Greater Montreal’s life sciences and health technologies (LSHT) sector has experienced significant growth, with major companies like Moderna, Grifols, and Novartis investing in the region over the past five years. The local ecosystem now boasts approximately 1,300 companies and over 45,000 jobs.
Asian investors have increased their contributions to Montreal’s economy, with projects worth $341 million in 2023, marking a 20% increase from the previous year.
Key Factors Driving Investment in Greater Montreal:
- Highly qualified talent pool
- World-class universities
- Competitive cost advantage
- Strong focus on artificial intelligence (AI)
Montreal’s reputation as an AI hub has attracted major investments from pharma and biotech companies looking to leverage technology in their R&D efforts. The city is home to renowned AI researchers like Yoshua Bengio and Joelle Pineau.
Notable Investments:
- InSilico Medicine: Inaugurated an R&D center in Montreal focused on deep learning for drug discovery
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals: Established an R&D centre to develop machine learning methods for drug discovery
Montreal offers a 31% cost advantage for businesses in AI and other high-value sectors compared to the average across the 20 largest metropolitan areas in Canada and the U.S.
Mila: World’s Largest Academic Centre for Deep Learning
Mila, a cornerstone of Montreal’s AI hub, has partnered with over 140 companies. It brings together more than 1,300 researchers and students, including Turing Award Laureate Yoshua Bengio.
Mila’s research extends beyond life sciences to areas such as:
- Robotics
- Language and image processing
- Environment and energy
- Ethical AI
Since 2019, Mila has hosted one of Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) centers, focusing on voice recognition, machine translation, and natural language understanding.
Other Asian tech companies with a presence in Greater Montreal include Panasonic, Sony, Fujitsu, Hitachi Global, and FTP Corporation, all partnering with Mila to access its expertise.
For more information on investment opportunities in Montreal’s life science industry, visit Montréal International.
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