DarwinAI makes global list of promising AI startups

A company founded by two Waterloo Engineering professors has made an international list of the most promising artificial intelligence (AI) startups for the third straight year.

DarwinAI, which was launched by systems design engineering professors Alexander Wong and Mohammad Javad Shafiee, was named to the AI 100 by research firm CB Insights for its work with explainable AI, and the detection and diagnosis of COVID-19 using medical images.

The list was compiled from a pool of more than 6,000 companies based on factors including patent activity, market potential and technical novelty.

DarwinAI, which is headed by Waterloo Engineering alumnus Sheldon Fernandez (BASc ’01), was one of just five Canadian companies to make the list.