Three companies based in Edmonton will get a repayable boost from the federal government to advance AI innovation and commercialization as part of a $6.8-million funding announcement made on the opening day of the Upper Bound conference.
Edmonton Centre MP Eleanor Olszewski, the minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, announced the funding at the fifth annual AI conference, hosted by the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute:
- Vertical City, a digital ad-tech company, will get $1.3 million to scale its AI and machine learning software to support global market expansion;
- Darkhorse Emergency, a decision-analytics provider for emergency services, will get $1 million to expand exports;
- NTWIST, which provides industrial AI solutions in mining and manufacturing, will get $1 million to accelerate commercialization and marketplace adoption.
Localintel, which has offices in Calgary, Vancouver, and Seattle, will also get a repayable grant of $500,000 to further its platform to help municipalities and economic development organizations better tell their story. Meanwhile, the University of Alberta received $3 million in non-repayable funding to advance its Canadian AI Compute Vault, which aims to build out infrastructure to strengthen Canada's tech sovereignty.
The investment will help Darkhorse Emergency reach new clients while also benefiting its existing ones, said Darkhorse president Daniel Haight.
"We applied for this money to support our growth and scaling, both within Canada and internationally," Haight told reporters. "We're using most of this to support our sales and marketing efforts, and to grow our team, but of course it also has a trickle-down effect throughout the business as we build out AI products and AI capabilities internally to better serve our customers."
Darkhorse expects to hire at least five people, Haight said, and Olszewski estimated that this installment of funding from the Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative will create more than 70 jobs. However, it can be difficult to invest in hiring as AI advances, suggested NTWIST co-CEO Sunil Vedula.
"I don't want to sugarcoat this," he told Taproot following the announcement. "We have to think 10 times before hiring anyone because so much can be done with the agents and all of that. So we will hire for sure, but only in those areas where human-to-human connection is what finally gets the deal done."
Edmonton Centre MP Eleanor Olszewski (second from right) announced $6.8 million in new funding for AI on May 19 during Upper Bound at the Edmonton Convention Centre. (Colin Gallant)
Vedula joined NTWIST after helping Nanoprecise raise $52 million in Series C funding in 2025. He said NTWIST sees value in hiring people in sales and product management, but the team simply needs fewer developers than it might have in the past because of what AI can do.
"Our developers spend less than 20% of the time coding, about 40% being a prompt engineer, and the last 40% reviewing (what AI has done)," Vedula said.
While that may sound grim for workers, Vedula said people who adapt to the AI era will still find work.
In making the announcement, Olszewski said a new federal AI strategy is coming soon. She quoted Prime Minister Mark Carney on the federal government's view that AI's effects on Canada are inevitable — whether they be good or bad — so intervention is necessary.
"The question is not whether AI will transform our lives — it will," she recalled Carney saying earlier this spring. "The question is whether it will improve the lives of all Canadians or benefit only some."
More announcements are expected at Upper Bound amid sessions for about 8,000 attendees. Nate Glubish, Alberta's minister of technology and innovation, will speak on May 20, and Evan Solomon, Canada's minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, is scheduled to appear on May 21.
The conference continues to impress, Olszewski said.
"In just a few short years, (Upper Bound has) gone from a kind of a modest gathering to Canada's fastest growing AI conference," she said. "I think that growth says a lot about our province, about Alberta, about Edmonton's leadership in the AI sector, and through Amii, our post-secondary institutions, local businesses, and the people gathered here today."