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Google invests in Canada’s AI boom w/ Google Brain Toronto and Vector Institute funding

Noting Canada’s artificial intelligence boom, Google announced yesterday that its internal deep learning division is opening another office in the country. The company is also investing $5 million into the new Vector Institute AI research facility.

Canada is increasingly a center for AI research, with the Google division responsible for breakthroughs in speech recognition and image classification already having an office in Montreal. While that outpost is focused on basic research, Google Brain Toronto will focus on the “biggest research challenges facing AI.”

Also in the city is the new Vector Institute housed at the University of Toronto. Similar to Google Brain, the research facility is focusing on “expanding the applications of AI by performing cutting-edge explorations in deep learning and other forms of machine learning.” Fields that could benefit include healthcare, financial services and advanced manufacturing.

Google is contributing $5 million, with the initiative being guided by chief scientific adviser Geoffrey Hinton, a VP and Engineering Fellow at the company. The bulk of the total $150 million funding is coming from the Canadian and Ontario governments, as well as other corporate funders.

This commitment to research comes as Google invested $4.5 million back in November in another Canadian institute working on AI.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com