Canada's largest pension funds have reported weak private equity performance for 2025, but consultant Alexander Beath argues the poor results may reflect flawed benchmarking rather than actual underperformance. Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan recorded a 5.3% loss on its PE portfolio, whilst Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System saw a 2.5% loss. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec's buyout portfolio returned just 2.3%, missing its benchmark by over 10 percentage points. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan gained 0.6%, whilst Alberta Investment Management Corporation's PE portfolio returned 3%. Beath contends these pensions measure PE performance against benchmarks heavily weighted towards large-cap stocks, particularly the Magnificent Seven, which saw massive 2025 returns. This makes PE appear worse by comparison, despite industry-wide headwinds from slow dealmaking and valuation declines.

Cohere, a Canadian AI firm, has raised $500 million, resulting in a $6.8 billion valuation. The funding round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with contributions from AMD Ventures, Nvidia, PSP Investments, Salesforce Ventures, and the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. The funds will accelerate the development of agentic AI products. Joelle Pineau, formerly of Meta, will join as chief AI officer, and Francois Chadwick will become chief financial officer.