Canada punches far above its weight in artificial intelligence. The modern deep learning era started in Toronto and Montreal labs, three national AI institutes anchor the ecosystem, and in 2025 AI native companies took about 40 percent of all venture dollars invested in Canadian startups. The result is a long list of serious companies, from foundation model builders to the agencies that put AI to work inside dental clinics and law firms.
Quick answer. Canada’s best known AI company is Cohere in Toronto, valued at US$6.8 billion in 2025. Other leaders include Ada, Coveo, Kinaxis, Shopify, Waabi, Sanctuary AI and BenchSci, supported by three national AI institutes: Mila in Montreal, the Vector Institute in Toronto and Amii in Edmonton. The people most associated with Canadian AI are Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Richard Sutton and Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez.
This guide to the top AI companies in Canada is organized by category so you can find the right kind of company for your question, whether you are a founder looking for a benchmark, an enterprise buyer, a job seeker or a small business owner who wants AI working for you next month. One disclosure up front: Quantro Digital, the company behind this guide, appears in the small business section. We explain exactly why, and we hold ourselves to the same criteria as everyone else.
How we chose the companies
- Headquartered or founded in Canada, with meaningful Canadian operations today.
- AI is the product, not a feature bolted on for marketing. For large companies we include only those with a named AI product line used at scale.
- Evidence of traction: funding, customers, published results or research output we could verify from public sources.
- Category balance, so the list reflects the whole ecosystem rather than only the companies with the biggest funding rounds.
Canada’s top AI companies at a glance
| Company | City | Category | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cohere | Toronto | Foundation models and enterprise AI | Enterprise language models and the North agent platform; raised US$500 million at a US$6.8 billion valuation in 2025 |
| Ada | Toronto | Customer service AI | AI agents that resolve customer service conversations for large brands |
| Coveo | Quebec City | Enterprise search and generative AI | AI search, recommendations and generative answers for commerce and service, listed on the TSX |
| OpenText | Waterloo | Enterprise software | Information management with the Aviator generative AI line |
| Kinaxis | Ottawa | Supply chain AI | Maestro platform for AI driven supply chain planning |
| Shopify | Ottawa | Commerce AI | Sidekick and Shopify Magic bring AI to millions of merchants |
| Clio | Burnaby | Legal AI | Practice management with Clio Duo AI; closed a US$900 million Series F |
| Hopper | Montreal | Travel AI | Price prediction and fintech products for travel |
| Waabi | Toronto | Autonomous trucking | Generative AI approach to self driving; announced US$1 billion in funding with Uber in 2026 |
| Sanctuary AI | Vancouver | Robotics | General purpose humanoid robots powered by AI |
| OTTO Motors by Rockwell Automation | Kitchener | Industrial robotics | Autonomous mobile robots for factories and warehouses |
| Avidbots | Kitchener | Robotics | Autonomous cleaning robots used worldwide |
| Tenstorrent | Toronto | AI chips | AI processors and RISC V hardware led by Jim Keller |
| Xanadu | Toronto | Quantum and AI | Photonic quantum computing and the PennyLane software library |
| BenchSci | Toronto | Life sciences AI | AI that helps pharma scientists plan experiments |
| Deep Genomics | Toronto | Drug discovery | AI designed RNA therapeutics |
| DrugBank | Edmonton | Health data | Structured drug and health data used by AI and clinical systems |
| Ideogram | Toronto | Generative media | Text to image models known for rendering text accurately |
| Vector Institute | Toronto | Research institute | One of Canada’s three national AI institutes |
| Mila | Montreal | Research institute | The largest academic deep learning lab in the world, founded by Yoshua Bengio |
| Amii | Edmonton | Research institute | Alberta’s national AI institute; its Upper Bound 2026 conference drew 11,000 attendees |
| Borealis AI | Toronto | Corporate research lab | RBC’s AI research institute |
| Layer 6 | Toronto | Corporate research lab | TD Bank’s machine learning lab |
| AltaML | Edmonton | Applied AI consultancy | Applied machine learning for enterprise and public sector |
| Quantro Digital | Edmonton | AI agency for small business | AI receptionists, chatbots, agents and automation for small and mid sized businesses across Canada |
Foundation models and enterprise AI
Cohere (Toronto)
Cohere is the most prominent AI company in Canada by private valuation. It builds large language models for enterprises and governments that need data to stay private, and its North platform lets companies deploy AI agents on their own infrastructure. In August 2025 Cohere raised US$500 million at a US$6.8 billion valuation in a round led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with a further extension reported later that year, and Canadian press reported talks of a much larger round in 2026. Co founder Aidan Gomez is one of the authors of the transformer paper that started the current wave of AI.
Ada (Toronto)
Ada builds AI agents that resolve customer service conversations across chat, email and voice for large consumer brands. It is one of the longest running applied AI companies in the country and a good benchmark for what a mature customer service agent looks like.
Coveo (Quebec City)
Coveo provides AI search, recommendations and generative answers for commerce, customer service and workplace use. It is publicly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, which makes it one of the few pure play AI software companies in Canada with audited numbers.
OpenText (Waterloo), Kinaxis (Ottawa) and Shopify (Ottawa)
Three large Canadian software companies now ship AI as a core product line. OpenText’s Aviator brings generative AI to information management, Kinaxis uses AI in its Maestro supply chain platform, and Shopify’s Sidekick and Shopify Magic put AI assistants in front of millions of merchants. If you run a store, Shopify’s AI features are probably the first AI tools you will use.
Clio (Burnaby) and Hopper (Montreal)
Clio is the dominant legal practice management platform and now ships Clio Duo, an AI assistant for law firms. Its US$900 million Series F in 2025 was one of the largest Canadian software rounds ever, even though much of it was secondary. Hopper applies prediction models to travel pricing and sells fintech products to airlines and travel companies.
Autonomy and robotics
Waabi (Toronto)
Founded by Raquel Urtasun, Waabi takes a generative AI approach to self driving trucks. In 2026 it announced US$750 million in Series C funding plus a milestone based investment from Uber that brought the total to US$1 billion, which BetaKit reported as the largest fundraise in Canadian tech history. The company is launching driverless freight and robotaxi programs with Uber.
Sanctuary AI (Vancouver)
Sanctuary AI builds general purpose humanoid robots designed to do physical work, with AI control systems at the core. It is one of the few humanoid robotics companies outside the US and China with real hardware in the field.
OTTO Motors and Avidbots (Kitchener)
The Waterloo region is Canada’s robotics hub. OTTO Motors, now part of Rockwell Automation, makes autonomous mobile robots for factories, and Avidbots makes autonomous floor cleaning robots used in airports and warehouses around the world.
AI hardware and quantum
Tenstorrent (Toronto) designs AI processors and RISC V chips under CEO Jim Keller, one of the best known chip architects in the industry. Xanadu (Toronto) builds photonic quantum computers and maintains PennyLane, a widely used open source library for quantum machine learning.
Health and life sciences
BenchSci (Toronto) uses AI to help pharmaceutical scientists design better experiments. Deep Genomics (Toronto) applies AI to RNA therapeutics. DrugBank (Edmonton) maintains one of the world’s most used structured drug databases, which feeds AI and clinical decision tools. For a look at how AI reaches clinics and patients day to day, read our guide to AI agents for healthcare in Canada.
Generative media
Ideogram (Toronto) builds text to image models that became known for rendering readable text inside images, a problem most image models struggled with. It was founded by former Google Brain researchers.
Research institutes and corporate labs
Canada’s advantage starts with research. The three national AI institutes created under the Pan Canadian AI Strategy are Vector Institute in Toronto, Mila in Montreal, founded by Yoshua Bengio, and Amii in Edmonton, which grew out of the University of Alberta’s reinforcement learning group. Amii’s Upper Bound conference in May 2026 drew 11,000 attendees from 22 countries. Canada’s big banks run their own labs too: Borealis AI at RBC and Layer 6 at TD. Google DeepMind, Microsoft and Meta all run research teams in Montreal and Toronto.
Applied AI companies and agencies
Most Canadian businesses will never buy a foundation model. They will hire a company that applies AI to their actual problems: answering the phone, qualifying leads, automating admin, forecasting demand. This is the fastest growing part of the ecosystem and the hardest to evaluate, so here is how to think about it.
AltaML (Edmonton)
AltaML is an applied machine learning company that works with enterprises and the public sector, often through joint ventures in health, energy and supply chain. It is a good fit for organizations with data science scale problems and budgets to match.
Quantro Digital (Edmonton)
Quantro Digital is our company, so judge this entry against the criteria above. We build AI receptionists, chatbots, AI agents and workflow automation for small and mid sized businesses across Canada, alongside the websites and CRM systems they plug into. We publish starting prices in Canadian dollars, hold a 5.0 rating on Google, and have shipped more than 400 products for clients including clinics, law firms, trades and e-commerce brands. If you are a business with 2 to 200 staff and you want AI answering calls and following up leads within weeks rather than quarters, that is the problem we solve. See our AI agent and voice packages and use cases.
How to choose an applied AI company
- Ask for live examples you can call or test, not slide decks.
- Check who owns the data and the accounts. You should own your phone numbers, CRM and AI configurations.
- Look for fixed scopes and prices. AI projects drift when billed by the hour.
- Confirm privacy handling under PIPEDA, Quebec’s Law 25 and any sector rules such as health privacy acts.
- Start small. One agent on one workflow, measured for 30 days, beats a six month transformation plan.
Our guide to choosing an AI agency in Canada goes deeper, and our AI receptionist cost guide shows what applied AI actually costs a small business.
Where Canada’s AI companies are
| City | Strengths | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Toronto | Foundation models, autonomy, chips, health AI, the Vector Institute | Cohere, Waabi, Tenstorrent, Ada, BenchSci |
| Montreal | Deep learning research, Mila, generative AI, travel and gaming AI | Mila, Hopper, corporate labs |
| Edmonton | Reinforcement learning, Amii, applied AI for health, energy and small business | Amii, AltaML, DrugBank, Quantro Digital |
| Vancouver and Burnaby | Robotics, legal AI, applied AI for professional services | Sanctuary AI, Clio |
| Waterloo and Kitchener | Robotics and enterprise software | OTTO Motors, Avidbots, OpenText |
| Ottawa and Quebec City | Commerce, supply chain and enterprise search | Shopify, Kinaxis, Coveo |
Who are the leaders of Canada’s AI sector?
Canada’s AI sector is unusual because so much of it traces back to a handful of researchers who stayed in Canadian universities while the rest of the field moved to Silicon Valley. These are the people most often named as its leaders in 2026:
| Leader | Role and why it matters |
|---|---|
| Geoffrey Hinton | University of Toronto professor emeritus and chief scientific adviser at the Vector Institute. His work on neural networks underpins modern AI, and he shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. |
| Yoshua Bengio | Founder and scientific adviser of Mila in Montreal and a professor at the Université de Montréal. Turing Award winner and one of the most cited computer scientists in the world, now also leading the AI safety nonprofit LawZero. |
| Richard Sutton | Professor at the University of Alberta and chief scientific adviser at Amii in Edmonton. A founder of reinforcement learning, he received the 2024 Turing Award. |
| Aidan Gomez | Co founder and CEO of Cohere in Toronto and a co author of the 2017 transformer paper, Attention Is All You Need, that modern language models are built on. |
| Joelle Pineau | Chief AI officer at Cohere since 2025, after leading Meta’s FAIR research lab, and a professor at McGill University in Montreal. |
| Raquel Urtasun | Founder and CEO of Waabi in Toronto, which builds AI for self driving trucks, and a professor at the University of Toronto. |
| Tobi Lütke | Founder and CEO of Shopify in Ottawa. His 2025 memo asking every employee to use AI by default became one of the most shared AI policies in business. |
| Evan Solomon | Canada’s first federal Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, appointed in May 2025, responsible for national AI policy and investment. |
If you are asking which Canadian CEO is most visible on AI, the two names that come up most are Aidan Gomez of Cohere, the country’s leading AI model company, and Tobi Lütke of Shopify, whose company put AI into the hands of millions of merchants.
Frequently asked questions
What is the biggest AI company in Canada?
Among private AI companies, Cohere has the highest reported valuation at US$6.8 billion after its 2025 round, with a larger round reported in 2026. Among public companies, Shopify, OpenText and Kinaxis are the largest Canadian software companies with AI product lines, and Coveo is the largest pure play AI software company listed on the TSX.
Which Canadian AI company raised the most money?
Waabi’s 2026 announcement of US$1 billion, including Uber’s milestone based investment, was reported by BetaKit as the largest fundraise in Canadian tech history. Clio’s US$900 million Series F in 2025 was larger than most, although much of it was secondary.
Which city is best for AI in Canada?
Toronto has the most companies and capital, Montreal has the deepest research bench, and Edmonton has the strongest reinforcement learning tradition and a fast growing applied AI scene. Vancouver leads in robotics and legal tech.
Which AI company should a small business in Canada hire?
Look for an applied AI agency that publishes prices, shows live demos, and builds on tools you own. Quantro Digital, the publisher of this guide, is one option for businesses that want AI receptionists, chatbots and automation live within weeks. Compare at least two providers and start with one workflow.
Are these companies hiring?
Most of the companies above hire continuously, and Toronto’s AI startups have been among the fastest growing employers in Canadian tech. The national institutes also list openings and training programs.
Who are the AI leaders in Canada?
The most cited are Geoffrey Hinton (University of Toronto and Vector Institute), Yoshua Bengio (Mila), Richard Sutton (University of Alberta and Amii), Aidan Gomez (CEO of Cohere), Joelle Pineau (Cohere), Raquel Urtasun (Waabi), Tobi Lütke (Shopify) and Evan Solomon, the federal Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation.
Which Canadian CEO is most visible on AI?
Aidan Gomez of Cohere and Tobi Lütke of Shopify are the most visible. Gomez co wrote the transformer paper behind modern language models and runs Canada’s largest AI model company; Lütke made AI use a default expectation at Shopify in 2025.
Need AI working in your business, not just on a list?
Quantro Digital builds AI receptionists, agents and automation for Canadian businesses, priced in Canadian dollars and live in weeks. Book a free strategy call and we will show you which workflow to automate first.
Sources: CTV News, Cohere raises US$500 million; BetaKit, Waabi Series C; Landbase citing Inovia Capital and PitchBook, 2025 Canadian venture data; company websites and public filings. Figures were checked in October 2026 and will change.
