Quebec funds AI company working on alternative to cloud computing

Ormuco President and CEO Orlando Bayter demonstrates a drone that can track a person

The provincial government is giving $4 million to Ormuco, a Montreal-based artificial intelligence company.

The company is working on a $17.6 million project, called the Cerebro platform, that is expected to create 40 highly skilled jobs in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Ormuco has developed software for edge computing, or decentralized computing, rather than cloud computing. The company has designed a peripheral computing platform, believing that cloud computing can cause problematic delays because of transmission lag.

During a news conference Monday to explain the project, Ormuco President and CEO Orlando Bayter gave the example of an autonomous car that cannot afford the delay in reaction time to make the decision between stopping at a red light or braking suddenly.

Peripheral computing technology allows decision-making at the same speed as a human brain, he said.

Minister of Economy and Innovation, Pierre Fitzgibbon, pointed out that these were the kinds of jobs, with salaries of more than $90,000 a year, that the Legault government wanted to see increase.