OAK BLUFF — A non-profit organization dedicated to helping Canadian businesses implement artificial intelligence tools to improve productivity is providing financial support to a Manitoba agritech company.
Scale AI, a federally supported consortium of private organizations, research centers, academia, and high-potential startups, is backing Agi3 with $4.7 million.
The funding was announced Wednesday at Enns Brothers' offices in Oak Bluff. This follows Scale AI's announcement in Toronto on Tuesday that it will invest $128.5 million to support 44 new AI projects across Canada.
Ruth Bonneville / Free Press “With every state announcing projects this week, one message is clear: AI is no longer theoretical,” Sean Duckett, senior investment director at Scale AI, said at a news event in Oak Bluff on Wednesday.
Agi3 is the only Manitoba company to receive investment from Scale AI during this funding round.
Agi3 has developed sensors and AI analytics that can monitor crop performance 24/7, and developed insurance products based on this technology.
“This is a federally funded project by Scale AI that is actually being driven by a Manitoba company and is delivering a solution for agricultural producers across Canada,” said Ray Bouchard, co-founder of Agi3 and president and CEO of Enns Brothers. “This really shows the application of AI in legacy industries and legacy businesses.”
“Agi3 enables agricultural insurers and brokers to build a complete digital profile of their farm,” said Kyle Gibson, the company's managing director of operations.
These profiles provide faster risk-adjusted quotes through an AI-enhanced underwriting system. Mr. Gibson said these shorten the underwriting process, which is very important.
“Our goal in developing these digital farm profiles is to understand the unique assets of each farm and its operations to accelerate end-to-end insurance solutions for producers,” he said. “Finally, we can make smarter and faster decisions by using AI to build a clearer picture of each farm’s risk exposure, including assets and hazards.”
Bouchard told reporters after the announcement that approximately 500 farms covering more than 4.9 million acres across Western Canada have uploaded data to Agi3's platform since its launch three years ago. Between 80 and 100 of these farms are currently purchasing insurance from Agi3.
Sean Duckett, senior investment director at Scale AI, said Agi3 is demonstrating how AI can strengthen resilience, improve efficiency and strengthen the agricultural and food value chain in a province like Manitoba where agriculture plays a vital economic role.
“So with every state announcing projects this week, one message is clear: AI is no longer theoretical,” Duckett said. “This is practical, deployable, and has real-world impact today.”
Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguide touted the investment as an example of how Canada is leading the AI technology revolution.
“This is what new nation-building will look like,” Duguide said. “Steam-powered railways once connected our country and built our economy, but now AI and digital systems will write our next great chapter.”
Meanwhile, a U.S.-based company that provides AI cloud services wants to build a data center campus in Ile-des-Chênes, south of Winnipeg.
Las Vegas-based Jet.AI Inc. and Convergence Compute LLC, a joint venture between Jet.AI and Vancouver-based Consensus Core Technologies Inc., announced the selected locations on Dec. 4.
The announcement described the proposed campus as a “large-scale development designed to meet North America's growing demand for AI,” adding that it “is attracting strategic interest from very large tenants.”
In a project update posted on Jet.AI's website, the company said it has secured purchase agreements for a total of approximately 350 acres. The company called the area a “Goldilocks” site for data center development, citing its “unique confluence of abundant hydropower and natural gas production capacity.”
In a Dec. 4 announcement, the joint venture said the land is adjacent to a substation, a regional natural gas substation, a high-speed fiber line, and the Riel converter station, which will provide 2,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power through the Bipole III transmission line. A 115 kV transmission line runs directly overhead, providing short-term access to “scalable and cost-effective power.”
Winnipeg is located along a major east-west fiber optic corridor, allowing customers to reach the United States from across Canada with low latency, the announcement said. These long-distance routes support the aggregation of large bandwidth volumes essential for AI and cloud-scale computing operations.
Jet.AI and Consensus Core did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. free press.
Jet.AI founder and CEO Mike Winston said in the companies' announcement that as demand for AI accelerates, it is becoming increasingly difficult to secure “energy-friendly sites” like land south of Winnipeg.
“The combination of power, redundancy and buildable scale here is very difficult to replicate,” Winston says.
A spokesperson for Ritchot Municipality, where the proposed site is located, said: free press Nothing has been discussed by the RM council yet.
A spokesperson said: “It would be premature to comment until something is presented.”
aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca
Aaron Epp
reporter
Aaron Epp reports on business for the Free Press. She joined the full-time staff in 2024 after working as a freelancer for the paper for 10 years. Previously, she was an associate editor at Mennonite Canada. Read more about Aaron.
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