At Web Summit Vancouver this week, Bell Canada announced Bell AI Fabric, which the Montreal telecom titan describes as “a major investment that will create the country’s largest artificial intelligence compute project and ensure that Canadian companies can continue to compete and win in the global AI economy.”
Bell AI Fabric is launching with intentions to create a national network. That network will start with a “data centre supercluster” in British Columbia, Bell says, with an aim to provide a total of upwards of 500 MW of hydro-electric powered AI compute capacity across six facilities.
This initiative represents Bell’s long-term objective to drive AI innovation and economic growth in Canada, according to Mirko Bibic, the company’s chief executive officer, while leveraging the province’s ability to produce clean energy.
“Bell’s AI Fabric will ensure that Canadian businesses, researchers, and public institutions can access high-performance, sovereign, and environmentally responsible AI computing services,” the CEO stated.
“Through this investment, Bell is immediately bolstering Canada’s sovereign AI compute capacity, while laying the groundwork to continue growing our AI economy,” Bibic remarked. “This is transformational for our customers, for Canada and for Bell.”
The first of Bell’s AI Fabric facilities will come online in Kamloops in June in partnership with AI inference provider Groq.
“As AI moves into production, nations are rethinking where inference runs and who controls it,” commented Jonathan Ross, founder of Groq, which powers companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI. “We’re building infrastructure that’s fast, affordable, and sovereign by design, already powering some of the largest inference deployments in the world.”
“Through Bell AI Fabric, we’re building the backbone for Canada’s AI economy,” said Bibic. “Groq’s technology delivers the speed and efficiency our customers need—now, not years from now.”
Additional AI facilities will come online by the end of 2026, including a 26 MW AI data centre being built in partnership with nearby Thompson Rivers University planned for 2026, and a third, also in the area, planned for 2027.
The news comes hot on the heels of a $70B announcement from telecom rival TELUS.
Leave a Reply