Toronto and New York-based fintech startup Overbond AI, a fixed income trading tool using AI predictive analytics, will open a trio of Montréal-based R&D Labs in partnership with Concordia University, HEC Montréal and the Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO).

The partnership will see Overbond working together with over 30 masters, doctoral and post-doctoral fellows from HEC Montréal And Concordia to develop forward bond pricing using AI.

Specifically, they will “source one of the deepest vertical data stacks in the world for fixed income capital markets AI modeling, including traditional and alternative data sets.” The academic researchers will focus on advanced AI applications for bond price forward, price momentum, liquidity scoring, fundamental analysis and modeling the shape of yield curves.

“Accurate prediction of bond prices with advanced AI is an important area of new research and applications in capital markets,” said Concordia University professor Cody Hyndman. “We are pleased to partner with Overbond to provide opportunities for master’s, doctoral, and post-doctoral fellows to be part of this exciting initiative.”

Overbond said in a release that the new R&D Labs will be associated with the Fintech Station accelerator and its larger venture community hub Espace CDPQ.

“R&D Labs will be offering to our clients a sandbox environment for rapid prototyping. We will be exposing advanced models and AI capabilities to reduce development and research costs for our clients by at least 10 times,” said the company’s CEO, Vuk Magdelinic.

“The sandbox environment for rapid prototyping will be made available to Overbond clients as of September 2019. Data cleansing and normalization layer will be applied so that clients can start driving meaningful AI modeling results without lengthy data sourcing and data structuring IT integration projects,” added Magdelinic

Montréal International, Montréal’s economic promotion agency, said it welcomed the arrival of a new AI player in the city.

“Quite a number of foreign companies are investing in the area. Our team has supported over 30 AI projects in the past two years, with investments totalling $500 million,” said CEO Hubert Bolduc.

“The dynamism of Montréal’s financial markets and AI communities are allowing Montréal to attract cutting edge projects,” added Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of Economy and Innovation of Quebec.

Founded in 2015, Overbond’s fully-digital platform and suite of AI algorithms (COBI) “eliminates inefficiencies, provides systematic price discovery and predictive analytics to all counterparties in fixed income markets.”

The company provides its clients advanced algorithmic output such as bond price momentum recommendations, pre-trade ideas, pricing tension signals and buyer preference monitoring. It uses a cloud-accessible platform for front-end visualizations and offers bond pricing feeds via on-demand near-real-time API access.