Montréal, world leader in artificial intelligence

A meeting of genuine intelligence

Every April, Montréal hosts World Summit AI. It’s the global community gathering of minds in the realm of artificial intelligence; the type of event where the most influential conversations on AI and the future of technology take place.

The 2026 edition presents an exciting opportunity to network with the brightest AI brains. The event is also known for having the best-of-the-best speakers. Past speakers include leaders from Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent, Intel, NASA, Uber and IBM Watson, to name but a few.

Home to an international AI lab

The ILLS International Research Laboratory is a gathering of Montréal research organizations focused on artificial intelligence. It unites McGill University, École de technologie supérieure, Mila - Québec AI Institute, France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Université Paris-Saclay and the École CentraleSupélec.

The ILLS focuses on five main areas of research: fundamental aspects of artificial intelligence, real-time machine learning, robust autonomous systems, natural language and speech processing, and applications to computer vision, signals and information processing. It also promotes interdisciplinary collaborations in the development of new methodologies and their integration into widespread learning systems. 

A global hub of AI research and education

Montréal’s place at the forefront of international university cities has been recognized year after year, as the city continues to be named the best student city in Canada. Greater Montréal’s 11 higher learning institutions house over 155,000 students, including the largest number of university researchers in Canada. McGill University and Université de Montréal are ranked among the world’s best learning institutions, and the city is also home to the Institute for Data Valorisation.

A collaboration between the Université de Montréal and McGill University, Mila composes the largest and most renowned group of deep learning researchers in the world. Mila’s new director, Hugo Larochelle, is a pioneer in deep learning and one of Canada’s most respected researchers, who played a key role in popularizing autoregressive modelling with neural networks, a paradigm that is now central to generative AI. He has contributed to industrial innovation first as a co‑founder of the startup Whetlab (acquired by Twitter in 2015), then as the head of Google’s AI research lab in Montréal (Google Brain), now part of Google DeepMind. 

Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau, Senior AI Researcher at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology AI Lab in Montréal within Mila, has recently been in the news recently for advocating for new directions in AI that prioritize accessibility, simplicity, and innovation over large-scale scaling. As the lead developer behind the Tiny Recursive Model, she is pioneering a less-is-more approach that seems to be being applauded as innovative as well as counter-intuitive.

Yoshua Bengio, founder and scientific advisor at Mila, is a member of the UN’s Scientific Advisory Board for Independent Advice on Breakthroughs in Science and Technology, and was named one of TIME’s magazine 100 most influential people in the world. Concerned about the social impact of AI, he actively contributed to the Montréal Declaration for the Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence and currently chairs the International AI Safety Report.

And recently, Cohere — dubbed Canada’s most prominent AI company — has landed ex-Meta AI star Joelle Pineau as the head of their new 20-person Montréal office, where they will specialize in developing large language models and other artificial intelligence tools tailored to the needs of Canadian businesses and the public sector, with a focus on security and privacy matters.  

In addition to those famous local specialists, Montréal has more than 250 doctoral students and researchers, making up the world’s largest academic concentration that’s developing a broad range of AI-related topics, from language processing to reinforcement learning and computer vision.

The heavy hitters

The world’s heaviest hitters in cutting-edge technologies have also flocked to Montréal, both furthering existing operations and founding their own.

• Google has invested heavily in the city’s research initiatives (including multi-million dollar donations to Mila) and launched its own Google Brain AI research lab in Montréal.
• The Microsoft Research Lab (formerly the ground-breaking deep learning startup Maluuba, acquired by Microsoft) is just part of their dedication to the city’s development as a centre-point in AI study, development and business.
• Cohere has opened a Montréal office to develop LLMs and other AI tools tailored to Canadian businesses and the public sector.
• IBM Research manages a lab directly with Mila, advancing AI development through academic collaboration.
• Meta’s FAIR research lab has played a vital part in the company’s innovative research.
• DeepMind’s Montréal office is headed by noted Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill, Doina Precup.
• Borealis AI’s Montréal research centre is a place where AI products are designed, built and implemented to shape the future of finance.
• The Havas Group AI Innovation Centre’s Montréal office focuses on the role of AI in customer experience — using the city’s annual trendsetting C2 Montréal conference as a work study subject.
• Huawei, in collaboration with Polytechnique Montréal, founded the NSERC/Huawei Industrial Research Chair in Future Wireless Technologies.
• Montréal’s Samsung AI Centre works directly with Seoul National University, strengthening the international flow of information and development. 

This list could go on! For a more complete overview of Montréal’s AI scene, check out Montréal International’s industry profile.