Canada’s “Big Three” AI cities (Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton) have dominated headlines for the past year. But with our country’s reputation for academic excellence in machine learning research, it was only a matter of time before a new crop of technical towns emerged.

Few other places in Canada lend themselves as naturally to the role as Kitchener-Waterloo. The southern Ontario tech corridor, anchored by the world-class University of Waterloo and flanked by a spate of innovative start-ups, has already proved itself a unique meeting place for stellar machine learning research and industry collaboration.

The establishment of Waterloo.ai, the university’s brand new artificial intelligence institute, offers a centralized space for this work to continue.

According to its mandate, Waterloo.ai’s goals are to “seize opportunities to lead AI research and application in emerging areas; enable conditions that support impact in the AI sector; increase interdisciplinary research; and build a better awareness around the world of Waterloo’s research press in both AI and the tech scene as a whole.”

RBC Borealis, a founding partner of Waterloo.ai, was proud to be on-hand last Friday for the official launch.

In addition to supporting the Canadian AI ecosystem, the timing for our partnership couldn’t be better. Come September, we will be putting down our own roots in Waterloo with a new lab led by Research Director, Prof. Pascal Poupart. The Waterloo location expands our network of labs from Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal into this emerging and robust space.

Congratulations to Waterloo.ai, to the city, and to everyone involved. We expect amazing things from the next wave of Canadian AI cities.