Farewell, fx innovation, hello, ateko. This is the name that Bell gives to a new subsidiary created from three recent acquisitions and in order to tackle the market outside Quebec of AI and TI services. Its objective is ambitious: to reach 1 billion in annual turnover as soon as possible.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
Bell has been struggling since the start of the year to maintain its value on the stock market and its growth in a national telecommunications services market that analysts qualify as saturated. Investing in business technological services is a way for the Montreal telecoms giant to diversify by focusing on an effervescence sector: digital services, infonuagic and artificial intelligence.
For the oldest, it will recall the time of Bell Sygma, which was acquired by CGI in the late 1990s. Between 1995 and 2005, Bell was also a shareholder of CGI.
Ateko, who officially sees the day this week, does not quite play in the same slots as CGI, but gets closer to it. It will provide solutions based on platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Salesforce and ServiceNow.
Over the past two years, Bell has acquired three Canadian SMEs that will be brought together under the Ateko brand. The best known of the three is the Quebecoise FX Innovation.
Ateko, a name from the contraction of “Automated Technological Collaboration” (“Automation and technological collaboration”), does not start from zero. Its 1100 employees will be established in the former head office that Bell formerly occupied in the Côte du Beaver Hall, in downtown Montreal.
Bell, from telecom to technology company
“We hope to go from telco has tech », Either of a operator of telecommunications services to a technological company, said to The press Bell’s President and CEO, Mirko Bibic, to explain the turn that Bell tries to accomplish. This turn is reminiscent of what Telus did a few years ago by launching, then swarming Telus International, a digital marketing division which has activities far beyond Canada.
-On the stock market, and in business in general, technological companies are perceived as having much better growth potential than telecoms. With Ateko, Bell hopes to know about international success. It prioritizes five industries: finance, telecommunications, media, energy and the public sector.
Bell’s strategy has been resting for decades for four pillars for decades, recalls Mirko Bibic to locate Ateko in the organization chart of his company. “Service to our customers is our priority. Second, we want to offer the best networks. Technological services are the third pillar, followed by media and digital content.
“Ateko allows us to reconnect with the third pillar. It was a force of ECB [la société mère de Bell] For years, but for 20 years, we have mainly focused on networks. »»
Networks at AI
Currently, technology services for businesses represent approximately 250 million in annual income for Bell. This includes helping digital transformation and the adoption of infonuagic solutions, including the integration of artificial intelligence tools (AI). Its objective is to raise these income to 1 billion per year, “short or medium term”, indicates the co -founder of FX Innovation and now a big boss of Ateko, Guillaume Bazinet. “We want to create a world leader. »»
The latter explains that the idea behind Ateko germinated in 2023, when the leaders of Bell and Fx Innovation met for the acquisition of the latter by Bell. The meeting occurred in the offices of the Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ), the main shareholder of FX Innovation at the time.
“Five years after the arrival of the cash register, we wanted to accelerate our growth, and Mirko arrived with an offer that finally allows us to aim for this growth,” says Guillaume Bazinet.
The moment is well chosen given, the emerging craze of companies towards automation and AI applications. The geopolitical context is also interesting for the new company, which can target the rest of Canada and Europe, but also perhaps the United States, since digital services seem to escape the president of their president, Donald Trump.
