Quebec artificial intelligence firm Element AI, which is handed over to Americans from ServiceNow, will dismiss 42 workers by next Monday, has learned The newspaper.
“The collective dismissal targets 42 employees at their establishment on rue Saint-Urbain, in Montreal. The dismissal will be staggered between November 30 and December 7, 2020 ”, confirmed to Journal the spokesperson for the Ministry of Labor, Catherine Poulin.
On Monday, ServiceNow declined to say how many Element AI employees would be fired, or even how many people make up the current team. Gold The newspaper learned that a collective dismissal notice had been sent by the company Element AI and received at the Ministry of Labor the same day the transaction was announced.
«Of peanuts»
Earlier this week, Element AI refused to tell the Journal how many employees would be affected by its sale to an American group. Highly visible in all kinds of public events, Element AI co-founders Jean-François Gagné and Yoshua Bengio refused to grant an interview on the transaction.
“We are not disclosing the current workforce size or the number of employees who will be joining ServiceNow. That said, we are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for employees who are not retained ”, was limited to say, in a statement sent by email in English, Marc LeCuyer, general manager of ServiceNow for the Canadian market.
In recent days, Quebec entrepreneurs working in artificial intelligence have deplored the purchase of Element AI by the Silicon Valley giant ServiceNow, for less than 400 million US dollars, according to The Globe and Mail.
“A great American player buys the Element AI team for peanuts – relative to the value that this same talent would have created in our economy if it had been properly managed. In the field of tech, we call it an “acqui-hire”, ”lamented Coveo CEO Louis Têtu in a LinkedIn post.
Element AI was able to benefit from a $ 20 million loan from the Federal Ministry of Innovation and a US $ 12.5 million equity investment from the Quebec Ministry of the Economy (out of the US $ 25 million promised). The Caisse had an investment of $ 30 to $ 50 million there as at December 31, 2019.
Some 80 Quebec patent applications funded in part by public funds will pass into the hands of the Silicon Valley company, which has continued to create a stir in the industry in recent hours.
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