🍜 Canada explore federal AI adoption..

Welcome, Noodle Networkers.

The Canadian government just inked a deal with AI startup Cohere 🇨🇦—because nothing says “efficient public service” like replacing red tape with predictive text. Over in the market jungle, Palantir’s stock is slumping hard 📉. After riding the AI hype wave, investors are now realizing that buzzwords alone don’t pay dividends. And in Silicon Valley, “zombie startups” are on the rise 🧟. These are the companies left behind after their teams got poached by Big Tech—basically empty shells with great valuations and no one left to water the plants.

Are we entering an era of smarter governments, nervous markets, and ghost-town startups? Let’s find out...

In today’s AI digest:

• Ottawa signs deal with Canadian AI startup Cohere to explore federal AI adoption 🇨🇦

• Palantir stock slides for a fifth straight session as investors cool on hot AI names 📉

• Silicon Valley’s AI deal frenzy leaves behind “zombie startups” stripped of talent 🧟

Read time: 5 minute

WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY

Canadian AI

Ottawa signs deal with Canadian AI startup Cohere to explore federal AI adoption 🇨🇦

(source: CTVnews)

🇨🇦 The Digest: Ottawa just slid into Cohere’s DMs with a memo of understanding—basically the government version of “let’s grab coffee.” The deal doesn’t involve cash (yet), but it signals Canada’s intent to bring Cohere’s sovereign AI into federal services. Translation: the feds want less paperwork, more chatbots, and hopefully fewer 300-page PDFs nobody reads.

Key Details:

🤝 Government + Startup = Slow Startup? – Ministers signed a non-binding agreement with Cohere to explore AI-powered tools. Think transcription for committee meetings, automated data workflows, and maybe even an AI that apologizes before saying “access denied.”

🛡️ Made in Canada, Eh – Cohere’s “sovereign AI” pitch is that your data stays in Canada—no detours through Silicon Valley or mysterious offshore servers. Very maple-syrup-core.

💸 Budget-Friendly… For Now – There’s no money tied to this deal yet. So far, it’s just bureaucrats and techies agreeing to talk. A little like promising to “study together” in college and hoping it leads to something real.

🌎 Flexing Canada’s AI Muscles – This move doubles as a PR play: Canada wants to show the world it’s not just hockey and Tim Hortons—it’s also AI exports, innovation, and very polite algorithms.

Why It Matters (and Why It’s Funny): If this sticks, you might one day call the CRA and be greeted not by 45 minutes of hold music, but by a Cohere-powered assistant that politely explains why your refund is “still processing, sorry.” Of course, with no funding yet, Ottawa’s still in the “let’s see where this goes” phase. It’s like dating—except instead of awkward small talk, it’s machine learning models and compliance frameworks. So yeah, Canada might finally get AI-powered government services. But let’s be real: if anyone can train an AI to say “sorry” more convincingly than a human, it’s us. 🍁🤖📑

Palantir

Palantir stock slides for a fifth straight session as investors cool on hot AI names 📉

(source: Investors)

📉 The Digest: Palantir’s stock is looking less like an AI rocket ship and more like a rollercoaster stuck on the downward slope. Shares slid for the fifth straight day, wiping away some of the hype that had investors treating it like the golden child of the AI boom. Translation: the AI glow-up doesn’t guarantee you’ll stay prom king forever.

Key Details:

💔 AI Hype Hangover – Palantir was riding the AI wave like a pro surfer last year. Now, investors are realizing that not every AI stock can be Nvidia—and this one might need a Red Bull to keep up.

📉 Five Days, One Mood – Consecutive daily losses aren’t just a dip, they’re a trend. At this point, Palantir’s stock chart looks like the ski slope your friend swore was “beginner level.”

🛑 Investor Cold Feet – Analysts say buyers are cooling on AI-heavy names as valuations start looking, well, too spicy. It’s like realizing your favorite restaurant charges $40 for pasta—and it’s just spaghetti with butter.

💸 Still Valuable, Just… Overpriced? – Palantir isn’t exactly doomed; it’s still cashing in on AI contracts. But the stock is starting to look more like a luxury handbag—expensive, coveted, and maybe not totally practical.

Why It Matters: The AI market is separating the true powerhouses from the “we-promise-we’re-an-AI-company-too” crowd. Palantir’s drop shows that investors want more than buzzwords and branding. Hype fades, but revenue and results stick around. So if you thought Palantir was the next Nvidia… let’s just say, right now it’s giving more “Nvidia’s little cousin who tried.” 🧠📉💔

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley’s AI deal frenzy leaves behind “zombie startups” stripped of talent 🧟

(source: CNBC)

🧟 The Digest (Zombie Valley Edition): Silicon Valley’s AI boom is producing fewer unicorns and way more zombies. Big Tech is on a feeding frenzy—poaching founders, buying out researchers, and leaving behind startups that technically exist but have all the life of a haunted WeWork. It’s giving “Walking Dead, but make it venture-backed” energy.

Key Highlights:

🧠 Brains, Brains, and Buyouts – Instead of acquiring whole startups, companies like Amazon and Meta are doing reverse acqui-hires—snapping up founders and engineers, then leaving the rest of the startup behind like a pizza crust no one wanted. Great news for the poached… not so much for the interns.

🦴 Covariant, the Skeleton Crew – Amazon scooped up talent from Covariant, once valued at over $600M, but left behind a legal husk of a company just to process licensing fees. Think “office with no employees, just a potted plant and a Gmail auto-reply.”

💸 VCs = The Angry Necromancers – Venture capitalists aren’t loving this trend. They wanted billion-dollar exits, but instead they’re watching their startups sell out early and morph into shell corps. It’s like betting on a marathon runner who stops at mile 3 to Uber home.

⚰️ Startup Culture, But Make It Corpse-Like – Once about disruption and passion, now many AI startups look like zombie shells shambling toward their next lawsuit. Innovation graveyard chic is officially in.

Why It Matters (and Why It’s Kinda Funny): Instead of the bold, scrappy energy that made Silicon Valley legendary, we’re getting empty shells where innovation goes to nap. Big Tech gets the talent, startups get hollowed out, and VCs get indigestion. The scary part? With all these zombie startups haunting the Valley, we might run out of actual risky, new ideas. The funny part? You can now walk into half of Palo Alto and accidentally end up in a ghost company whose only living employee is the office Roomba. So yeah—Silicon Valley’s next big hit isn’t “the trillion-dollar unicorn.” It’s “Zombie Startup Apocalypse: Now Streaming on Crunchyroll, poorly subtitled by ChatGPT.” 🧟💸👻

THE NOODLE LAB

AI Hacks & How-Tos

How to Use Parallel Web Systems for AI-Driven Web Research 🕸

The Digest: Parallel Web Systems provides powerful APIs crafted for AI agents to efficiently search, verify, and organize information from the web. These tools outperform both humans and other AI models like GPT‑5 in deep research tasks—ideal for developers building intelligent assistants or research workflows.

How-to:

1. Explore the Platform

   • Go to parallel.ai to learn about the Search and Deep Research APIs and sign up for access.

2. Choose the Right API

   • Search API is great for quick, factual queries with structured results.

   • Deep Research API handles complex, multi-step research tasks. Both are tuned for AI-first use. parallel.

3. Send a Simple Search Request

   curl -X POST "https://api.parallel.ai/alpha/search" \
     -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     -d '{
       "objective": "Current population of Tokyo?",
       "search_queries": ["Tokyo population", "how many people live in Tokyo"]
     }'
   

   You'll receive structured, ranked results ready for AI use.

4. Use Auto Mode for Deep Research
   If you need a full report:

   curl -X POST "https://api.parallel.ai/v1/tasks/runs" \
     -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     -d '{
       "input": "Provide a summary of climate policy changes in the EU since 2020.",
       "task_spec": { "output_schema": { "type": "auto" } }
     }'
   

   Parallel handles formatting and delivers well-structured insights.

5. Build Smarter AI Workflows
   Integrate Parallel APIs into your AI agents—perfect for tasks like gathering research, building datasets, or powering assistant tools with live web intelligence.

Trending AI Tools

• TuluAI – AI-powered platform preserving and teaching the Tulu language using proprietary LLMs.

• Vibecode – “Vibe codes” app ideas into live iPhone apps using natural language prompts.

• Parallel Web Systems – AI agents that autonomously gather, verify, and organize web info—smarter than ChatGPT‑5.

• Bud Runtime – Runs generative AI apps on CPUs affordably—no need for expensive GPUs.

• Marey by Moonvalley – Filmmaker-focused video generation that gives granular control—supports, not replaces, creators.