The funding will be used to build fraud-detection and speech-to-text analytics tools in the school’s computer science department. (The Logic)

Talking point: This investment gives Scotiabank access to Edmonton’s growing AI talent pool at a time when competition in Canada’s other two major cities for AI research—Toronto and Montreal—is reaching a fever pitch. The University of Toronto, McGill University and the Université de Montréal have announced partnerships with some of the largest companies in the world, including Uber, Facebook and Samsung. Scotiabank has been an early mover in AI company-university partnerships before. It made a $1.75-million donation to U of T in September 2016, well before those Big Tech companies signed their deals. RBC and Mitsubishi have research facilities in Edmonton and Google’s DeepMind chose Edmonton for its first-ever international AI research facility.