Overview
- A federal–Telus memorandum of understanding announced Monday outlines a three‑site AI data centre cluster in B.C., with an expansion in Kamloops and new facilities in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant and downtown near BC Place.
- Telus says Kamloops and Mount Pleasant will open later in 2026, the downtown site will start operations in 2029, and the cluster will scale through 2032 to more than 60,000 Nvidia GPUs drawing over 150 megawatts.
- No federal funding is committed for the build, while Tuesday’s separate move released up to $66 million from a $300 million Compute Access Fund to 44 Canadian projects to help them buy compute on domestic infrastructure.
- Telus promotes 98% renewable power, closed‑loop direct‑to‑chip cooling, and waste‑heat reuse designed to warm about 150,000 homes, yet residents and experts warn about the 150‑megawatt load, water risks, noise, and urban siting that could strain local systems.
- Backers frame ‘sovereign’ compute as keeping data and AI workloads under Canadian law, though analysts flag reliance on a single GPU vendor and long‑term control of hardware, software, and IP; B.C. has set aside up to 400 megawatts for AI and data centres in a new allocation process.