The Government of Canada announced on Tuesday $6.8 million in funding to help five organizations connected to Alberta improve productivity and commercialize AI.
Eleanor Olszewski, the minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, made the announcement on the opening day of Upper Bound, Edmonton’s largest AI conference.
Minister Eleanor Olszewski
“I think [Upper Bound’s] growth says a lot about our province, about Alberta, about Edmonton’s leadership in the AI sector.”
“This year marks a really important milestone for Upper Bound. It’s celebrating its fifth anniversary—and in just a few short years, it’s gone from a modest gathering to Canada’s fastest growing AI conference,” Olszewski said. “I think that growth says a lot about our province, about Alberta, about Edmonton’s leadership in the AI sector.”
The funding comes through the Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative (RAII), a $200-million federal program aimed at assisting small and medium-sized businesses in developing, adopting, and scaling AI technologies across vital sectors like agriculture, cleantech, healthcare, and manufacturing.
The University of Alberta received the lion’s share of the funding, with the feds injecting $3 million in non-repayable funding for the university’s Canadian AI Compute Vault (CAICV), an initiative developing and delivering sovereign, high-performance compute infrastructure to accelerate AI technologies.
The other four recipients all received repayable funding, meaning they must repay part or all of the federal investment at a certain time or based on certain milestone outcomes. Those recipients include:
- Darkhorse Emergency, an Edmonton-based analytics company working in the public safety and emergency services sector, which received $1 million to expand its platform and to “optimize risk analysis and resource allocation in emergency response management services for fire and emergency departments.”
- Localintel, a location intelligence company, received $500,000 to commercialize its Location Intelligence Content Platform. The platform uses location data to create branded content for economic development organizations and municipalities.
- Ntwist, a company that uses AI in the industrial mining sector to propel decision making, predict outcomes, automate planning and reduce energy use, which received $1 million to accelerate commercialization and marketplace adoption of its platform.
- Vertical City, a company integrating AI into residential elevator and lobby screen networks for improved communication, which received $1.3 million to scale its software for a global market expansion. The company has a footprint in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.
Olszewski claimed the funding announced today will support roughly 70 jobs in Alberta.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy of Jesse Cole for BetaKit.