The gap between “we ran a pilot” and “we have something that works in production” is where most Canadian AI investments go to die.
KPMG Canada is putting money on a different approach.
The firm announced an expansion of its agentic AI capabilities that includes four new AI Labs opening in Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, with Montreal to follow. The Labs, described as “secure, platform-agnostic sandboxes,” allow KPMG professionals to work alongside clients to build and test AI solutions in weeks rather than months.
Instead of abstract strategy sessions, clients get hands-on workshops and a controlled environment to actually run agents against real workflows before anyone commits to a live rollout.
Agentic AI is the piece most Canadian organizations aren’t ready for.
Where generative AI produces content, agentic AI takes action. In a customer service setting, for example, an AI agent can handle a billing issue from inquiry to resolution, without a human touching it. That’s a fundamentally different governance and process problem than asking a model to summarize a document, and most enterprises haven’t built the infrastructure to manage it.
KPMG’s broader AI investment includes an AI Learning Academy for enterprise-wide literacy, a digital twin solution called GenUI AI incorporating LlamaZoo’s proprietary technology, and the appointment of Dr. Andrew Forde as Head of AI Research, described as the first such national role in Canada’s professional services industry.
“Now more than ever, Canadian organizations need teams they can trust to take their AI operations to the next level,” says Walter Pela, AI Client and Market Development Lead for KPMG Canada. “Through our investments in agentic AI, hands-on ideation, executive education and applied research, KPMG is helping clients move from experimentation to achieving real business impact.”
Canadian organizations are largely still sorting out how to govern the AI they’ve already deployed. Agentic AI asks them to hand autonomous decision-making to systems they’re still learning to trust. The Labs are KPMG’s argument that the answer to that problem is moving faster, not slower, and that the right sandbox makes the risk manageable enough to try.
Final Shots
- The four AI Labs are platform-agnostic, meaning clients aren’t locked into a KPMG-preferred vendor stack during the build-and-test phase.
- GenUI AI, built with LlamaZoo technology, lets organizations simulate scenarios like natural disasters or site expansions before going live, useful for energy, manufacturing, and construction CIOs with complex physical operations.
- Dr. Andrew Forde’s Head of AI Research appointment is positioned as a first for Canadian professional services, signalling that KPMG is trying to build credibility with technically skeptical CIO audiences, not just executive sponsors.
