Telus is hoping the Buy Canada movement will make its way to the AI industry.
Driving the news: The telecom is partnering with chipmaker Nvidia to launch an AI data centre in Québec by this summer. Telus plans to target Canadian businesses and researchers looking to run AI models within the country on Nvidia’s industry-leading chips.
- The promise of keeping all client data secure in Canada could be a major selling point, especially for companies in the healthcare, legal, or banking spaces that need to protect sensitive personal information.
Why it matters: Canada's AI research and talent have long been regarded as world-class, but experts say the country is lacking the computing infrastructure, like AI data centres, to turn homegrown innovations into commercial successes.
- With 670 AI startups and 30 generative AI companies, Canada ranks fourth globally for the number of genAI companies per capita, according to a recent Deloitte report.
- But without local AI infrastructure, there’s not much stopping that talent from eventually moving south of the border.
Big picture: Data centre investments are a key part of the AI compute strategy Canada launched in December. Since then, the feds have announced $15 billion in loans and investments to encourage pension funds to build domestic data centres and committed $240 million to help Toronto startup Cohere build a multibillion-dollar AI data centre.—LA