Alternative asset manager Sagard Holdings Inc. has hired its first head of artificial intelligence as the private capital unit of Power Corp. of Canada POW-T continues its expansion in the digital economy.
Sagard is set to announce on Thursday the hiring of Parinaz Sobhani, the former head of AI at Georgian Partners, Canada’s largest venture capital firm.
Ms. Sobhani joined Georgian as an applied research scientist in 2017 after earning a master’s degree in computer science at Sharif University of Technology in her native country of Iran and a PhD in AI at the University of Ottawa. Her university studies focused on natural language processing. She was appointed Georgian’s head of AI in early 2023 after serving as head of applied research.
At Georgian, Ms. Sobhani oversaw a 10-person team that worked with dozens of its portfolio companies and prospects, helping them integrate machine learning into their products. She advanced Georgian’s strategy to act more like a financial technology firm, which would even write software that investee companies could use.
Now, Ms. Sobhani will lead the development and implementation of the AI strategy at Sagard, Power Corp.’s seven-year-old alternative investment arm, which has US$25-billion in assets under management. Ms. Sobhani starts next month.
Sagard is led by Paul Desmarais III, the grandson of Power Corp.’s late chairman Paul Desmarais and son of its former co-chief executive officer Paul Desmarais Jr. Power, through its affiliates, including Sagard, is among the most active Canadian players in the technology space. It has key stakes in bank challengers Wealthsimple Technologies Inc. and Koho Financial Inc. Sagard was also a big backer of telemedicine provider Dialogue Technologies Inc., which was acquired by Sun Life Financial Corp. in 2023.
Sagard managing partner François Lafortune said that with AI now a key element of many companies backed by venture capital, it is important for early-stage financiers to have a dedicated AI person who can help build out a team, collaborate across their portfolio and assist with due diligence on prospective investments. Mr. Lafortune is also co-founder and chief executive officer of Sagard unit Diagram Ventures, a company builder and technology venture capital firm.
“All of our companies have parts of their products and projects that are AI centric. We felt although we were supporting our companies with pockets of expertise internally, we didn’t have a dedicated person or team to do that,” Mr. Lafortune said.
Ms. Sobhani said that after working with more mature growth-stage companies across a range of sectors at Georgian, she was drawn to the opportunity to work with younger companies more focused on financial technology at Diagram and Portage Ventures, Sagard’s other venture capital arm. “I really like the zero to 10, building from almost nothing and collaborating with founders,” she said in an interview. “I’m excited to go very deep in the fintech industry.”
Ms. Sobhani said she was initially hesitant about leaving her “dream team” at Georgian to join an established financial services group whose main holdings are in mutual funds and insurance. “But every single person I met at Sagard convinced me that they are really serious about making the change happen, both in their broader ecosystem as well as internally.”