Canada's Element AI, publicly launched in October, announced today it has raised US$102 million in an outsized Series A financing round seen by experts as a sign that artificial intelligence is ready to solve real-world business problems. The young Montreal-based company, whose staff of AI engineers collaborates with academic AI researchers, offers consulting services to businesses and also plans to co-found AI startups in the future. With founders that include Yoshua Bengio, co-founder and director of the prominent Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), Element AI's big fundraising debut reinforces Canada's claims as a competitive hub in the global development of AI technology. The startup's early trove of capital came from a roster of some of the most active investors in AI. The round was led by Data Collective, joined by Intel Capital, Nvidia, and Microsoft Ventures.

Humanyze has rolled out Wyze, its flagship product that is designed to measure social interactions and improve teamwork and processes in companies. BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Humanyze, the global leader in people analytics technology, announced 4M in Series A financing today from Romulus Capital. The announcement comes as Humanyze rolls out the first of its kind Wyze people analytics platform to its strong Fortune 500 customer base in the US and industry leaders in Japan with the goal of making large corporations more agile and accurate about their most valuable resource (people), and to make these same people more in control of their performance and improvement. "Our customers – which include the largest multinationals and consulting firms – are investing heavily in technology and personnel to make full use of our data-driven people analytics platform. Employees are almost universally opting in as they see the individual benefits. These additional resources from Romulus provide us strong footing to support new customers and grow with them over the long term," Humanyze CEO Ben Waber said.