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Chapa is pleased to announce our partnership with Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute and the world's largest deep learning institute under Mila's entrepreneurship lab as Mila Startup. This partnership enables Chapa to further research within the AI and machine learning world, allowing financial inclusion for SMEs and businesses overall. Mila is a research institute in artificial intelligence that rallies nearly 900 researchers specializing in the field of machine learning. Based in Montreal, Mila's mission is to be a global pole for scientific advances that inspire innovation and the development of AI for the benefit of all. Founded by Professor Yoshua Bengio, Mila is now the world's largest academic research center for deep learning. Yoshua Bengio, a Quebec researcher who specializes in artificial intelligence at the Université de Montréal, is one of the precursors of deep learning. In 2017, Mila expands the scope of its activities through a collaboration between Université de Montréal and McGill University, working closely with Polytechnique Montréal and HEC Montréal. Today, Mila brings together a community of professors, student researchers (master's, doctorate, postdoctorate, interns, visitors), students (professional master's, specialized graduate degree), industry partners, and startups working in AI. Mila acquired the status of a non-profit organization in 2018 and inaugurated its new premises in 2019 in an effervescent innovation-oriented Montreal neighborhood: the Mile-Ex. The city ranks first in Canada in AI university research, with annual funding of more than $1.34 billion. Became operational in June 2022, Chapa has set out to drive growth for businesses and entrepreneurs across Africa through digital payment technology, starting by enabling Ethiopian businesses to accept payments from any customer in the world. "This is an important milestone for Chapa. We are excited to be able to advance our research in machine learning with Mila and look forward to making impacts together. Chapa will leverage this partnership to realize our 2025 vision of empowering entrepreneurs and businesses to thrive in a global economy using AI and creating a world-class research and development center for financial services in Ethiopia," says Israel Goytom, CTO of Chapa. "Developing state-of-the-art machine learning models is core to our business and useful to include every business in society by giving them basic financial services regardless of their demography in an inexpensive and easy-to-use form." As a startup founded by members of Mila, Chapa has been selected based on our scientific excellence and commitment to the responsible use of AI. Following this partnership with Mila Entrepreneurship Lab, We are excited to extend our global presence with a research and development office in Calgary, Canada. "Our new office will be an innovation center and help accelerate our organization's growth and drive new economic opportunity for Ethiopia by bringing global trends," says Nael Hailemariam, CEO of Chapa With Mila, Chapa will leverage this partnership to realize our vision of empowering entrepreneurs and businesses to thrive in a global economy using AI and creating a world-class research and development center for financial services in Ethiopia and Africa as a whole.