Element AI Raises Historic $102M USD ($137.5M CAD) Series A Funding Round from DCVC and Leading Global Institutions

SINGAPORE – June
15, 2017 – Element AI, an artificial intelligence company that delivers
groundbreaking AI solutions, announced today it has raised $102M USD,
representing the largest Series A funding round for an artificial intelligence
company in history. With this funding, Element AI will accelerate its
capabilities and invest in large-scale AI projects internationally, solidifying
its position as the largest global AI company in Canada and creating 250 jobs
in the Canadian high tech sector by January 2018.

The expansion in its
international capabilities will see Element AI open a Singapore office during
the second half of 2017. The office will serve as a Southeast Asia hub.
Singapore has a growing AI presence in the region, especially in the field of
Fintech, and it also has a sizeable talent pool. The Singapore office will be
the company’s second office in Asia; the first being in Japan.

Besides being a target
market for Element AI, Asia is a source of considerable funding. Both Tencent
Holdings Ltd. from China and Hanwha Investment from South Korea are significant
investors.

Element AI solves
impossible problems for global organizations that urgently need to use AI in
combination with their proprietary and valuable data to leap ahead of their
competitors. Serial entrepreneurs Jean-François Gagné and Nicolas
Chapados, Real Ventures and Yoshua Bengio, a co-father of deep learning
technology, co-founded Element AI in October 2016  to empower industry
with the massive scale of academic AI innovation Bengio was driving at the world-leading
Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (MILA).

Together with MILA,
one of the three leading centers of AI research in the world, Element AI
pioneered a unique, non-exploitative model of academic cooperation they have
now replicated to many other institutes.  This model provides Element AI
with insight, talent, and cutting-edge research that matches or exceeds even
the largest tech corporations’ reach and budgets.

Data Collective (DCVC)
led the funding round with participation from Fidelity Investments Canada,
Hanwha Investment, Intel Capital, Microsoft Ventures, National Bank of Canada,
Development Bank of Canada (BDC), NVIDIA, Real Ventures, and several of the
world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.  In addition to laying the groundwork
to hire hundreds of top researchers, this new funding will enable Element AI to
aggressively expand on a global scale focusing on AI-powered solutions for
their customers in cybersecurity, fintech, manufacturing, logistics and
transportation, and robotics.

“Artificial
Intelligence is a ‘must have’ capability for global companies,” said Element AI
CEO Jean-François Gagné. “Without it, they are competitively impaired if not at
grave risk of being obsoleted in place. Seasoned AI investors at DCVC
understood this, and supported us to democratize the AI firepower reserved
today for only the largest of tech corporations. Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA,
as pioneers and champions of AI hardware and software, likewise understand that
their businesses flourish as every company is empowered with world-class
AI.  This is why these leaders have backed us with the world’s largest
Series A round ever for an artificial intelligence company. 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.
We’re proud to back Element AI and their team of world-class researchers and
engineers, who are already solving multiple global-class problems.”

“Intel is all-in on AI,” said Naveen Rao, VP
& GM of Intel’s Artificial Intelligence Products Group (AIPG).  “In
addition to hardware, we’re committed to developing the software ingredients necessary
to accelerate complex, data-intensive processes. Such an endeavor means
investing in the best minds in the world and Element AI has the intellectual
horsepower to help us all advance artificial intelligence like never before.”

“Element AI is doing amazing work enabling AI
for a wide variety of industries, leveraging NVIDIA’s deep learning platform,”
said Jeff Herbst, Vice President of Business Development at NVIDIA.
“Element AI will benefit by continuing to leverage NVIDIA’s high performance
GPUs and software at large scale to solve some of the world’s most challenging
issues.”