The Canadian government will support this new initiative to accelerate the research & development of open source AI, providing a collaborative, safe and accessible alternative to proprietary models.
MONTRÉAL, Sept. 17, 2026 /CNW/ -- Today at ALL IN, Canada's largest AI and technology event, Mila and Mozilla announced a new initiative and fresh investment to build an open source AI foundation layer that enables organizations and institutions to own and operate advanced AI systems locally, ensuring full control over their technology and data.
Doubling down on its commitment to open source AI, the Government of Canada announced its support for the initiative. Mila will lead the technical delivery and coordination of the project, while Mozilla contributes technical expertise and provided the initial $5 million investment to kick off the project. Hypertec is committing an additional $1 million in first-year funding to accelerate initial Canadian deployments of the open source AI foundation layer on Hypertec hardware.
Founding this new initiative in Canada is a deliberate bet, and a distinctly Canadian one. The same country that took an early chance on deep learning when few others believed in it is now betting that the next generation of AI will be built on open source AI, and that Canada can help build it.
Mila and Mozilla will lead the work together: Mila drawing on a world-class community of close to 2,000 researchers and professionals, Mozilla as technical partner from industry, bringing twenty-five years of experience stewarding open infrastructure others build on. Mila and Mozilla are actively engaging new partners, inviting companies, research institutions, funders, governments and developers to join and support this work.
What's Being Built
The goal is simple: make owning your AI as easy as renting it. Using open-source models was never the hard part. Turning a raw open-source model into something a small business, a hospital, a local charity or a government can run in production -- secure, reliable, plugged into everything else -- takes an engineering team most organizations and institutions do not have and months they can't spare.
The goal is to offer businesses and organizations a ready-to-use AI package that they can run privately and keep under their own control, rather than having to build a complex system themselves or rely entirely on expensive, pay-per-use proprietary AI services.
For example, a small manufacturer could use the system as a private AI assistant for its employees. It could search the company's manuals, procedures and past project files; help staff draft reports or answer technical questions; and help its software team write and improve code. Because the system is designed to be able to run locally, the company could do this while keeping its proprietary information and data within its own environment.
That also means lower costs. For the vast majority of everyday business tasks, companies will be able to use open-source AI running on open-source tools instead of paying a commercial provider every time an employee makes a request. But this requires reducing the technical work and expense involved in putting open-source AI into practice.
This initiative was founded to solve that problem, building the free layer that makes owning open source AI easy - the same kind of layer the web was built on. It has two halves: An open standard, published as interface contracts, so any part of the stack can be swapped for a better one. And a working "reference implementation" any organization can install on its own machines or the ones it chooses, running the models and controls it chooses against its own data, with governance and access control built in from the start. The ambition is that with the standards and foundation in place, open source AI can be built anywhere, by anyone.
The Work Already Underway
Over the last six months, Mila and Mozilla have been designing the architecture, deciding which open source components belong at each layer, and testing that the whole system works end to end. This investment builds on that progress.
Working alongside Mila and Mozilla, Hypertec will help move the initiative from research and reference implementation to real-world adoption by Canadian businesses and institutions, providing a practical, private and cost-effective path to deploy AI while maintaining greater control over their data and technology.
Why Now
Mozilla's State of Open Source AI report found that while 79% of developers adding AI functionality use open models, only 53% of teams ever reach production, stopped by cost, security, integration and maintenance. This work aims to change that.
Within six months, Mozilla and Mila expect to publish working reference implementations for enterprise, government and public-interest use cases. The two-year ambition is bigger: to have solved this problem outright, so that open source AI can be adopted fully and easily, anywhere, by anyone.
Quotes
"Canada has a choice: depend on technologies developed elsewhere, or build more of what we need here at home. Open-source AI gives Canadian businesses and institutions greater control over their technology and data, while making powerful tools more affordable, accessible and easier to adapt. By supporting this work, we are strengthening Canada's capacity to build and adopt AI on our own terms." -- The Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario
"Six months ago, we announced our partnership with Mozilla to advance open-source and sovereign AI. Today, we are bringing that work to a whole new level. By delivering an open, secure AI foundation layer, we empower organizations, from small businesses to non-profits to governments, to own their technological future so they can run, control, and maintain AI models themselves. At Mila, our research community has always believed that for AI to be trustworthy and accessible, it must be built on open standards that keep control in local hands." -- Valérie Pisano, President and CEO, Mila
"AI today is at a crossroads, where it could be closed and owned by a few, or open and available to every coder, developer, enterprise and nation. That's what we're building - an open source AI ecosystem that fits together as seamlessly as the web, and that anyone, anywhere can build on. We're so grateful to Canada for scaling this work, and call on partners across sectors - from enterprises and governments to coders and startups - to join us in building this future." -- Mark Surman, President, Mozilla
"AI is advancing at an extraordinary pace and has the potential to transform our economy and society for the better. Canada has an important role to play in ensuring that AI is developed and adopted responsibly. Hypertec is proud to help turn open source innovation into AI that Canadian organizations can deploy securely and under their own control. This is exactly the kind of partnership between government, research and Canadian industry needed to realize the full potential of AI." -- Simon Ahdoot, CEO, Hypertec Group
About Mila
Founded by Professor Yoshua Bengio, Mila is one of the world's leading AI research institutes, bringing together close to 2,000 researchers & professionals shaping the future of intelligence. A non-profit organization based in Montreal, Mila is recognized for its scientific contributions, global innovation partnerships, leadership in safe & responsible AI, and acceleration of AI venture creation. It was created through a unique partnership between Université de Montréal and McGill University to advance scientific breakthroughs for the benefit of all. Mila is supported by the Government of Canada, the Government of Quebec, and more than 150 industrial partners. For more information, visit mila.ai
About Mozilla
Mozilla is a mission-driven organization that has spent more than twenty-five years building an open, healthy internet. Best known for the Firefox browser, Mozilla today works across products, advocacy, research and investment -- including Mozilla.ai and Mozilla Ventures -- to ensure that artificial intelligence, like the web before it, is built as public infrastructure rather than private property. Mozilla is backed by a non-profit foundation and answers to a mission rather than to shareholders. Learn more at mozilla.org.
SOURCE Mila - Quebec AI Institute
Media contacts: Mozilla: di:ga Communications, [email protected]; Mila: Media Relations, [email protected]
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