More computing resources for Borealis AI

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Borealis AI partnered with Nvidia and Red Hat to create a computing platform for AI in banking.

Borealis AI is a specialized research center established by RBC, Canada’s largest financial institution, in 2016. The center focuses on natural language processing, reinforcement learning, and responsible AI, to address challenges such as risk and fraud, and improve customer experience.

The bank’s new dedicated AI cloud, powered by Nvidia’s DGX GPU-based servers and Red Hat’s OpenShift software, has the ability to run thousands of simulations and analyze millions of data points in a fraction of the time it previously took.

It takes hardware

“Modern AI cannot exist without access to high performance computing,” said Foteini Agrafioti, chief science officer, RBC, and head of Borealis AI. “This collaboration means that we can conduct research at scale and deploy machine learning applications in production with improved efficiency and speed to market.”

Borealis AI intends to leverage the new infrastructure to create, deploy, and maintain AI-powered applications for personal and commercial banking, wealth management, and capital markets.

“In today’s ever-changing marketplace, we must always be at the forefront of innovation for our clients,” said Mike Tardif, senior vice president, tech infrastructure, Royal Bank of Canada. “We are proud to have delivered a unique AI private cloud capability in-house, leveraging our strong collaboration with Red Hat and Nvidia. This cloud offers GPU acceleration and containerized platform benefits, and we are well positioned to provide the best experience possible for our customers going forward.”

RBC said the new platform has improved trading execution and insights, helped reduce client calls, and allowed for faster delivery of new applications for clients, with the added potential to benefit the AI industry in Canada.