In a fancy Toronto hotel on Wednesday, Canadian investor John Ruffolo introduced me to Martin Basiri, a young immigrant and entrepreneur who just raised $40 million in seed funding for his second startup. In 2021, his first one became one of the country’s 21 "unicorns."

Why it matters: Canada may have famous tech companies like Blackberry and Shopify, but its startup and venture capital industry remains relatively small, fragmented and timid.

• While he’d be a common occurrence in Silicon Valley, Basiri is a rare successful serial entrepreneur in Canada.

Zooming in: I spent the week picking the brains of various Canadian VCs about the state of their industry. My takeaways:

• Fragmentation: Canada’s startup hubs tend to keep to themselves. Even English-speaking markets like Toronto and Vancouver aren’t as integrated as they could be, investors admit.
• Small and young: Modern American VC goes back several decades, but Canada's was born in the 21st century (at least according to investors I spoke with). Even its most established firms like Inovia Capital and Real Ventures are less than 20 years old, and not immune to challenges.
• Government LPs: Various government entities invest in Canadian venture funds, and while they can help emerging managers get off the ground, the benefit-detriment ratio remains unclear. Notably, these investment programs tend to be aimed at economic development, and thus come with mandates that the funds invest locally (or at least have a partner based in a particular location).
• U.S. inspiration: Especially in the English-speaking startup hubs, there’s a clear desire to emulate at least some parts of the American VC industry. A number of investors have spent part of their careers as investors or startup founders in Silicon Valley, and now try to run their firms in many of the same ways — including seeking out nongovernment capital, and advising entrepreneurs to travel to California and New York for fundraising and networking.

Between the lines: Canada's proximity to the U.S. is both a benefit and a detriment.

• Top Canadian startups can easily hop on a plane to fundraise from American investors, while Canadian VCs can do the same to invest in American startups — instead of being limited to their country's market.
• But it does also create more competition for Canadian VCs. And Canadian startups may have a harder time getting the attention of U.S. investors, who are already inundated with local companies clamoring for their capital.

The bottom line: Many believe their country's venture industry needs to get more ambitious and up its game.

Despite being headquartered in Toronto with a big office in San Francisco, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez is most impressed with the U.K.'s current efforts around artificial intelligence regulation, he tells Axios.

Why it matters: Governments around the world are racing to figure out AI regulations, while companies and other experts are working overtime to shape their direction.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity:

Your investors include companies like Oracle, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures — do those deals come with more than cash? Are you getting cloud credits, priority for Nvidia's chips, etc.?

Fundamentally, it is like a traditional investment. And obviously it's amazing to have a close relationship with those organizations because sometimes you get prioritized or able to work better together.

But when it comes to chips or compute [resources], we don't get free chips. And we don't get to jump the line. So when there's a compute crunch, like everyone else, we're waiting for those chips to land. And we can't just call up so-and-so and ask them to front run us. It doesn't work like that, unfortunately — or fortunately. I'm glad that there's not that skipping-the-line feature.

But we do get a close relationship with the organization. Collaboration is extremely deep. The trust is deep because they're our investors — they're financially incentivized to help us succeed.

You're headquartered in Toronto — what role does being here play for the company? Have you ever considered having the company elsewhere?

I think we have considered it for sure.... I will always make the decision that is best for Cohere, wherever Cohere will flourish ... and right now, I think that's Canada and Toronto. Strategically, it's important because there's the Vector Institute here, which is like our AI research hub. It just pumps out world-class talent, which are some of the scarcest talent on the planet. Being right next to that, having a close relationship with the professors there, in the ecosystem, it's strategically advantageous for Cohere.

But I will say, we're not just a Canadian company — the majority of the leadership team is from the States. We have a big presence in San Francisco, also a huge presence in London. I'm British; Martin Kon, our president, is British. So it's a very global company.

What regulation and guardrails are you looking for?

I would love to see clear guardrails and guidelines. Right now the state of regulation ... the picture is so fuzzy.

I think it should be a human right to know whether the content you're consuming is machine-generated or human-generated. Am I talking to a human? Or am I talking to a bot? You should not be able to impersonate a human with a bot.

Plant-based faux salmon could be ready for fine dining soon.

The intrigue: New School Foods, a Toronto-based startup developing plant-based protein alternatives, invited a few journalists to a fancy dinner on Wednesday featuring its fish alternative.

The details: Guests were served an eight-course meal, with four dishes that included New School’s plant-based salmon prepared three ways: seared, oven-roasted and in lemon juice ceviche-style.

Zooming in: As Axios Pro’s Megan Hernbroth noted in February, New School Foods’ process “includes freezing a plant-based gelatin block from the bottom up to create pre-measured icicle channels that are then filled with the alternative protein replacement.”

My take: The faux salmon was fairly impressive. Its texture was fish-like, it had a salmon-y taste, and it played nicely with the garnishes and seasonings in the various dishes.

• The ceviche's consistency most impressed me, especially since, according to the company, the product isn’t meant to be eaten raw.

Yes, but: It’s not quite there.

• The company is still working on getting it to “flake” in the same way real salmon does (it had a firmness more like tuna, in my opinion). And the taste was a bit faint for me when compared to real salmon.

Flashback: The company recently raised $12 million in seed funding led by Lever VC, with Blue Horizon, Hatch, Good Startup and Alwyn Capital also participating. It also has grant funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada and Protein Industries Canada.

What's next: The company will continue to tweak its salmon, and says it expects to roll out the product in restaurants first.

• Canada wants in on the startup boom (Axios)
• U.S. H1-B visa holders targeted by Canada's new immigration program (Forbes)
• ApplyBoard founder raises $40 million for startup Passage to finance immigrants to Canada (The Globe and Mail)

In lieu of trivia this week, if you've watched the recently released "Blackberry" movie, send me your thoughts on it!

• My thought bubble: One surprising refrain I heard all week was how poor data collection on the Canadian VC industry really is, at least in investors' views. So take the above with a grain of salt.