Leaders at OpenAI say the company wants to grow its presence in Canada and potentially play a role in the country’s efforts to build sovereign AI.
In an interview with BetaKit, OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane and senior advisor of global affairs Dev Saxena said they see plenty of room for the American artificial intelligence (AI) giant to grow in Canada.
“[Canada] is obviously a place that any AI company would be interested in.”
While the large-language model (LLM) developer does not have an office north of the border, Lehane and Saxena said OpenAI already has a “pretty significant presence” in the country, lots of Canadian developers building on its platform, and many working with its Silicon Valley team on AI research.
“There’s a lot of Blue Jays shirts this week in our office in San Francisco,” Lehane quipped, while Saxena noted that this group has been vocal about Canada’s importance and is “very eager to contribute back home.”
Lehane, who spoke with BetaKit yesterday ahead of his appearance at Elevate Festival’s AI-focused opening night, hinted that an office north of the border could be in the cards at some point, but did not provide specifics. “Stay tuned,” was all he said.
“As we begin to think about what our presence is going to look like globally, given the [AI] talent pool here, [Canada] is obviously a place that any AI company would be interested in,” Lehane said. “That’s part of the reason we’re having conversations here.”
Lehane noted that the company spoke with Canadian AI minister Evan Solomon earlier this week and has been meeting with other public and private sector leaders as part of a push to figure out what role OpenAI could play in Canada’s efforts to build sovereign AI.
“A big part of what we’re doing right now is listening and learning from those folks,” he said.
Geopolitical and trade tensions with the United States have spurred countries like Canada to pursue digital sovereignty across AI and the cloud. Earlier this year, Solomon told BetaKit that “sovereignty does not mean solitude,” indicating that he anticipates that Canada will need to work with foreign companies and partner with other countries to build out its AI sector.
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The shape of Canada’s strategy will be determined partly by an AI task force that has just embarked on a 30-day sprint.
Lehane said OpenAI is trying to figure out how it can help bolster Canada’s efforts, and stressed that the company would like to be a “constructive partner.”
“From minerals and metals through to energy generation and transmission into the data centre, into AI model training through to application diffusion—that’s one of the most complex and expensive value chains in history,” Saxena argued. “No country can do that end to end.”
Saxena said he sees this moment as an opportunity for Canada to determine where exactly in that value chain the country wants to play and then identify foreign partners that can help export some of those capabilities and build up its domestic capacity in other areas.
Lehane noted Canada is one of the birthplaces of AI, and said he thinks the country is in a strong position to play a leadership role in the future of the technology. He said Canada has a few key competitive advantages: strong AI talent, access to energy, and capital. Lehane said every country is struggling with the two other pieces of the puzzle: data and chips.
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OpenAI is interested in securing data centre capacity in Canada to support its operations here. That could mean building infrastructure or serving as an initial tenant for developers that require commitments from clients.
For now, OpenAI’s work in Canada has included partnering with Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify to allow merchants to sell directly through ChatGPT.
OpenAI is also contending with a copyright lawsuit from major Canadian publishers, including The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, that it has argued ought to be heard in the US. Lehane would not comment on the suit but acknowledged that “everyone recognizes that these are really important issues to get right.” He added that the company has been working to identify win-win models and strike partnerships with publishers.
OpenAI announced two Canadian partnerships this week. It’s teaming up with local accelerator Creative Destruction Lab to help domestic charities and non-profits adopt AI, and working with the Vancouver Board of Trade to make OpenAI’s AI certification program available to the organization’s members. Simultaneously, the company revealed that ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly active users worldwide.
“That’s not the end of the story,” Lehane said. “It is probably the prologue to what we hope will be a much longer story here.”
Feature image courtesy Elevate. Photo by Brandon Ferguson Media.