Quarter of all Canadian AI ventures could be categorized as ‘clean AI’: new research
At Toronto Climate Week, the global CleanAI Initiative shared research on the Canadian ecosystem, finding growing investment hubs in Vancouver, the GTA, and Kitchener-Waterloo.
Why It Matters
The CleanAI Initiative defines ‘clean AI’ as artificial intelligence applied to support decarbonization and the transition to a low-carbon economy. According to the CleanAI Initiative’s research, there are more than 2,700 clean technology ventures in Canada, and more than 900 AI ventures. Between 230 and 250 companies sit at the intersection of both.
Canada is among the top five countries with the most venture capital (VC) investment poured into the clean AI sector, according to new research by the CleanAI Initiative.
A quarter of all AI ventures in Canada sit under the clean AI umbrella, an audience heard on June 5 at a Toronto Climate Week event hosted by the Lawson Climate Institute at the University of Toronto.
Defined by the CleanAI Initiative as the application of artificial intelligence to the clean economy transition, this type of – or approach to – AI is taking root across various sectors, including agriculture, energy, materials and manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and waste management, said the CleanAI Initiative’s Director of Knowledge Emily MacIntosh at Friday’s event.
Several hubs are emerging across the country: Vancouver leads in VC investment amount, the Greater Toronto Area sees the most deals, Kitchener-Waterloo is emerging as a major infrastructure hub, and Montreal is the home for research, she said.
Friday’s launch of a Canada-focused clean AI ecosystem was hot on the heels of the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, in which the federal government wrote of Canada being “uniquely positioned to lead in building [sustainable data centre] infrastructure responsibly” as demand for AI compute power increases.
The CleanAI Initiative team uses venture capital funding as a “proxy indicator of where capital is being put to work, and that shows us where innovation is coming from and where we think it’s going,” said Shivani Chotalia, founding partner of the Clean AI Initiative.
“But absolutely, I think there’s a lot of room for blended finance mechanisms, or even public-private partnership type of finances that are possible,” she said, adding that one of the top Canadian investors in clean AI is a Saskatchewan credit union.
The desire for sovereign technology and geopolitical factors are also driving investment in clean AI, MacIntosh said at Friday’s event.
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