Canadian startup Element AI will open an office in Singapore later this year which will also serve as a regional hub for Southeast Asia
The Element AI team
Element AI, a Canadian startup offering artificial intelligence solutions to enterprises, has raised US$102M in Series A funding from a slew of investors, including Chinese internet major Tencent Holdings and Korean VC firm Hanwha Investment.
The round, led by US-based Data Collective Venture Capital (DCVC), also saw participation from Fidelity Investments Canada, Intel Capital, Microsoft Ventures, National Bank of Canada, Development Bank of Canada (BDC), NVIDIA, Real Ventures, in addition to several of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.
With this funding, Element AI will accelerate its capabilities and invest in large‐scale AI projects internationally. It also plans to open offices in Japan, Korea and Singapore to expand in the Asian market, with its first Asia office in Japan during the third quarter to target the local market. The second office will be opened later in the year in Singapore, which will also serve as a regional hub for Southeast Asia.
In addition, Element AI will aggressively focus on expanding AI‐powered solutions for its customers in cybersecurity, manufacturing, logistics and transportation, and robotics.
Element AI was founded in 2016 by entrepreneur Jean-François Gagné and leading AI researcher Yoshua Bengio. The startup offers products and services that address all the AI needs of an organisation — from strategic roadmapping and ready-to-deploy applications to implementation of transformative business solutions through its AI as a Service (AIaaS) platform.
Together with Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (MILA), one of the three leading centres of AI research in the world, Element AI developed a non‐exploitative model of academic cooperation, which has now been replicated to many other institutes. This model provides Element AI with insight, talent, and cutting‐edge research that matches tech corporations’ reach and budgets.
Also Read: Artificial Intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent
“Artificial Intelligence is a ‘must have’ capability for global companies,” said CEO Gagné. “Without it, they are competitively impaired if not at grave risk of being obsoleted in place. This historic round will help Element AI deliver profoundly powerful AI platforms for all, not just the few.”
“The most serious problems facing global industry and government today involve too much complex and rapidly changing data for the cognitive capacity of even large numbers of human experts working together,” said DCVC Managing Partner Matt Ocko. “These groups ‐ and the customers and citizens they serve ‐ need intelligent systems that can work in concert with them to field that scale and complexity.”
Element AI is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec.
—
Image Credit: Element AI
The post Canadian startup Element raises US$102M to offer AI as a service solutions to enterprises; expanding to Singapore, Japan and Korea appeared first on e27.