Canada’s artificial intelligence (AI) cluster Scale AI has announced that it is investing a cumulative $17.2 million across 12 projects dedicated to scaling the adoption of AI in supply chains.
Contributions from the private sector bring the money invested in the Scale AI projects to about $50 million.
Among the companies to receive funding for the projects are D-Wave Systems, Mimik, Moov AI, Coveo, and Canada Drives.
D-Wave is working with Save-On-Foods, ThoughtsWin Systems, White Box Analytics, OpsGuru, and Deloitte (with $2.8 million from Scale AI) to develop a demand forecasting model for product placements and pricing. An optimization algorithm will also automate scheduling of ecommerce deliveries.
Also with $2 million from Scale AI, Mimik teamed up with Flybits, TD Bank Group, and Toronto Metropolitan University to create a data ecosystem and predictive solution to help businesses with supply chain disruptions.
Other projects include The Dal-ia, securing $2.4 million. Led by Logibec with partners CHUM, Moov AI and the Canadian Chair in Analytics and Logistics in Healthcare, Dal-ia aims to create a solution that prevents inventory run-out in hospitals through improved consumption forecasting of more than 50,000 essential products.
Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne noted that Canada is home to over 50 multinational AI research centres, nearly 1,000 AI startups, and thousands of top researchers.
RELATED: Scale AI moves to scale supply chain AI startups with new funding, partnerships
The Government of Canada launched Scale AI with $230 million in funding in 2018. An additional $53.4 million was also granted by the Québec government.
As one of the country’s five Innovation Superclusters Initiative (recently rebranded to Global Innovation Clusters), Scale AI invests in Canadian businesses to develop next-generation supply chains and promote Canada’s leadership in applied artificial intelligence.
Canada’s other innovation clusters are Digital Technologies, Protein Industries, Advanced Manufacturing, and Ocean Industries.
Following Canada’s Superclusters lobbying the government last year for more capital, the federal government allocated a $60 million top-up over two years to the Innovation Superclusters Initiative as part of budget 2021.
In this year’s budget, the five-year-old program was extended with an additional $750 million over six years and rebranded to ‘Canada’s Global Innovation Clusters.”
With Scale AI, the government estimates that its investments will add $16.5 billion to Canada’s economy, while creating 16,000 new high-skill jobs.
By the end of fiscal year 2022 to 2023, Scale AI said its own investments paired with contributions from the private sector will exceed $500 million.
Most recently, Scale AI announced that it was doling out $24 million to support five AI projects in April. At that time, Scale AI also established its partnership with MaRS to support the commercialization of 12 Canadian supply chain solutions AI startups.
Featured image from Arno Senoner via Unsplash.