Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, Evan Solomon, has announced the federal government’s intent to invest $150 million in not-for-profit organization LawZero’s development of a fundamentally new form of advanced AI.
The government will finance the organization from the Strategic Response Fund. Germany will also inject €100 million into LawZero, as announced by Dr. Karsten Wildberger, Germany’s federal minister for digital transformation and government modernisation, at the ALL IN conference held in Montréal on Wednesday September 16.
The move bolsters Canada and Germany’s cooperation on AI following the announcement of the Joint Declaration of Intent on Artificial Intelligence and the establishment of the Sovereign Technology Alliance. Canada’s funding will be applied towards research and engineering talent and computing capacity for LawZero’s methodology, Scientist AI.
Scientist AI has been designed to reason transparently and produce unbiased evidence-based outputs. It is intended to limit reliance on foreign-controlled AI systems. The project will generate 360 full-time jobs in Canada, and a dedicated sovereign computing infrastructure will be established together with Hypertec and 5C.
Meanwhile, Germany’s funds will go to research and development at LawZero’s office in Germany. It will ensure that the project incorporates European norms and AI regulations while expanding and accelerating the project.
LawZero will begin with developing tools that evaluate and supervise current AI systems. It will also support scientific research while progressing towards a new methodology for safe-by-design frontier models, the Canadian government said.
“With Scientist AI, we are deepening the proven partnership between Canada and Germany. This project pursues a novel, mathematically grounded approach: to develop an inherently safe AI. The safe-by-design model offers an alternative to potentially uncontrollable autonomous AI agents. It works purely on the basis of facts—like an objective scientist—and does not pursue its own goals. By building advanced AI research capabilities in Canada and Europe, we are strengthening our technological sovereignty,” said Wildberger in a statement.
LawZero founder and scientific director Yoshua Bengio added that the organization had identified safety as a key aspect.
“As AI risks multiply and accelerate, our priority must be building solutions to make this technology safe and providing alternative models people can genuinely trust. Recent events demonstrate that safety is itself a core capability; scientific innovation and public safety can and must advance together,” Bengio said.
Germany’s funding is subject to the European Commission’s notification.