Element AI was an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

company based in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is ...

History

Element AI was founded in October 2016 by Jean-François Gagné and co-founders

Yoshua Bengio Yoshua Bengio (born March 5, 1964) is a Canadian computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université d ...

, Anne Martel, Nicolas Chapados, and Philippe Beaudoin, along with Jean-Sébastien Cournoyer of Montreal venture capital fund Real Ventures. In early 2017, the company acquired the entire team o
MLDB.ai
an open source machine learning database. It then raised US$102 million from US investors in a

series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exc ...

led by the San Francisco venture fund Data Collective and

Microsoft Ventures M12, formerly Microsoft Ventures, is a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Microsoft. Founded in March 2016, its mission is to be an active, strategic partner during a startup's growth, typically investing between Series A and D. The fund is ...

. In December 2018, the

Government of Canada The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-i ...

gave a loan of up to CAD$5 million to Element AI with the goal of creating new jobs. They later hosted a conference on the effects of AI, with

Justin Trudeau Justin Pierre James Trudeau ( , ; born December 25, 1971) is a Canadian politician who is the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada. He has served as the prime minister of Canada since 2015 and as the leader of the Liberal Party since ...

and Mounir Mahjoubi establishing a global panel to study the effects of AI. In December 2018, Element AI also partnered with Amnesty International and released a study measuring online abuse against women in politics and journalism on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. Element AI has partnerships with

GIC Gic is a village in Veszprém County, Hungary. External links Street map (Hungarian) Populated places in Veszprém County Ghyczy family {{Veszprem-geo-stub ...

Singapore Management University The Singapore Management University (SMU) is a public autonomous university in Singapore. The university is the only city campus in Singapore. It ranks third in Asia as a specialist university, behind Hong Kong University of Science and Techn ...

, the

Port of Montreal The Port of Montreal (french: Port de Montréal) ( ACI Canadian Port Code: 0395, UN/LOCODE: CA MTR) is a cruise and transshipment point located on the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, Québec, Canada. The port operates as an international contai ...

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest ''chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered ...

, among others. At the Port of Montreal, Element AI is working to predict how long trucks will wait to drop off or pick up goods at the port. The company's first standalone product Underwriting Partner, an AI-assisted insurance underwriting workflow software, was released in September 2019. In December 2019, they released Knowledge Scout, a platform for data set management in manufacturing companies. On November 30, 2020,

ServiceNow ServiceNow is an American software company based in Santa Clara, California that develops a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Founded in 2003 by Fred Luddy, ServiceNow is listed on th ...

, a Californian cloud-based IT services company, announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Element AI. The company was running out of money and options and sold for US $230 million, terminating the vast majority of employees whose stock options expired worthless.

References

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External links

Official website
AI companies Companies based in Montreal Canadian companies established in 2016 2021 mergers and acquisitions