More people, organizations, and governments seem to be paying more attention these days as to where their data lives, where does it go to, how is it used, and more importantly, who can or could potentially see it? With this increased interest and need in data sovereignity, it is great to see that there is a Canadian alternative available for LLM Cloud services and it is called Augure.
What makes this so great is that it is a Canadian owned research and product company, the product runs entirely on Canadian owned infrastructure, is compliant with Québec Law 25, Canada PIPEDA, and Canada CPCSC, the data never leaves Canada, and falls entirely outside of the bounds and impact of the USA CLOUD Act and USA PATRIOT Act.
This is a huge deal for many Canadian industries and organizations who require AI LLM services but are heavily restricted or regulated in how they can use their data. Or for anyone in Canada who simply doesn’t want their data to leave the country.
Augure has a free tier available that you can start using right away. It is very limited, of course, so you may eventually need a subscription to unleash enhanced functionality. For developers, APIs following the OpenAI API specs are also available to paying customers, although you first need to request that level of access on their Developer Portal so they can review and approve it.