Compugen claims to be Canada’s largest private technology solutions provider.
Toronto-based venture studio AXL is helping businesses find new ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) through a new partnership with technology services provider Compugen.
Compugen claims to be Canada’s largest private technology solutions provider. Through this partnership announced today, Compugen and its customers will have direct access to AXL’s AI commercialization and research experts, prototyping and venture environment designed to quickly transform ideas into real-world AI applications.
AXL co-founder and CEO Daniel Wigdor explained in a statement that Compugen brings industry knowledge and AXL brings the design and engineering expertise needed to turn problems into scalable and applicable AI solutions.
“Together, we can identify the most impactful opportunities, quickly build and validate solutions, generate outcomes that Compugen can deliver at scale, and focus on opportunities for Canada’s best AI startups to build together,” said Wigdor.
Related: Can one venture studio stop Canada’s AI brain drain?
Compugen and its customers rely on AXL’s Venture Studio format, which identifies business problems, consults academic research, and assigns entrepreneurs to solve problems with AI. AXL entered into similar idea pipeline partnerships with RSM Canada and Dillon Consulting last year. Wigdor has pledged to launch 50 AI companies over the next five years through AXL to slow Canada’s brain drain, but the definition may be different.
“We’re not building 50 AI companies,” Wigdor said during a breakout room session at SAAS NORTH in November. “We will build 50 companies that solve real-world problems using AI as a technology that enables things that weren’t possible before.”
Wigdor, an entrepreneur and former director of Meta’s Reality Labs Research, especially emphasizes the importance of incorporating the application layer of AI as a way forward for Canada. SAAS NORTH deplored the “brain-dead” approach of some companies to replace workers with AI and advocated for finding creative uses for this technology. Looking ahead to 2026, Wigdor predicted that Google and Microsoft will dominate the AI race “because they’re actually shipping AI products,” while pure LLM players like OpenAI and Anthropic will be “in a race to the bottom.”
Feature image courtesy of AXL.
