Saskatchewan’s first technology incubator has begun selling artificial intelligence training to businesses outside the tech sector, a move aimed squarely at the industries Statistics Canada identifies as the country’s slowest adopters of the technology.
Co.Labs, the Saskatoon-based incubator that has run startup programming for nine years, launched the training this week, executive director Jonathan Lipoth said in an interview with BetaKit published Sept. 4, 2026. The program will run in Regina and Saskatoon and be delivered remotely to rural communities, with businesses in accounting, agriculture and manufacturing among the first participants. Pricing will be set according to the size and scope of each company, Lipoth said, and Co.Labs plans free workshops this autumn, including at the Memo Festival for creatives and designers in Saskatoon in October.
Lipoth, who announced the expansion in a LinkedIn post, said the incubator wants to help non-tech companies use AI “like a tech company,” and that the shift came from demand among partners outside the industry rather than from a strategic plan. Co.Labs will keep most of its programming focused on tech startups, he told BetaKit.
The sectors named as early participants are the ones furthest behind. In the second quarter of 2026, 19.2 per cent of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce goods or deliver services in the previous 12 months, roughly triple the 6.1 per cent recorded in the same quarter of 2024, according to the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions released by Statistics Canada on June 11, 2026. Use was least common in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, at 4.5 per cent, followed by wholesale trade at 7.9 per cent and construction at 9.2 per cent. Information and cultural industries led at 42.3 per cent.
The geographic split is just as wide. Statistics Canada found 21.0 per cent of urban businesses had used AI in the previous year, against 9.9 per cent of rural businesses, a gap that has held as both figures roughly tripled since 2024. Older firms also lag, with 15.0 per cent of businesses more than 20 years old reporting AI use, compared with 25.0 per cent of firms three to 10 years old.
Those numbers point to the harder problem facing a paid advisory program. Among businesses with one to four employees that reported using AI, only 10.7 per cent used external consultants or vendors and 8.2 per cent hired staff with AI skills, the agency found. At businesses with 100 or more employees, those figures were 30.2 per cent and 32.8 per cent. More than two in five of the smallest firms, 41.4 per cent, said AI is not relevant to their business at all, against 21.3 per cent of the largest.
Cost is not the leading obstacle. Statistics Canada reported that 13.4 per cent of businesses cited cybersecurity or privacy concerns as a barrier limiting AI use, ahead of cost at 10.6 per cent.
Co.Labs has previously drawn federal support, with BetaKit reporting that PrairiesCan invested $7.9 million to back the incubator and local AI firms. Adoption is also a stated pillar of the national AI strategy Ottawa released in June. Whether provincial programs reach the smallest and most rural businesses will be difficult to judge for some time. Statistics Canada’s new technology measurement program, TechStat, funded in Budget 2025, does not begin publishing business statistics on AI use until 2027.
Sourcing: primary via BetaKit, “Saskatchewan’s tech incubator wants to help non-tech businesses adopt AI,” Jesse Cole, Sept. 4, 2026. Primary data: Statistics Canada, “Analysis on artificial intelligence use by businesses in Canada, second quarter of 2026,” cat. 11-621-M, released June 11, 2026.
