For those that are new around here, this is the spot where usually highlight my Product pick of the Week showcasing how it’s a promising rockstar. We’re switching it up this week, thanks to Scale AI’s conference - ALL IN.
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Happy Friday!
How was the week? I went ALL IN, and It Was All Great 🤙🏽
On the roster this week, I had 3 days of mingling with all kinds of players in the Canadian AI ecosystem. Think corporates, think startups, think investors, accelerators, contributors, robots, lasers, all of the above and more.
This trio kicked off with NEXT AI’s Montreal 2024 Showcare, and then 2 days of ALL IN Conference bringing everyone together. I know you’re here for the good stuff and insights so let's dig in.
NEXT AI Is Showing Up In Force 💪🏽
You could feel the anticipation in the room
Tuesday evening saw the tradition of an accelerator showcase stay true to its spirit of community. Throwing open the doors and celebrating how far these ventures have come throughout their time within NEXT AI’s walls.
From the seats in the audience of 600 guests split over 1 live room & 2 broadcast overflow rooms in the same building (wild I know) we saw Top 10 pitches of the 2024 cohort of 32 startups, an impassioned valedictorian speech, and guest re-appearances of accelerator alumni and mentors alike.
From Legal AI tech focused on restoring balance in the world of access to justice, to solutions actively leveraging AI for a greener way to load balancing power plant energy consumption, there was much to behold.
It makes more sense to keep things slim in your inbox (Hello mobile readers👋🏽) so here’s the cohort’s digital flipbook celebrating the entire group’s dedication! Go drop them some follows on their socials and show them some startup love 💌
ALL IN 2024: A Young But Mighty Conference 🤩
This was the 2nd ever edition for ALL IN, and their goal was ambitious; Bring as much as possible of the Canadian AI industry under one roof to talk shop and share brain cells. It worked.
From an attendee’s perspective, the entire production ran reaaaal smooth 👌🏽 From casual side chats on open air stages, podcast recording booths with remote headphones, and speaker panels, all the key pieces were at play.
Who Was There?
The conference brought together a mix of attendees, setting up a perfect environment for collaboration and ideas exchanges. Venture capitalists eager to discover, established companies looking to integrate, and a host of startups looking to showcase were are all at play. Support organizations from all over the ecosystem: government orgs, accelerators, research Labs also made their mark, contributing niche expertise, opening new doors, and unique perspectives. With such a diverse group of players the event felt like a nice melting pot of talent and opportunity.
Walking The Vendor Floor
We’ve got screens, bots, laptops, and massive ideas
The vendor floor was truly alive, with screens, robots, and laptops everywhere you turned. It was a showcase of bold ideas brought to life, with over 40 startups flaunting their stuff, all powered by AI to varying degrees. Here’s some of the standouts:
A French delegation, including L’Oréal, made waves with their AI-driven solutions.
A mind-blowing AI-powered painting robot—enhancing high-quality artistry rather than replacing artists. Impressive, right?
A team unveiled their intriguing Large Movement Model—we need to dive deeper into that!
Consulting firms showcased customized Boston Dynamics robots, proving AI can be tailored for any task.
Industrial tech had a strong showing, with startups pushing AI deeper into manufacturing, a sector that’s been ripe for disruption.
An LLM security testing platform was making its mark on the show stress-testing large language models to ensure their safety and reliability in real-world production environments—definitely a hot topic in these past weeks!
What really stood out was the broad support for this AI-driven future, with accelerators and government entities fully committed to making this vision a reality.
Who I Heard Speak?
In the whirlwind 2 days at ALL IN, making the most of it meant making tradeoffs. I did manage to snag some panel attendances, and those few I’ve distilled down below.
TL;DR - The Talks & Panels ⚡Lightning Round⚡
Building A Trustworthy And Safe AI: This was a star studded session hosted by Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director at Forbes chatting with a living legend of AI: pioneer Dr. Yoshua Bengio (Sidenote: Yes, THE Dr. Bengio: “one of the three people most responsible for the advancement of deep learning during the 1990s and 2000s.”) discussing mitigating the core risks on humanity’s way towards AGI requires humility and collaboration between scientists and governments. The science of AI safety is still young, and the research agenda needs to pivot towards building safe AI systems. There is much urgency for investment in AI safety given the rapid advancements in the past three years. Drawing parallels to nuclear power and how public trust in it critically erodes now that there HAS been unmitigated issues, the benefits of AI can't be fully realized without addressing its risks in order for social acceptance to lean into AI willingly. Governments should avoid regulating technical specifications but focus on a pair of policies along the lines of:
Transparency + Liabilities = Visible, publicly required AI Safety plans + Consequences when plans prove inadequate
AI Project Playbook for Business Leaders by Patrick Tammer, Senior Investment Director at Scale AI:
Bite the bullet, get started. Make safety and ethics by design as part of your work, it’ll save you headaches upstream. Fail fast in safe isolated spaces to reduce risk. Reevaluate solution architecture as you need to. Don't always overanalyze, you have to try stuff. Continuously improve from there.
Financing & Developing Canadian AI Solutions & Products
Speakers from left to right: Douglas Soltys | Editor-in-Chief, BetaKit — Dwayne Dulmage | Vice President and National Lead, Technology, BDC — Sarah Legendre-Bilodeau | CEO, Videns — Hongwei Liu | Founder & CEO, Mappedin — Sam Ramadori | CEO, BrainBox AI — Pape Wade | CEO and Co-Founder, Airudii
The talk was kinda hopeful near the end, but much of this talk was discussing the slow departure of Canada's innovation climate from its “Branch plant economy” reputation. Even though we’ve had a material market in the great white north for years, it’s too long stayed untapped since most large players aren’t maintaining bandwidth for consistent applied innovation on their balance sheets.
Roundtable sentiment on the Canadian Government’s role in financing innovation looked something like this:
“A customer dollar is better than a Grant dollar.” was said, and I couldn't agree more. Here’s why:
Contributing to proving models to investors,
Applying resources where the business needs it most instead of where the government wants it to go
Building export potential towards selling to other public administrations
Roundtable thoughts on Canada in AI: The truth is, Canada’s not likely to win the LLM development game, but we can win the product game. Let’s retain IP ownership as a means of developing better competition chops along the way. AI is developing faster in small shops than in large corporations, so there’s an opening there for investors to bring capital to [Nimble + Lean] players in the Canadian market that are efficient in their use of capital.
Liu: “It is ultimately your, [the] founders’ job to find the path where you can win”
If you’ve read this far…
You’ve made it to the future! There’s going to be a bonus segment from ALL IN coming in your Wednesday News Recap, and here’s a little preview of what it is: I got an interview with Richard Chénier, the CEO of Quebec Tech bringing more hope and opening doors for Canadian Innovation. 💡 Be sure to check back for the whole story! 📖
An Organization On A Mission, Québec Tech: AI Talent On The Global Stage
“The goal is clear: to nurture home-grown talent and perform both locally and across Canada, and to export QC to the world.”
During ALL IN this week, I had the opportunity to pull Richard Chénier, the CEO of Quebec Tech aside for a short table-side chat. He took me on an inside tour into the transformation of Startup Montréal into Québec Tech. And let me tell you, this full stack shakeup (✨rebrand included ✨) has run quite deep. When asked about it, Richard and his team were brimming with focus. Their initiative has become a total overhaul of mission, purpose, and ambition, all in the name of staking Québec’s claim on the map as a powerhouse in AI and tech innovation. “We’ve got a renewed purpose, and a bold mission. Bringing Québec’s incredible talent pool to be seen for what it really is: a force to be reckoned with in AI, and tech innovation.”
This was The AI Product Report checking in for a huge week in Canadian AI Industry News.. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a rest, I’m going to go lie down.
-✌🏽 Sam
Self Co