Element AI Raises Historic Series A Funding Round from DCVC and Leading Global Institutions

Element AI , an artificial intelligence company that delivers groundbreaking AI solutions, has raised US $102 million, 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.  

China's Tencent Holdings Ltd is a significant investor in Element AI, part of a broader strategy of Tencent to grow its expertise in artificial intelligence in order to serve the needs of its diversified businesses -- a strategy that took shape with the establishment of AI Labs in April 2016.

AI Labs' main areas of focus are content, social, online games and cloud services. The other significant investor from Asia is South Korea's Hanwha Investment, the investment arm of Hanwha Group.

Element AI plans to open 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.

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-Franc¸ois Gagne´ 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, intech, manufacturing, logistics and transportation, and robotics.