The president of Behavox is full of praise for Montreal. So much so that he decided to leave the United States to settle there and create in Montreal the most important technological platform of his artificial intelligence company.

The young New York company, which specializes in developing solutions for financial institutions, has just signed a lease of some $ 50 million (US $ 35 million) with Ivanhoé Cambridge for the ten-year rental of the two floors of the summit from the Manulife Tower in downtown.

Inaugurated in the fall of 2017, the building, erected at a cost of $ 224 million, is the last large office tower to appear in the sector after that of Deloitte, two years earlier. From the top of the 26th and 27th floors, which had remained unoccupied until then, the new Behavox offices offer a breathtaking view of the city center and the Montérégie.

High level workforce

“We could have settled anywhere on the planet. But it was in Montreal that I wanted our most important office to be located, said his young CEO, Erkin Andylov, a Briton, former analyst at Goldman Sachs. Montreal is a vibrant city, with a pool of high-level labor and a concentration of artificial intelligence companies that made it essential. “

The company, which still has only a hundred employees in the metropolis, says it plans to hire at least 400 new workers within two years. If all goes well, this figure could even reach 600, says the president, who in addition to his offices in New York, London and Montreal announces the upcoming opening of offices in Dubai, Seattle and Tokyo.

With recent funding of US $ 100 million from SoftBank, Behavox has just signed a major contract with Danske Bank, the largest bank in Denmark.

The 35-year-old CEO says he can’t wait to move to Montreal with his wife and children.

“I am learning Japanese, but we all want to get into French as soon as we arrive. We want our children to attend a French daycare center; it’s important to us. ”