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The first holiday shortened, yet volatile, first week of 2022 trading was off to a slow start in Canada, but there was plenty of action in the USA. Another data point suggested that the final numbers for 2021 venture capital investments pointed to a whopper of a year. Crunchbase reported that global venture funding nearly doubled last year to US$643 billion compared to 2020, due diligence was a casualty in light of increased funding, according to various reports. San Francisco-based social-media company Reddit Inc. has picked Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to help it go public as soon as March. OpenSea, one of the most talked about blockchain start-ups in Silicon Valley, said on Tuesday that it had raised US$300 million in new venture capital, making it the latest company to cash in on a rush to fund cryptocurrency start-ups. Banking app Dave shares rose 9% in public listing after SPAC merger. Tencent raised US$3 billion in Sea share trade. If all the rumors are correct, 2022 is the year when Apple will finally introduce its own mixed reality headset. Technology analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple’s headset will be released in late 2022 with limited supplies. Qualcomm and Microsoft are teaming up on an augmented reality initiative. Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. has ceased development of a new VR/AR software operating system that employed more than 300 after four years, The Information reported Wednesday. Facebook has never regularly disclosed sales data for Oculus, which it acquired in 2014 for US$2 billion. But IDC estimates that unit sales of the company’s VR devices in 2021 will come in between 5.3 million and 6.8 million. Either one would be a nice jump from the 3.5 million Oculus units estimated to have sold last year. And it is far better than the anemic sales from before the company put out its first Quest headset in mid-2019. Oculus devices before that mostly required a cable running to a high-powered PC. Such “tethers” have severely limited the appeal of VR devices even to the gamer crowd.

In a historic year for valuations, League‘s new funding round has squeezed in one more Canadian tech unicorn before the clock struck midnight on 2021. The Toronto-based healthcare startup raised US$70 million in new financing, which at a pre-money valuation of US$850 million, or $1.1 billion, made it Canada’s newest tech unicorn. New Zealand-based accounting platform Xero has reached a deal to acquire Calgary tax preparation software startup TaxCycle for a total of $75 million. A record 560 startups were valued at over US$1 billion this year, earning their place in the so-called “unicorn” club, according to a report from Business Insider citing data from Crunchbase and PitchBook. The term unicorn was first coined in 2013. At the time, there were just 39 U.S. startups that fit the bill, with an average of four unicorn births per year in the decade prior. Today there are approximately 1,000 private companies around the world valued at US$1 billion or more. Those companies are estimated to be worth a total of roughly US$3 trillion, per Crunchbase data. Shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. rose 0.8% in morning trading Monday, after China’s securities regulator’s draft rules on overseas listings released over the long weekend OK’d the listing structure known as variable-interest entity (VIE) used by the e-commerce giant to list its shares on the NYSE. Facebook’s Oculus VR app marked a key milestone over the Christmas weekend, when it was the most popular download on Apple’s App Store. The Oculus app beat out long-standing leaders like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram for having the most downloads. This marks the first time ever the Oculus app was No. 1 on Christmas.

Thank you for your support through 2021, we hope you and your loved ones are enjoying a restful holiday season. Canadian software firm, Dye & Durham Ltd. soared as much as 21% after reaching a deal to buy Australian data services firm Link Administration Holdings Ltd. for about $3.2 billion. Sophic Client, GameSquare Esports (GSQ-CSE, GMSQ-OTC), a stock we recently called out as a tax loss buying candidate, had a nice move (gaining ~35%) last week, as the Company’s execs were profiled in Business Insider. China Mobile, the wireless carrier that was among the state-owned firms forced to delist from the U.S. by the Trump administration for alleged ties to the Chinese military, is seeking to raise the equivalent of US$7.6 billion in a Shanghai initial public offering. It would be the biggest domestic IPO in a decade, according to Bloomberg. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that electric vehicle maker Nikola will pay US$125 million to settle charges that it misled investors about its products. Subscription-based streaming video services worldwide spent nearly US$50 billion on content in 2021, an uptick of 20% from last year, according to new data released by research firm Ampere Analysis. Venture capital invested a record US$30 billion in crypto in 2021, more than quadruple previous high, this comes as Apple, among other tech companies is quickly losing talent to lucrative crypto startups. Semi CapEx to hit US$152 billion in 2021 as market on track for US$2 trillion by 2035. TSMC, the world’s largest foundry, intended to spend between US$25 billion and US$35 billion on new manufacturing capacities as demand for its services is setting records.