Lauren Aratani, Michael Sainato, Heather Timmons and Gaya Gupta. The team will cover cost of living challenges, tariffs, inflation and new federal policy proposals from local candidates. If you have a question about how the economy could shape midterm election results, we’d like to hear from you – and be sure to tune into our live conversation on 15 October when reporters may answer your question. The US politics team is hosting a series of reader Q&As leading up to the November US midterm elections. See our earlier conversations as part of this series, here: Will the Iran war cost Trump in the US midterm elections? Your questions answered