Techstars to Host Startup Weekend AI in Montreal
The global entrepreneur network Techstars is teaming up with McGill University to host a Startup Weekend on artificial intelligence in Montreal.
The 54-hour competition from September 22 to 24 brings AI designers, developers, entrepreneurs and business-minded individuals together to pitch a startup idea to their peers and set off on a crash course to build a real product, team and brand.
The three-day event involves business model creation, coding, designing and market validation, wrapping up with presentations judged by local entrepreneurial leaders acting, including Google Brain’s Ross Goroshin, formally with DeepMind. Both Google and IBM are also sponsoring weekend workshops.
McGill is joining the event to give their graduate students who are studying AI an opportunity to build their network in a city where AI is booming. Montreal is home to the largest group of deep learning researchers in the world and is gaining attention from global tech giants.
Just this week, Facebook announced a new Montreal-based AI lab, led by Joelle Pineau, the co-director of McGill University’s Reasoning and Learning Lab, and Université de Montréal’s Pascal Vincent, who co-founded the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms with AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio.
Facebook also announced a $7 million investment into Montreal’s AI research community.
