Why Element A.I. will Win

Google revolutionized the internet by making it more accessible to everyone. Netscape made the internet usable for non-techies. WordPress allowed those non-fluent in HTML create just as effective websites. Element AI — Canada’s Google, Netscape, and Wordpress — is taking one of the most powerful technologies of our generation to build an AI first world and making the tools accessible to everyone.

Why is this big time?

Well for starters, finding the talent to build and strategically implement AI into companies is very difficult. Engineers and data scientists are being scooped up by the big daddy’s & momma’s of the world (Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon etc.), making it really difficult for small to mid-sized companies to start to compete for this talent.

Secondly, artificial intelligence is still only really understood by the tech-ge… early adopters in the field and low-tech CEOs are more interested in how can this increase the ROI of their firm; not necessarily why deep learning, natural language processing, or speech recognition is a big deal.

To add to this A.I. pie, the intellectual property governing the products coming out of the woodwork is being swallowed up by those who can foot the bill. Take for example Apple’s acquisition of Lattice Data for a cool $200M. No one really knows what happens to Lattice, other than their secret sauce is lost in Apple dark web.

This is where Element comes in

Through strategizing, implementation, and value creation low-tech industries now have access to the world’s best talent, technology, and scalable solutions. Think about injecting the world’s best business strategists, CTO’s, AI developers, product designers, and data scientists into your company. Element AI is a hand to walk with through the tech park for every executive.

Soon, a fragment of companies won’t be the only ones classified as “A.I.” companies. There is a strong belief by advocates of this technology that every organization, big and small, will have to embrace the technology not just to thrive, but to survive. Think circa 2005 when Facebook made it clear that companies needed to start adopting social media.

By democratizing access, Element AI’s approach is to work with everything from large organizations to startups to create turn-key products and useful applications built on their platform. As ambitious as this sounds, many onlookers think they are the one to do it.

What does this mean for Canada?

Raising $135M in Series A capital is unheard of in Canada and they achieved this blistering milestone just last summer. However, it doesn’t stop there. During the Elevate Toronto Conference Yoshua Bengio, Element AI’s co-founder believes that it is the risk they took in the early years to invest in research when it was not trendy to do so. Now, as more countries start to catch wind of the potential of the technology, Yoshua believes that they have to continue to take risks for Canada to maintain its stance as a global leader.

Leaders in cognitive technologies only emerge when there is access to large datasets. You need data to create actionable insights or for any deep learning to occur. Element AI’s approach seems to have cracked that code.

Their business model could give them a leg up if they’re able to work with many companies across different fields of interest and have access to this data that current A.I. companies yearn for. Their team also consists of some of the world’s best A.I. researchers, and leaders, leaving no doubt that we will be hearing from them for a long time coming. In the meantime, let’s take pride in the fact that Canada is creating technology companies that are having an impact on the global ecosystem.

Are you interested in learning more about this field?. The C-Tribe Innovation Festival is happening very soon and we will dive deep into this topic with some of the best experts in the world. Join the C-Tribe here as we discuss all the emerging technologies that are impacting our generation.