The Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) is expanding its partnership with 25 more small businesses across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba to develop custom artificial intelligence tools. This expansion follows new funding of C$2.5M from the federal agency PrairiesCan.

With this latest contribution, total federal support for the initiative has reached C$5.6M. The program began in 2024 with an initial C$3M allocation and has already assisted 30 firms since its inception.

Under the scheme, Amii places an AI expert directly within each participating company. These experts collaborate with staff on their own proprietary data. Companies retain ownership of the developed tools and receive training to operate them independently once the project concludes.

Early projects are already underway in the energy, farming, and manufacturing sectors. Notable examples include Croptimistic, which utilizes cameras on crop sprayers to distinguish young wheat and oats from weeds, and Carson Integrated, which leveraged two decades of field data to build a tool classifying streams for land management purposes.

Small enterprises often face challenges adopting AI compared to larger corporations. Data indicates that while 55% of large companies utilize AI, only approximately 17% of small firms in the EU do so. Amii Chief Executive Cam Linke stated the funding aims to empower businesses across the Prairies to scale their impact.

Amii operates as one of Canada's three national AI institutes, alongside Mila in Montreal and Vector in Toronto. In July, Anthropic included Amii among eight institutions sharing a C$10M research pledge.