Glossary

The words to understand what comes next.

Clear definitions of the technical, financial, and policy terms used in Canadian tech.

Glossary results

Finance

Annual recurring revenue from subscription-style contracts.

Definition and context

Definition: ARR stands for annual recurring revenue. It is a common metric for software and services businesses that sell repeatable contracts and want to show the expected revenue run-rate over a year.
Why it matters: ARR is a shorthand for scale and retention, but it only matters if the underlying revenue is durable and collectible.
Aliases: annual recurring revenue
Related topics: SaaS · Enterprise revenue · Growth quality

Hardware

A chip designed for one narrow task instead of general-purpose computing.

Definition and context

Definition: ASIC stands for application-specific integrated circuit. It is built to do one job extremely well, which usually means better performance, lower power use, and tighter cost control than a general-purpose chip.
Why it matters: ASICs matter when a company needs predictable throughput and economics at scale, especially in AI infrastructure, telecom, and industrial systems.
Aliases: application-specific integrated circuit · custom chip
Related topics: AI infrastructure · Semiconductor strategy · Compute efficiency