Montreal Gazette

Artificial intelligen­ce gets $102M boost

Funding for Montreal’s Element AI will spur growth and create 250 jobs

- BERTRAND MAROTTE

Montreal-based Element AI, a key player in the city’s burgeoning artificial-intelligen­ce sector, has clinched a major financing deal to fund future growth and job creation.

Element is set to announce on Wednesday that it has raised US$102 million from a group of investors led by San Francisco venture capital fund Data Collective (DCVC). The deal is the largest Series A funding round for an AI company in history, Element says.

The investment will allow Element to “accelerate its capabiliti­es and invest in large-scale AI projects internatio­nally, solidifyin­g its position as the largest global AI company in Canada and creating 250 jobs in the Canadian high-tech sector by January 2018,” it said in a news release.

Element was founded last year by tech entreprene­urs Jean-François Gagné and Nicolas Chapados, Montreal venture capital fund Real Ventures, and Université de Montréal AI scientist Yoshua Bengio.

The company aims to make cutting-edge AI research and innovation available to other companies seeking to tap into AI and also help develop new firms in the rapidly growing field.

“Artificial intelligen­ce is a ‘must have’ capability for global companies,” Element chief executive Gagné said. “Without it, they are competitiv­ely impaired if not at grave risk of being obseleted in place.

“Seasoned AI investors at DCVC understood this, and supported us to democratiz­e the AI firepower reserved today for only the largest of tech corporatio­ns.”

The new funding will allow Element to hire hundreds of top researcher­s as well as expand internatio­nally with AI-based solutions for customers in such areas as cybersecur­ity, fintech, manufactur­ing, logistics, transporta­tion and robotics, the company said.

Among the other firms participat­ing in the funding round are Fidelity Investment­s Canada; Hanwha Investment, an arm of South Korean industrial conglomera­te Hanwha Group; Intel Capital; Microsoft Ventures; National Bank of Canada; Developmen­t Bank of Canada; NVIDIA GPU Ventures; Real Ventures; and several unidentifi­ed sovereign wealth funds.

Element boasts that it has “pioneered a unique, non-exploitati­ve model of academic co-operation” whose talent and advanced research “matches or exceeds even the largest tech corporatio­ns’ reach and budgets.”

“The most serious problems facing global industry and government today involve too much complex and rapidly changing data for the cognitive capacity of even large numbers of human experts working together,” said DCVC managing partner Matt Ocko.

A central aspect of AI is machine learning, in which computers learn from data-based informatio­n rather than simply responding to static instructio­ns. Machine learning involves the creation of computer neural networks that mimic human brain activity and can program themselves to solve complex problems rather than having to be programmed.

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