Canadian telecommunications giant Telus and U.S. artificial intelligence tech heavyweight Nvidia have announced plans to build what they call a "sovereign AI factory" in eastern Quebec.
The companies said Tuesday they will provide Canadian businesses and researchers with the supercomputers and software they need to train and run AI programs while keeping their data within the country's borders.
Vancouver-based Telus aims to deploy Nvidia's latest-generation AI semiconductors at its data centre in Rimouski, Que., by this summer, with plans to expand at its Kamloops, B.C., facility once the initial capacity is exhausted.
The data centre will receive 500 graphic processing units to begin with, but Telus chief information officer Hesham Fahmy said that could over several years scale up to tens of thousands, depending on demand.
“We want it to be really, really big," he said in an interview from San Jose, Calif., following a keynote speech from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at that company's annual flagship GTC AI conference.
He said he would love it if Telus was the catalyst that brought almost all of Canada's AI computing within its borders, even if the company itself doesn't capture all of that business.
“We really think that AI is going to get infused in every aspect of business," Fahmy said. "Every knowledge worker is going have some sort of AI assistance, we believe, in the near future.”
The Vancouver-based firm says it will be the first North American service provider to become an official Nvidia cloud partner, gaining access to the U.S. tech giant's research and development, engineering talent and other resources.
AI data centres tend to be voracious energy users, raising environmental concerns. The Rimouski site is to be powered 99 per cent by renewable energy sourced from Hydro-Quebec. It will use natural cooling, which Telus says cuts water use by more than three quarters compared to traditional data centres.
Telus says the Quebec facility, 250 kilometres from a major urban centre, is highly secure and a good option for customers seeking a core or disaster recovery site.
Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has a stock market value of almost US$3 trillion and is second only to Apple on the S&P 500 index.
“Sovereign AI infrastructure is critical for every nation to advance their society and economy, while preserving their own data, enabling them to drive a local intelligence revolution with global technology advancements," Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice-president of telecom at Nvidia, said in a news release.
At GTC 2025 — dubbed the “Super Bowl of AI” — Nvidia CEO Huang focused his keynote on the company’s advancements in AI and his predictions for how the industry will move over the next few years.
He said he expects Nvidia’s data centre infrastructure revenue to hit US$1 trillion by 2028.
— With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 18, 2025.
Companies in this story: (TSX: T) (NASDAQ: NVDA)
Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press
