Condo Investment Insights

While speaking at Shopify’s annual conference in Toronto a few weeks ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got in some trouble for a few choice words. His mistake? Calling for Canada to have “a little more swagger” when promoting its homegrown innovations on the global stage. The rival Conservative Party jumped on his comments, openly criticizing him. In response, Shopify’s CEO penned an op-ed in The Globe and Mail defending Trudeau’s remarks.

While this might sound like mild drama, the sentiment comes at a time when global giants are already noticing Canada’s rapid growth within certain high-tech sectors, and specifically those related to artificial intelligence. An influx of talent and capital, combined with public-private programs, has helped Toronto become an AI hub for innovation ranging from retail to healthcare.

Last year, Google invested $5 million in the Vector Institute, an AI lab based at the University of Toronto that’s already received more than $150 million in funds. In January, hometown hero BlackBerry began its pivot from making phones to creating technology for self-driving cars. And late last month, Samsung announced plans to open an R&D hub for AI focused on healthcare.

In total, PwC Canada found 2017 to be a record year for AI investments, with startups raising $191 million. And in the first quarter of 2018, PwC Canada found that investments in Canadian AI companies increased 88 percent year over year, with eight deals totaling $83 million.

“Canada and Toronto have amazing opportunities right now,” said Janet Bannister, a partner with VC firm Real Ventures who moved from Silicon Valley back to her home country. “This is our time to shine on the global stage, and I just want to make sure that we as a country, we as a city take advantage of that—and we’ll look back in 20 years and see this section as a turning point.”

At the epicenter of much of the recent growth is the MaRS Discovery District. The 1.5 million-square-foot facility houses hundreds of startups across a variety of industries—along with a broader “MaRS ecosystem” that includes more than 100 AI and machine-learning ventures ranging from health and clean tech to financial tech and enterprise. That includes Uber’s first non-U.S. facility for researching autonomous cars; Borealis AI, an academic AI research institute for the Royal Bank of Canada; the AI startup incubator, Element AI; and the Vector Institute itself.

Original link: https://www.adweek.com/digital/how-toronto-became-a-global-powerhouse-for-artificial-intelligence-for-startups-and-giants/