Join Maclean's AI power lister Mohammad Norouzi (PhD ' 15) and fellow U of T innovators Eva Lau (BASc '92) and Som Seif (BASc '99) at a networking event for alumni tech entrepreneurs. Norouzi will share his incredible journey in AI, from his days as a PhD student to his success as a startup founder, highlighting the pivotal support of alumni trailblazers along the way.

Inspired by Professor Geoffrey Hinton's Nobel prize-winning work in machine learning, U of T startups are writing the next chapter of AI. Hear their pitch presentations. Stay for the mixer. Share ideas with the researchers, founders and investors driving U of T's innovation ecosystem.

Space is limited so RSVP now.  

Event Highlights

Investor Eva Lau in conversation with Ideogram’s Mohammad Norouzi 

Eva Lau, co-founder of Two Small Fish Ventures and founding member of Wattpad, sits down with Mohammad Norouzi, CEO and co-founder of Ideogram. Following a demonstration of Ideogram’s text-to-image AI tool, Lau and Norouzi will discuss:  

• Professor Hinton’s legacy of attracting talented students and future entrepreneurs to U of T 
• Gaps, strengths and opportunities for U of T in the Canadian AI industry.  
• Practical advice for alumni, investors and entrepreneurs 

Mohammad Norouzi 

Ideogram

Mohammad Norouzi is the co-founder and CEO at Ideogram, a generative AI startup based in Toronto, well known for its generative graphic design. While at Google, Norouzi co-developed Imagen for text-to-image synthesis, and SimCLR, a neural machine translation system for visual representation learning.  He holds a PhD in computer science from U of T,  where he conducted research under the supervision of David Fleet, supported by a Google PhD fellowship. 

Eva Lau

Two Small Fish Ventures (TSFV)

An entrepreneur-turned-investor, Eva Lau is among the few women leading a venture fund in Canada. As co-founder and General Partner of TSFV, she backs founders building category-defining technology that represents the next frontier of computing. Lau's latest US$30 million fund focuses on Generative AI, semiconductors and protocols.

Before TSFV, Lau was a founding team member of Canadian success story Wattpad, which used AI to disrupt the global entertainment industry. Previously, Lau mentored startups at Toronto accelerator Brightspark Labs.  She holds a BASc in industrial engineering from U of T and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business.
 

Pitches by four of U of T’s hottest startups  

Jon French, Director, U of T Entrepreneurship, leads with an overview of U of T's vibrant innovation ecosystem, followed by pitches from four dynamic, scaling U of T ventures that are harnessing the power of AI to create innovative solutions. Founders of all companies will be available during the networking mixer.

BioBox is a software company building the knowledge infrastructure for modern biopharma drug discovery, helping research teams craft custom mutli-modal knowledge graphs and deploy graph AI models to augment decision making. BioBox's mission is to help scientists organize all biological knowledge into a singular, unified resource that is searchable and accessible.

CentML simplifies and accelerates AI deployment with software that delivers performance, scalability and cost-efficiency for enterprises and developers. With the flexible CentML platform, clients can effortlessly train, fine tune and infer AI models, reducing the serving costs of large language models by up to 65%. 

Private AI helps organizations protect customer data and comply with privacy regulations, with a software that identifies, anonymizes and replaces more than 50 types of personally identifiable information (PII) across various data formats. Private AI's solutions operate on-premises or in any cloud environment and support multiple file types.

Xatoms utilizes AI and quantum chemistry to accurately predict 3D models of photocatalytic structures, aiding in the purification of waters across the globe. The company aims to create efficient and sustainable water treatment solutions in places with limited access to clean water.  Xatoms's founders were recently named to the Forbes' Manufacturing and Industry 30 Under 30 list.

Networking Mixer

Stay for a reception with fellow alumni, entrepreneurs, startups, business leaders, investors and community partners. Food and drinks will be provided!

Don't miss out on the chance to connect with these four additional startups at the networking mixer!