Canadian institutions and researchers have been instrumental in shaping the modern AI landscape. During a period of widespread skepticism about neural network research, the University of Toronto and the Université de Montréal were among the few institutions that nurtured this critical area of study, while University of Alberta researchers carried out groundbreaking work on reinforcement learning. In the early 2010s, Canadian research institutions led the way in showing that deep neural networks could succeed at scale with new computing resources-particularly general-purpose GPUs-launching the current era of AI.
Today, Canadians both domestically and internationally continue to hold leading roles in AI research, safety, and policy-including at Anthropic. In recognition of this, the company is committing $10 million CAD to Canadian research institutions to fund the next generation of work in the field. Anthropic is also releasing its first Canadian country brief based on the Anthropic Economic Index, offering a snapshot of how Canadians are putting Claude to use.
Investment in Canadian Research
The $10 million commitment will fund research into beneficial and responsible AI applications. As part of this initiative, Anthropic is announcing partnerships with Canada's three leading regional AI institutes-Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal, and the Vector Institute in Toronto-along with CHEO, The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Université Laval, University of Toronto, and the University of Saskatchewan, with additional partnerships expected in the months ahead:
- Amii, based in Edmonton, will receive Claude credits for its research and engineering teams to advance work in reinforcement learning, AI trust and safety, and to boost AI adoption across Canada's key economic sectors.
- Mila, the Quebec AI institute that hosts the world's largest concentration of academic deep learning researchers, will make Claude available to its community for research in responsible AI, health, sustainability, multi-agent systems, and robotics. Mila also plans to use Claude to build AI assistants that help researchers discover and evaluate scientific breakthroughs.
- The Vector Institute in Toronto will leverage Claude credits to advance AI research in trust and safety, health and science, and other challenges AI is well-suited to address for Canadians.
- CHEO and the CHEO Research Institute will use Claude credits to develop and assess AI-enabled approaches for improving health outcomes and care experiences for children, youth, and families, as well as to study how AI can be applied responsibly in pediatric health.
- CAMH will apply Claude credits across its research, education initiatives, and clinical projects. For instance, CAMH's Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics will use Claude for computational mental health research, including developing predictive treatment models and running large-scale fairness evaluations in psychiatric AI systems. Credits will also help scale the CAMH Global Learning Academy's multilingual, AI-enabled mental health education programs.
- Université Laval's Institute for Intelligence and Data will work with Claude to deepen understanding of how LLMs behave across cultural contexts, as well as to study low-resource languages and dialects such as Quebec French and Indigenous languages.
- The University of Saskatchewan will use Claude to advance research in biomedical innovation, food and water security, public health, quantum computing, and public service.
- The University of Toronto Data Sciences Institute will support a range of research projects through a scientific review-based process for accessing Claude API credits.
Beyond these donations, Anthropic plans to add Amii, Mila, and Vector to the Anthropic for Startups program this summer, giving founders building on Claude access to a community and resources to support growth. Hundreds of Canadian startups affiliated with these institutions will each receive at least $5,000 USD in API credits to continue developing their businesses.
Chris Olah, one of Anthropic's co-founders, remarked that many foundations of modern AI originated in Toronto, Montréal, and Edmonton-and so did many of the researchers most dedicated to making AI safe. He noted that he was shaped by that culture and expressed pride that Anthropic can support the next chapter.
How Canadians Are Using Claude
Anthropic is also sharing data on how people across Canada use Claude. This information draws from the March 2026 Anthropic Economic Index, Anthropic's ongoing analysis of how AI is being integrated into work tasks across the economy. The economic research relies on real-world Claude usage data, analyzed through a privacy-preserving tool that identifies usage patterns while keeping all user information anonymous.
The data shows that Canada ranks eighth worldwide in Claude.ai usage. On a per-capita basis, Canadians use Claude at more than four times the rate that population size alone would predict, and among the top 10 countries for Claude usage, only the United States ranks higher on this measure.
Within Canada, Claude adoption correlates with the types of work people do. Per-person usage is higher in provinces where professional, scientific, and technical work is concentrated. British Columbia leads in per-person usage, with Ontario-home to the largest share of total conversations-close behind. Both provinces show usage rates higher than expected based on population alone.
A closer look reveals that how people use Claude aligns with local economic characteristics. Translation requests are most common in provinces with higher rates of government employment, likely reflecting Canada's bilingualism requirements for federal services and communications. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Québec lead the country in both government employment and the share of conversations related to translation.
A Shared Perspective on AI's Future
The countries that invest the most in advanced AI over the coming years will also shape the rules governing it. Anthropic has long held that democracies should lead this effort, and Canada is positioned at the forefront. Canada published the world's first national AI strategy in 2017, and in June released its successor, "AI for All," which commits to strengthening the country's AI safety institute, expanding AI literacy, and reinforcing the three national institutes that have anchored Canadian research for nearly a decade.
Anthropic recently published a case study on the Government of Alberta, whose Ministry of Technology and Innovation used Claude Code to review 466 million lines of code across provincial systems in roughly 20 hours, then shared their methods with other governments.
The eight partnerships announced represent only the beginning of Anthropic's investment in Canadian research. The company looks forward to supporting this work-in research institutes, hospitals, and universities-for years to come.