Québec’s leading AI institute says it’s in the early stages of creating a potential venture capital (VC) fund to turn more of its research output into commercial ventures.
Montréal-based Mila has brought on Jonathan Shaanan, the managing director of Couche-Tard’s corporate VC operation, as a strategic advisor to help develop the fund.
“Our goal is to amplify the number of startups emerging from Mila’s extraordinary pool of talent, while ensuring that as many of them as possible are built here in Canada.”
Shaanan announced in a LinkedIn post that he was joining Mila as Circle K Ventures winds down. According to that post, Stéphane Marceau, Mila’s general manager of venture AI initiatives, and Alex Shee, Mila’s entrepreneur-in-residence, are also leading the initiative.
“Mila is entering a new era where commercialization is a higher priority, alongside its top-tier research,” Shaanan wrote. “As part of this shift, I will be driving the creation of its own venture fund. It is still early days, but things are moving quickly and I hope to share more details soon.”
Created in 2020, Circle K Ventures said it had deployed more than half of an initial $100 million into companies such as grocery delivery startup Food Rocket, which shut down in 2023, and Jackpocket, which was acquired by sports betting company DraftKings last year.
“Venture investing comes with inherent volatility, and in today’s market environment, ACT’s shareholders are understandably focused on more predictable returns. As a result, the decision was made to wind down the fund,” Shaanan wrote. BetaKit has reached out to Couche-Tard for comment.
Shaanan, who was previously an early-stage technology investor at government-backed BDC Capital, said the Mila fund is still in “exploration,” so details about fund size or investment targets have not been finalized.
Marceau told BetaKit in an email that informal conversations have made clear “there’s strong interest from strategic partners in a potential Mila fund.”
Marceau claimed that more than 50 startups linked to Mila have raised over $100 million in recent years, with just “one and a half people” managing support for startups. “We think now is the time to focus and scale this activity,” he wrote.
There has been interest from several VCs, including some in the United States who want to “get closer to the Mila community,” Marceau said. Some American VCs have invested in Mila students right after they published their doctoral theses, he claimed. He said these students plan to build companies in the US “following the guidance of their American investors.”
“Our goal is to amplify the number of startups emerging from Mila’s extraordinary pool of talent, while ensuring that as many of them as possible are built here in Canada,” he wrote.
RELATED: New era at Mila as Hugo Larochelle named scientific director
While tech talent draining to the US has long been a concern, worries have intensified recently among some Canadian investors and startup CEOs. New data from Toronto VC firm Leaders Fund found a sharp decline in the share of Canadian-headquartered “high-potential” startups compared to just a few years ago. Concurrently, Canadian tech leaders have advocated for immigration policy to draw tech and AI talent away from the US.
The interest in a venture fund comes during a new era for Mila, which was founded in 1993 by Turing Award winner and leading computer scientist Yoshua Bengio. Hugo Larochelle, an adjunct professor at the Université de Montréal and the former head of Montréal’s Google Brain research lab, was appointed last month as Mila’s new scientific director.
Larochelle told BetaKit he wants the non-profit institute to be more “ambitious.” His priorities are maintaining Mila’s high research quality, helping members commercialize their work, and supporting the creation of new startups.
According to Marceau, Mila’s “most powerful leverage point” is helping its AI scientists become “venture scientists” by turning their scientific advances into world-class companies.
Since its founding, Mila has grown into a joint initiative between leading academic institutions in Québec, including Université de Montréal and McGill University. Mila and its sister organizations, Toronto’s Vector Institute and Edmonton’s Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, are funded by the federal government through the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy.
The institute also serves as a research hub for industry partners, including Canadian startups Protexxa and AbCellera. Enterprise AI startup Cohere’s new chief AI scientist, Joelle Pineau, is a core academic member at Mila.
Feature image courtesy BrainBox AI.