Twenty-three Québec-led projects will receive almost $100 million in combined public-private funding.
Scale AI, Canada’s federally-funded global innovation cluster for artificial intelligence (AI), is providing $31.7-million in funding across 23 Québec-led AI projects as Canada’s AI Minister describes the country to be in a “crisis moment.”
The announcement was made at Scale AI’s offices during a Startupfest tech event with AI Minister Evan Solomon in attendance. Supported projects are implementing AI in cases ranging from aircraft maintenance scheduling to sorting immunological data.
“Countries that master AI will dominate the future, you’re either part of the bulldozer or you’re part of the road.”
Evan Solomon
The financed projects are backed by a two-to-one ratio of private investment to public funds, which Scale AI said helps de-risk major innovation projects. This brings the cumulative value of the projects close to $100 million. Onstage, Solomon said the money was meant to address a “crisis moment” and warned that if Canada did not support its innovators, there will not be a Canadian economy of the future.
The sentiment echoed remarks by Scale AI board co-chair Hélène Desmarais just a few minutes earlier.
“If we are the masters of our own AI destiny, our data, infrastructure, and talent, we are masters of our own future,” Solomon said. “We are not going to be passive consumers, we are not going to [be a] branch plant, we are not going to rent out our talent so we’re the farm team for another country to pick off our best and brightest.”
A project led by Québec City-based applied AI startup Coveo received $4.5 million from Scale AI, the most out of the batch, to enhance e-commerce search, recommendation, and product catalogue automation systems. Alongside partners IVADO Labs, which shares an office building with Scale AI, and hardware retailers Lee Valley Tools and Canac-Marquis Grenier, the $16.1 million effort is built to automate descriptions in product catalogues, enable visual search for lookalike products, and improve search interpretation through intent detection.
Not to be confused with the Silicon Valley-based data annotation company of the same name, Scale AI’s role as a global innovation cluster is to drive the adoption of AI-powered solutions across sectors, boost AI and digital literacy, and help Canadian AI startups scale and commercialize using funding from the federal and Québec governments.
Canada is well positioned to play a leading role in AI thanks to its research talents, Desmarais said at the funding announcement, noting a departure from the historical norm.
“For several decades, the trend has been for Canada to fall behind in technology adoption, therefore economically jeopardizing its prosperity and independence,” Desmarais said. “We need Canada to draw up an AI action plan that is as ambitious as it is realistic, serving people, our needs, our values, and our principles”
Prime Minister Mark Carney kickstarted his recently formed government with a mandate letter calling on ministers in his new cabinet to make more use of AI. Solomon has since been on a tour pitching the government’s renewed vision and focus on the tech, as well as getting in front of people to announce government funding commitments that support its development.
“Our mission at the Ministry of AI and Digital Innovation is to move very quickly, but anchored in our values,” Solomon said at Scale AI. “Countries that master AI will dominate the future, you’re either part of the bulldozer or you’re part of the road. We cannot be left behind.”
Following his remarks, BetaKit asked Solomon if the recent wave of Canadian AI companies shutting down or being acquired by foreign companies was cause for concern or increased support. Solomon said there’s no doubt foreign companies would target Canadian talent, and that part of the government’s job is to create frameworks that help anchor companies in the country.
“We are always always concerned about Canadian sovereignty and keeping our data and talent here, but I do think we’ve taken steps through our clusters like Scale AI and our compute program to make sure there is a rational and incentivized reason to stay here and get investment here.”
With files from Douglas Soltys. Feature image courtesy Douglas Soltys for BetaKit.