Canada & physical AI
Canada’s physical AI opportunity: follow the work
Canada has plenty of places where better machines could do useful work. The commercial question is which job someone is ready to pay them to do.
My view is that physical AI deserves a place in the Canadian market-entry conversation. Mining, construction, infrastructure, and manufacturing put technology in contact with real operating problems: moving material, inspecting assets, handling parts, and keeping people out of hazardous situations.
By physical AI, I mean AI that helps machines perceive their surroundings and act in the physical world. Robots and autonomous vehicles are examples; NVIDIA’s overview describes that connection between perception, reasoning, and action. A chatbot answering questions about a building is a different proposition from a machine navigating it.
How big is the opportunity?
I would be wary of a single Canadian physical AI market number. The useful starting point is the industrial spending underneath it, followed by a much narrower view of what a particular product can serve.
Statistics Canada’s February 2026 release puts planned capital spending in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction at C$65.3 billion for 2026. Transportation and warehousing intentions exceed C$61 billion. These are broad sector totals, not AI budgets, and the resource figure includes oil and gas.
The same release reports C$141 billion in infrastructure capital spending in 2024. Manufacturing investment was C$34 billion in 2025, with a further decline expected in 2026. There is substantial activity to sell into, but it is not a uniform boom. Those figures cover different periods and overlapping categories; I would not add them into a market-size claim.
For a vendor, I’d size the reachable opportunity from eligible sites, a specific task, the economics of deployment, and the number of customers it can support. A country’s construction bill is not your pipeline.
The banks are making larger commitments
At the September 2026 Canada Investment Summit, the federal government reported TD’s C$150 billion financing commitment over five years across sectors including energy, critical minerals, digital and AI, and infrastructure. It also reported more than C$100 billion from Scotiabank over five years, C$2 billion from CIBC for defence-related and dual-use businesses, and nearly C$1.5 billion to be invested and mobilised by RBC for high-growth Canadian technology companies.
Separately, BMO announced plans to mobilise up to C$70 billion over ten years, covering areas including electricity and transportation infrastructure, mining, AI computing, and defence.
These are multi-year commitments with different scopes. They are not all direct investments, they are not already fully deployed, and they are not dedicated physical AI funding. My read is that they make industrial expansion worth watching closely. They do not remove the need to find a funded project and a willing buyer.
Where I’d look for the first customers
Mining. I’d investigate tasks such as material movement and remote inspection, then work backwards from the mine operator’s actual conditions. What happens underground or when connectivity drops? Who maintains the equipment? Can a deployment fit the site’s operating and safety requirements? Canada’s established mining sector makes this a serious place to look, but a national resource story will not answer those questions for you.
Traditional construction. A residential or commercial job site changes as work progresses. I’d assess a tightly defined task—such as moving material or collecting repeatable site observations—with the contractor who bears the cost of delay. Establish who controls the site, who buys the equipment, and who benefits. They may be different companies.
Infrastructure. Roads, rail, utilities, and other long-lived assets create a different conversation. I’d explore inspection and maintenance tasks with the asset owner and its service partners. A new project may offer an opening during design; an existing asset needs a deployment that fits current operations. The route to purchase matters as much as the demonstration.
Factories. I’d start with a particular handling, inspection, or production task and the plant leader who owns the result. Work out how installation affects the line, how exceptions are handled, and who responds when it stops. An existing factory with a costly problem can be a better first account than a newly announced plant without a settled timeline.
A Canadian deployment plan has to survive the site visit
Before building a national account list, choose a task and an operating environment. Then identify the buyer, local service coverage, implementation partner, and conditions a pilot must meet. For outdoor deployments, test the weather and terrain assumptions. For remote ones, test the connectivity and support assumptions.
I’d agree on the baseline and the decision after the pilot before starting it. What would justify paying for a rollout? Who has that authority? What would cause the operator to stop? “The demo went well” leaves too much unresolved.
I’m optimistic about the opportunity to build and operate more effectively here. The strongest Canadian story will be told by projects that work: equipment people trust, customers who can support it, and a commercial case that holds up beyond the announcement.
If you’re bringing a physical AI product to Canada, let’s talk about the first buyer and the route to deployment.