ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Artificial intelligence is a fast-growing field, especially here in Montréal. From leading research centres and burgeoning startups to specialized units for multi-national corporations, the city is a hotbed for machine learning.
The sheer numbers are impressive. Montréal’s AI ecosystem includes 15,000 experts, 11,000 students and more than 300 researchers who account for the highest concentration of deep learning researchers in the world. Nearly 80,000 other locals work in AI-related fields, adding to the potential for cross-sector innovation and application of deep learning.
Investing in the future
Major investments are ensuring that the field will keep advancing in Montréal. The Province of Québec has provided $100 million in funding to Québec’s AI cluster of connected organizations and research centres and another $40 million to the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. The Canada First Research Excellence Fund gave $93.5 million to the Université de Montréal and $84 million to McGill University to support their AI projects.
Even private firms are investing here, with Google donating $4.5 million to MILA and Microsoft injecting $135 million into Element AI.
Industry, research and thought leadership
With a critical mass of AI experts, Montréal has been chosen as the homebase for AI clusters, research centres and specialized divisions of world-class companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Amazon and more. Hundreds of innovative startups and incubators are at their sides, pushing the boundaries of what machine learning can do.
Industrial clusters
- SCALE AI – Canada’s AI supply chain supercluster
- Intelligence Artificielle Québec
Research centres and chairs
- MILA – The Montréal Institute of Learning Algorithms - A 90,000 square-foot AI district inaugurated in January 2019
- School of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
- IVADO – Institute for Data Valorization
- CIRRELT – The Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation
- GERAD – Group for Research in Decision Analysis
- Canada Excellence Research Chair in Data Science for Real-Time Decision-Making
Startups
- Element AI – $135 million in funding
- Hopper – $130 million in funding
- Mnubo – $17 million in funding
- Algolux – $13 million in funding
- AUTOMAT – $11 million in funding
Incubators and accelerators
- Techstars Montreal AI
- Creative Destruction Lab – HEC Montréal
- FounderFuel
- McGill Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship
- Centech – ÉTS
- Next AI – HEC Montréal
- TandemLaunch
Leading the way in AI ethics
In December 2018, more than 500 people signed the Montréal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence, an ethical framework that promotes a progressive and inclusive approach to AI development.
Past and upcoming events
- International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL) June 17 to 21, 2019
- International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM) July 2 to 5, 2019
- World Summit AI for the Americas 2019, 2020, 2021
- International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2021