The University of Toronto professor aims to make the city a global technology leader by launching 50 artificial intelligence (AI) companies, by helping Canada maintain talent from its own research while economically benefiting from its own research.
“Currently, in Canada, 75% of patents filed in the AI space go to the Global Technology Giants,” Daniel Wigdoll, a University of Toronto computer science professor and co-founder and CEO of AXL, said on Thursday. “Of the remaining 25 people, only 7% are here in Canada. But we are also the world leader in this technology and AI application technology. And despite that fact, we are doing this incredible research here, but we haven't made it into Canadian innovation and Canadian companies.”
According to Canadian news outlets, roughly three-quarters of AI patents produced by Canadian researchers have left the country, with mostly in the hands of big technology.
According to Axl's website, Wigdor has applied technology to create products, created products, and established several companies employing revenue and funding of over millions. In 2020, he sold Chatham Lab to Facebook and became the founding director of Toronto's Meta Reality Lab. He has 60 patents.
Through Toronto-based venture studio Axl, Wigdor aims to build 50 AI-driven companies within the next five years, fueling the Canadian research to commercialization pipeline.
“What we want to do is create the right network of opportunities and talent in Canada, so we can take these results and start commercializing them here,” Wigdor says.
Axl is located at the Schwartz-Raisman Innovation Campus at the University of Toronto and is housed in the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Computer Science Department and Startup Accelerator at the University of Toronto.
Rather than working to build innovative AI servers from scratch, studios help clients by using academic research to identify business issues and apply new and existing AI. They work to automate the tasks and features for companies to partner together on future projects.
“We already have many partners established and we look forward to being able to announce over time,” Wigdor says. “There's the basic technology of a large-scale language model and the servers and things where people are throwing billions of dollars right now, but all the real money on every platform is always done through applications built on top of it.
Axl recently closed its $15 million venture fund. They are currently working with Dentons and Dillion Consulting Limited.
“We are partnering with great innovative companies,” Wigdoll said.
“For example, we announced a partnership with Denton, a global law firm in Canada. Through that partnership, we will be deeply emerging with our corporate partners. We have studied business over the course of weeks and months and have a deep understanding of all the opportunities that exist.”
“In the case of Dentons, what are the opportunities and problems within the company itself, for them to become clients, but for Denton's clients, what are the opportunities and issues that AI can solve that other people can't solve in that way?
