Vancouver isn’t the only metropolis north of the border buzzing with tech.
Montreal
Quebec’s largest city is becoming internationally renowned as a research hub for artificial intelligence. Google (GOOGL) last November established a new A.I. research group in its Montreal office, pledging to invest $4.5 million over three years in the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, an A.I. research lab at the University of Montreal. And earlier this year, Microsoft doubled the size of its local A.I. research group. The tech giant also pledged $6 million to the University of Montreal and $1 million to McGill University over the next five years. Outside of A.I., Amazon (AMZN) houses massive cloud data centers nearby.
Toronto
As if it doesn’t have a footprint everywhere already, Google is planting roots in Canada’s most populous city. Sidewalk Labs, a unit of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, recently applied to develop a 12-acre parcel of land downtown, promising a brand-new high-tech city “from the Internet up,”deciding against U.S. candidates like Detroit and Denver. Uber is also expanding self-driving car research into foreign markets, making Toronto its first outpost.
A version of this post appears as a sidebar in the article “Just Call It Silicon Coast” in the Aug. 1, 2017 issue of Fortune.
