The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that to understand the scale of Ottawa's recent pledge to invest up to $1.6-billion to own part of Toronto AI company Cohere Inc., consider that the amount is more than three times the size of the proposed $500-million Canadian Tech Growth Fund, which will provide promising companies with financing. The Globe's Murad Hemmadi and Joe Castaldo write that it is also more than the $1-billion federal program called the AI Compute Access Fund and it's almost as much money as the $1.75-billion Ottawa has budgeted to boost Canadian venture capital funding as a whole. The federal government's direct investment in seven-year-old Cohere -- unprecedented for a single private tech company -- has kicked off a debate among tech founders and policy experts about sovereignty, and how best to support the country's AI sector. There are still unknowns about the deal. Jim Balsillie, chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators and former co-chief executive officer of BlackBerry, said, "This has red flags all over it." Neither Cohere nor the Canada Development Investment Corp. directly answered questions about whether the deal gives Ottawa a board seat or veto rights over a potential sale.