Yoshua Bengio, a renowned researcher in the field of artificial intelligence, has selected Montreal as the primary location for his research activities. He co-founded Element AI in 2016, which has as a mission to “turn the world’s leading AI research into transformative business applications”. He is also the director of Mila (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms) which has been called “the largest concentration of deep learning researchers in the world”. Thanks to him, Montreal has become the fastest growing AI community in the world.

Recently, Google (Google Brain), Microsoft (Maluuba) and Facebook (FAIR) have announced that millions of dollars will be invested in AI labs across Montreal.

Finally, Montreal has just been designated to host the World Summit AI for the next 3 years organized by Inspired Minds. The conference is expected to attract approximately 1,000 participants to Montreal next year (2019), but this number is expected to reach 3,000 by 2021.

In 2013, the Quartier de l’innovation was launched by McGill University and ETS (Ecole de Technologies Supérieures). Its aim is to act as an innovation hub that gathers a variety of stakeholders (researchers, business and startups) to work together and make Montreal an expert in innovation and creativity.

C2 Montreal, another innovative hub, was launched in Montreal. This is an annual conference taking place in Montreal, which gathers worldwide leaders to explore trends, opportunities and major developments in creativity which are on the horizon.

In 2017, the famous entertainment studio Moment Factory lit up the Jacques Cartier Bridge, an iconic landmark of the city of Montreal, with the help of 6 local partners. The collaboration resulted in the world’s most-connected bridge, a smart city illumination activated by real-time social media activity and big urban data.

The founder of the Cirque du Soleil Guy Laliberté just started a new project: Lune Rouge. He plans to erect a new auditorium in the shape of an imposing pyramid in Old Montreal. This space will be a playground for multimedia and digital experiences.

Montreal is a green city where urban ecology is not just a concept, it is a lifestyle that truly engages its institutions and citizens. The island of Montreal holds 17 big parks for a grand total of 2000 hectares of green spaces. The city has developed many community gardens permitting urban citizens to keep their green thumbs. 18 public spaces are managed by the organisation La Pépinière, which puts them in the thick of the communities in order to develop meetings and mutual aid for Montrealers.

Various organizations are very present in Montreal for example, Lufa Farms, the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse on an industrial building in Montreal (urban agriculture). The Centre for Sustainable Development provides space to meet and share innovative ideas about sustainable development, in a sustainable building, Equiterre, an organization that encourages citizens, organizations and government agencies to make ecological choices.