Canadian AI company raises historic amount of funding

Canada has developed into an artificial intelligence (AI) research powerhouse, and it isn't slowing down any time soon if new reports are any indication. Element AI, a Montreal-based AI company focused on enterprise solutions, announced that it has raised USD102 million (CAD137.5 million) in its first round of venture capital funding, the largest for any AI company in history. The funding will be used to ramp up research, accelerate enterprise AI adoption, invest in large-scale AI projects globally, and create 250 new jobs in the Canadian high tech sector by January 2018. "As we've been launching the business in the last year, we've been overwhelmed by the positive feedback and the level of interest in the market for the services we're working on," CEO and co-founder Jean-François Gagné tells IT World Canada. "We received funding from large corporations and startups across the globe and we're going to use this to scale up our business and work on new projects."