Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Artificial intelligence firm Cohere will receive up to $240 million from the federal government to boost its computing capacity.

The money headed for the Toronto company, which specializes in enterprise AI, is meant to help Cohere secure enough private capital to get its partners to build an AI data centre.

That centre is expected to be in operation in Canada by 2025.

The government's funding is part of a strategy it recently launched to invest up to $700 million to increase domestic AI compute capacity.

Canada has recently slipped several notches in global rankings meant to measure the country's AI capacity, infrastructure and talent.

Experts have said reversing these trends will rely on Canada scaling up its energy capacity, data centres and chips to accommodate AI's rapid advancement.

(C) The Canadian Press