[ad_1]
“This is now the place to place a long-term bet – to make connections with the cluster of schools in the area and create a new pipeline for recruitment,” said Tristan Jung, a Korean-born computer scientist who grew up in Toronto. He worked at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters for six years and recently convinced the company to set up an engineering center in Canada.
Over the past year, Twitter has tripled its Canadian workforce by hiring more than 100 engineers in Toronto. Home internet names like DoorDash, eBay, and Pinterest have set up similar tech hubs in the city, as have emerging artificial intelligence companies like Cerebras, Groq, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals.
There are two universities in this corner of Canada that are best known for producing researchers and engineers: the University of Toronto is a short walk from the city centre, and the University of Waterloo, from which Mr. Jung graduated, is about an hour’s drive or train ride away. In the past, many of these talents immigrated to the United States. But engineers and computer scientists trained in and around Toronto are increasingly staying put.
Or, like Mr. Jung, returning home after years in the United States.
In Toronto, US-based companies can also accelerate the arrival of new tech talent from other countries – a talent stream that has long been the lifeblood of the American tech industry. As the U.S. immigration system slowed and rebounded under the Trump administration, Canada launched programs aimed at bringing skilled workers to an already unusually diverse country. About 50 percent of Toronto residents were born outside the country city.
“It’s much easier to bring that kind of talent to Canada,” said Heather Kirkby, managing director of Recursion, a company that applies artificial intelligence to drug discovery. “Many companies have given up on immigration in the US There are limits to what is possible.”
In and around Toronto, local institutions are intent on nurturing the tech ecosystem. Ontario recently passed a law that explicitly acknowledges it. prevents companies from applying non-compete clauses in their employment contractsto encourage employees to set up their own start-ups. Backed by a $100 million donation from local business leaders, the University of Toronto is building a complex to house artificial intelligence and biotech companies.
[ad_2]
Source link