Creating an innovation center in Montréal

Connecting, exploring, innovating: 50 years of commitment to helping clients turn ideas into action

For 50 years, CGI has worked alongside clients across industries to help turn innovation into practical, measurable progress, with a constant focus on advancing ideas that create business value. In Montréal, this story reflects that commitment through the opening of CGI’s innovation center in 2020, creating a collaborative space where clients and CGI experts could explore emerging technologies, co-innovate and accelerate transformation.

In 2020, CGI (TSX: GIB.A) (NYSE: GIB) opened a new innovation center in Montréal to showcase cross-industry innovation developed with clients from around the world and create new co-innovation opportunities.

The center was designed to give clients and business leaders an immersive experience, taking advantage of virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and other innovative tools that leverage key emerging technologies, CGI's best industry innovations, and CGI's intellectual property solutions. It was also equipped with a state-of-the-art design thinking space where clients, guided by CGI experts, can build digitization roadmaps and spark new thinking—from ideation to rapid prototypes—with a process designed to generate applied innovations. For CGI professionals, the center created a collaborative space to test, evolve and share innovations with clients and the local community.

"The new center is an extension of our proximity model," said Guy Vigeant, President of CGI's Canadian operations. "CGI's global network of innovation centers and labs enables us to collaborate and innovate locally with our clients. The center also will help us attract new talent to our growing team of approximately 11,000 professionals in Canada, which is spread across 21 offices and 11 centers of excellence, and delivers end-to-end services."

"Montreal is one of the world's top cities for artificial intelligence, among other emerging technologies," added Michael Godin, President, Canada CGI. "Our new innovation center demonstrates our commitment to take an active part in the ecosystem, providing clients and CGI teams with a dedicated space where they can connect, think, explore, innovate and, most of all, get inspired."

The center also responded to findings from CGI’s 2019 Client Global Insights research, which showed that the consistent application of innovation was a pressing priority for business and technology leaders, and that developing new products and services was top of mind for many organizations. In that context, the Montréal innovation center was designed to help clients identify, prioritize and apply relevant innovations to improve performance.

At the time of its opening, more than 65 Montréal-based and international clients had already explored the center as part of its phase-one pre-launch.

About CGI

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 94,000 consultants and professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from strategic IT and business consulting to systems integration, managed IT and business process services and intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and accelerate results. CGI Fiscal 2025 reported revenue is CA$15.91 billion and CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com.