Montreal’s already bustling artificial intelligence industry got another boost on Tuesday as three foreign companies announced plans to open Montreal offices.
During a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Theatre St-James, Investissement Quebec and Montreal International said Montreal has become an attractive place for an investment due to its strong economy.
The three companies involved are software firms Winning Minds, Quantum Black and Bioss. Representatives for the companies said Montreal has become Canada’s AI capitol. In the past few years, the Universite de Montreal has become a major source of AI research under the guidance of pioneer Yoshua Bengio. Companies such as Google and Facebook have both announced donations to labs at UdeM and McGill to fund research into artificial intelligence.
Bengio said Tuesday’s announcement would mean hundreds of new jobs in the sector, a far cry from when he began his work in the 1980s.
“The kind of AI research I’ve been doing was something happening mostly in academia,” he said. “It’s only about six years ago that industry started paying attention and then it accelerated. Now, it’s really crazy.”
