AHOY’s Alliance Signals a New Era for Physical AI in North America

MONTREAL, QC – July 08, 2026 – For years, the conversation around artificial intelligence has been dominated by digital minds living in the cloud, mastering games, writing poetry, and analyzing data. But a new frontier is rapidly emerging, one where AI leaps from the screen into the physical world. This is the domain of "Physical AI," and a strategic new partnership is set to accelerate its arrival across North America.

AHOY, a deep-tech company building the infrastructure for AI to perceive, decide, and act in the real world, has announced a landmark alliance with Will Be Live, a firm specializing in ecosystem development. The goal is ambitious: to build the commercial backbone needed to deploy AHOY’s technology at scale, transforming everything from our transportation networks to our public utilities. This isn't just another software update; it's a foundational play to create a new operating system for our physical environment.

Beyond the Algorithm: The Dawn of Physical AI

So, what exactly is Physical AI? It represents a monumental shift from AI that merely processes digitized information to systems that interact directly with their surroundings. While traditional AI might predict a traffic jam, Physical AI could re-route autonomous vehicles, adjust traffic signals in real-time, and orchestrate a seamless flow of movement. It operates on a continuous loop of sensing the environment, reasoning about the data, and executing a physical action.

AHOY has been quietly building the core components for this revolution since 2018. The company’s modular platform, the AHOY Machine Studio, is not a monolithic, cloud-dependent brain. Instead, it’s a versatile stack designed for deployment "on-chip, at the edge, on-prem, and in hybrid cloud configurations." This is a critical distinction. For an AI managing an airport's ground control or a city's water supply, the latency and potential failure points of a distant cloud server are unacceptable. AHOY’s technology processes data where it is generated, enabling the low-latency, high-reliability, and secure decision-making that real-world operations demand.

Furthermore, the company champions what it calls "sovereign infrastructure." In an era of increasing concern over data privacy and control, this approach allows organizations and even nations to deploy and govern their own Physical AI systems. This ensures that the intelligence managing critical infrastructure remains localized, auditable, and resilient, even in "air-gapped" environments with no external network connection.

The Ecosystem Imperative: Why Partnerships Power Progress

Developing groundbreaking technology is only half the battle. Bringing a complex, foundational platform like Physical AI to a market as vast and varied as North America requires more than a direct sales team. It requires a thriving ecosystem of partners.

This is the core philosophy behind the partnership with Will Be Live. As AHOY's Chief Strategy Officer, Mohannad El-Barachi, stated, "One of our core beliefs is that ecosystems scale faster than companies." Deep-tech solutions aren't plug-and-play. They require system integrators to weave them into existing infrastructure, implementation partners to manage deployment, and resellers with deep industry knowledge to connect the technology to the right problems.

Will Be Live, led by growth strategist Nima Mirpourian, is tasked with building this network. "Building great technology is only part of the equation," said Jamil Shinawi, Founder and CEO of AHOY. "The next challenge is ensuring the right organizations understand how to deploy it and realize its value." The collaboration will focus on recruiting and enabling these crucial partners, creating a force multiplier for AHOY's North American expansion. For Mirpourian, the stakes are clear: "Physical AI represents one of the largest technology opportunities of the next decade," he noted. "Our role is to help expand market access, increase strategic relationships, and support the development of the partner ecosystem necessary to bring these capabilities to organizations at scale."

A New Operating System for Physical Spaces

With the technology in place and a strategy for scaling it, the potential impact across North America is immense. AHOY’s systems are already proven, with deployments in tens of countries across aviation, transportation, utilities, and logistics. Imagine this technology applied to the continent's most complex challenges.

In aviation, it could mean optimizing runway traffic to reduce delays and fuel consumption. In public utilities, it could mean AI-powered sensors that perceive subtle pressure changes in water mains, predicting and preventing catastrophic failures before they happen. For logistics, it could orchestrate the entire supply chain, from autonomous warehouse vehicles to last-mile delivery drones, all communicating and adapting in real-time. This is the tangible promise of Physical AI: not just smarter insights, but more efficient, resilient, and safer physical operations.

The partnership will focus on these key sectors, where the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is most critical. By enabling a broad network of partners to deliver these solutions, AHOY and Will Be Live are not just selling a product; they are seeding the market with a new category of innovation.

This strategic push is underpinned by AHOY's significant investment in the region. The company recently established its North American headquarters in Montreal, acquired the Canadian automation firm Wrk Technologies, and launched Canada's first Physical AI Lab in partnership with the esteemed Mila AI Institute. These moves signal a deep commitment to making the continent a central hub for the development and deployment of this next-generation AI. The alliance with Will Be Live is the commercial engine designed to turn that vision into a widespread physical reality.