Mila launches Montreal bootcamp to help Canadian researchers build AI-driven startups
Montreal’s Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute has launched a full-time Venture Scientist Bootcamp aimed at helping STEM researchers turn lab breakthroughs into AI-driven companies. The four-month program, announced on April 14, 2026, is recruiting outstanding PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and emerging scientific founders from across Canada for its Summer 2026 cohort.
Applications close April 26. Mila says the bootcamp is designed for Canadian or Canada-based scientists and engineers who want to fuse their domain expertise with artificial intelligence from day one of company building. The institute frames the initiative as a way to move more discoveries from the lab to the market and to keep innovation, talent and capital anchored in Canada.
It invites STEM experts, including those with no prior AI background, to learn how AI can be integrated into their startups to improve their odds of success. The institute points to a commercialization gap: while Canada is a global leader in AI research, claiming 10% of the world’s top AI researchers, only a fraction of that innovation translates into domestic economic value.
Mila also cites industry data indicating that 82% of high-growth companies have CEOs with STEM backgrounds—nearly double the share from the previous wave—and that almost 60% have at least one co-founder with a partial or completed PhD. “The most disruptive founders of the coming decade will not come from business schools.
They will come from labs,” said Jonathan Guillemette, PhD, who leads the Venture Scientist Bootcamp at Mila.
“The Venture Scientist Bootcamp exists to help exceptional researchers turn deep technical truth into ambitious companies that matter on a global stage.” Hosted in Montreal, the program will bring a highly curated cohort together to work full-time on venture creation through structured programming, direct coaching and immersion in Mila’s research and venture community.
It is open to researchers across science and engineering who may join as solo founders or as teams. Selection will emphasize close support, high standards and a peer group operating at an exceptional level, according to the institute.
“The most important companies of the next decade will be built at the intersection of advanced AI and breakthroughs across STEM,” said Stéphane Marceau, Managing Director of Mila Ventures, citing opportunities from biology and materials science to robotics, energy systems and photonics.
“The next generation of category-defining companies will be built by founders who can fuse their deep scientific expertise with advanced AI to create entirely new capabilities.” Mila says the bootcamp’s goal is that by the end of the program, participants will have launched mission-driven, AI-native, science-based companies.
The initiative is part of the institute’s broader push to help more of Canada’s top scientific talent translate breakthrough research into enduring businesses. Applications for the Summer 2026 cohort close on April 26, 2026.