Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next great technological transformation. It is imperative to Canadians’ prosperity, security, and sovereignty that we build and govern these technologies on our own terms. The opportunity to cement that autonomy is now. The decisions we make today will determine whether Canadians have that choice – to use secure, sovereign, Canadian-made AI – for decades to come.
To that end, the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, today announced the Government of Canada’s commitment to making an equity investment of up to $1.6 billion in Cohere. This is a commercial investment, announced alongside private investors, including NVIDIA, Bell, and Schwarz Group.
Fine, whatever, C$1.6B isn’t that much to the federal government in the grand scheme of things, it keeps a piece of emerging tech infrastructure local. If we have to write it off after a bubble collapse I won’t cry over it.
There is a real amount of university research, public benefit, commercial and defence applications for the tech, that by having it publicly owned we can ensure it doesn’t get bought out by the highest (American) bidder as soon as we have something promising. We really should be doing it for chipmaking and components too, but this is a start.
It would be a total boondoggle scam if he was talking about it as a speculative investment like how he’s selling the pipelines on Alberta’s behalf or the sovereign wealth private-sector-giveaways fund (betting on the future remaining as the status quo is still speculation). But as a measured investment to retain local talent, knowledge and expertise in Canada, it’s a valuable piece to have, and there’s a potential chance $1.6B will seem a cheap price for that in hindsight.