Canada’s artificial intelligence (AI) Global Innovation Cluster, Scale AI, will be investing $31.3 million across 22 projects looking to incorporate AI into various industries.
François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, announced the funding at the Pre-All In Discussions in Ottawa this week, a Scale AI event for discussing AI in the Canadian economy.
The selected projects look to apply AI in many different areas, from supply chains to healthcare, and were selected for their potential to deliver economic and intellectual property advancements. Alongside partner participation, Scale AI says the projects represent a total investment of $96 million.
Based in Montréal and funded by the federal and Québec governments, Scale AI says it works with more than 500 industry partners, research institutes, and AI players to develop programs that support investments in real-world AI applications.
Scale AI’s largest investment of this group is $3.5 million in NavTrax, an AI-enabled forklift automation and collision-avoidance system. Spearheaded by Foxfire Labs, the $8.8-million project looks to retrofit manual forklifts with an AI-driven plug-and-play kit that would transform the machines into semi-autonomous vehicles.
The largest overall investment is in Aéroports de Montréal’s (ADM) AI Ramp Fluidity project, with Scale AI providing $1.7 million of the total $17.6 million project value. ADM, which is responsible for the management of Montréal’s airports, alongside partners IVADO Labs and Groupe Infynia, is looking to alleviate airport traffic congestion using AI to provide real-time congestion data and predictive analytics tools.
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Montréal-headquartered Plusgrade, which was reportedly taken over by New York-based private equity firm General Atlantic in March, is receiving $2.5 million from Scale AI for its “pricing and room assignment optimization” project for the cruise and hospitality industries. The upselling platform is looking to “advance its upgrade bidding system” in the cruise industry by leveraging AI algorithms to match bids with available rooms. The system is meant to present customers with upgrade options tailored to their preferences and their likelihood of acceptance.
Last month, AlayaCare received $1.1 million to integrate AI into its health records platform from Canada’s Global Innovation Cluster for digital technologies. Now, the startup has also received $1 million from Scale AI to use machine learning, large-language models, and schedule-optimization algorithms to stretch how many visits home care workers can make in a day.
Scale AI committed amounts ranging from $200,000 to $3 million for the remaining projects. These included projects using AI to optimize airplane de-icing operations, retail store planograms, and delivery routes.
All projects supported by Scale AI can be found here.
Feature image courtesy Scale AI via LinkedIn.
