Canada is working with Nvidia to enhance the nation’s computing capabilities and empower the local talent.
On Friday, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canadian minister of innovation, science and industry, confirmed in a post on social media that the two sides signed a letter of intent during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s trip to Toronto last week.
Details about the agreement are scarce, but Huang discussed the country’s growing artificial intelligence ecosystem at a fireside chat with Canadian technology industry leaders on Thursday.
“Canada, as you know, even though you’re so humble, you might not acknowledge it, is the epicenter of the invention of modern AI,” Huang said.
Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, professors at the University of Montreal and the University of Toronto, respectively, are Turing Award winners alongside Yann LeCun for their work on the AI subfield of deep learning.
According to Huang, Canada is not the only nation making investments in AI. He told Bloomberg Television that France, India and Japan are also discussing sovereign AI capabilities.
“Their natural resource, data, should be refined and produced for their country,” he added.