Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister announcing $240 million for Cohere to scale-up AI compute capacity

December 6, 2024 – Toronto, Ontario

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Thank you very much for being here.

I want to start by saying how inspiring it is for me to see all these great, young, brilliant Canadians who are working here at Cohere. You inspire me so much. You really are Canada’s future.

I’m grateful for your work and I am absolutely committed to create the conditions that keep you here at home—doing great work, creating even more great jobs, and great growth and opportunity for our country. So, thanks a lot, and I’m going to do everything I can to support you. Canada is really lucky to have you and we’re proud of you.

Before I begin, I would like to say a few words about the Canadian economy. In October, inflation was at two per cent. That means that for 10 months now, inflation has been within the Bank of Canada’s target range. That’s good news for Canadians. Because of that, interest rates are coming down. Canada was the first G7 country to cut interest rates four times, and that’s also good news for Canadians and Canadian business owners.

In the economy, in general, we see solid progress but much remains to be done. We know now that our priorities must be economic growth—to attract private capital investment. And that is what we are doing today.

So, as Canadians, we can and should be really proud of our country’s leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). This is thanks to investments we’ve been making for many years now in our universities, in our great researchers. That is where it starts. That is really important.

And I want to take a moment to salute and congratulate Canada and Toronto’s very own Geoffrey Hinton—winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work in AI. It’s important to recognize the money invested in the budget in the spring—$5 billion in research in universities, in students, in graduate students because we know how important it is.

And we have the proof right here today because your own Aidan Gomez (Founder & CEO of Cohere) worked with Geoffrey Hinton. So, there is a direct line between the work being done in our universities and having great groundbreaking world-leading companies. That is so important for Canada. Everyone here knows very, very well the power, the importance of AI. And there is a global race on right now for AI leadership.

Thanks to the really smart Canadians and smart investments we made in supporting those Canadian AI researchers and founders, we have a great base here in Canada. In fact, Canada has 10 per cent of the world’s top tier AI researchers. That puts us in second place in the world. A really big deal. In 2022-2023, there were 140,000 active AI professionals in Canada. That is 29 per cent more than the previous year.

So, we have a strong foundation. We need to not take that foundation for granted. We need to build on it. And we know that for Canada to build on that lead in AI—with all the advantages that offers for our economy—we need to be sure that you, our AI leaders, have access to compute power. Compute is the technology that powers AI, chips and data centres.

Canada has the brains. We have the smart people. We need to be sure you have the infrastructure you need.

That’s why we launched the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy yesterday. In the spring budget, we announced that we would be investing $2 billion in Canadian AI so that Canadian innovators have access to compute infrastructure and we have started to roll that out. Today is part of that roll-out.

As part of the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, we have launched the AI Compute Challenge. That means the government is investing $700 million to crowd in private capital to get data centres built here in Canada so that all of you can do your work here at home.

And today, we have the first announcement to make of how some of that $700 million is going to be used. The Government of Canada, the people of Canada, will be investing together with Cohere. We will be investing $240 million to get an AI data centre built here in Canada.

Having that centre built here is absolutely essential. It’s crucial for Cohere to build the next generation of AI solutions in Canada. It is going to provide compute power that will be accessible to other Canadian start-ups, other Canadian innovators in this space. It is going to help us crowd in more private investments, more private capital to get these data centres built and to really build on Canada’s strong start as a centre for AI—an international centre, international competitor in the AI space.

It’s really important for Canada that our brilliant, young AI researchers have the infrastructure and the capital that makes it possible for them to stay here at home. To bring in brilliant AI researchers from other countries and to really build on the strong AI advantage our country has. This investment of $240 million is going to crowd in more of that private capital to get the physical infrastructure that are going to really anchor companies like Cohere and, indeed, build on this industry of today and industry of tomorrow for our country.

We know that there is an international race on right now for AI leadership. I want us, as Canadians, to recognize how good we are at this. I want to us to have a real “Own the Podium” mentality when it comes to AI. We just won a Nobel Prize in Physics for this. We can do this. We’re really good at it. Canada is a great place for data centres and we have tons of clean power. And really smart people.

So I want us to set our national modesty aside when it comes to AI and I want us to have a mentality of owning the podium. We’re good at this. We can do it. We are doing it. And the government is absolutely committed to providing the support that you need to crowd in. To attract private capital. To cut through any red tape that you are encountering in getting these data centres built that you need for Canada to be a leading and dominant player in the world in AI. That is what this investment is about.

We’ve been doing this for a while. The Prime Minister is an early recognizer of the power of AI and of Canada’s capacity to be really strong in this space. Since 2016, the government has announced $4.4 billion in investments to support AI and digital research infrastructure. In the most recent budget, we put in another $2.4 billion to scale-up adoption of AI. We also need to work hard as a country to ensure, yes, that we have dominance in the world leading AI companies. And then we want the benefit that you bring to flow through the Canadian economy. And for companies across the economy, across sectors, for the federal government to adopt AI so that we can be more productive and we can all become more prosperous.

I just want to end by saying a big thank you to everyone who is here. To all the workers, to the researchers, thank you very much. I really appreciate your work. It is really a great pride for our country that you do what you do. I am convinced that Canada today is already one of the leaders in artificial intelligence and we are absolutely convinced that as a country we have the capacity to really be one of the world leaders in the creation and the adoption of AI. 

Thanks to your work, the federal government will always be there to help you. Thank you very much.