BC Is Built for the AI Era — All Five Layers of It

British Columbia is better positioned for the AI revolution than most people realize. We have clean, abundant hydroelectric power. We have world-class research institutions and a deep pool of engineering talent. We have globally competitive companies in sectors from mining to genomics to enterprise software. And we have the natural resource industries that AI applications will transform most dramatically.

The question isn’t whether BC has a seat at the table. It’s whether we’re strategic enough to claim it.

Jensen Huang’s model of AI as a five-layer cake — energy, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications — is a useful lens. Because when you look at BC through that lens, we show up at every layer.

Energy is the foundation. AI data centres are enormous power consumers, and clean, affordable baseload electricity is the scarcest ingredient in the buildout. BC Hydro and BC Tech member FortisBC power a province that runs overwhelmingly on clean hydroelectric generation — exactly the kind of reliable, low-carbon energy that hyperscalers and AI infrastructure developers are actively seeking. That advantage is real, but it isn’t guaranteed. Alberta is moving. Quebec is marketing its hydro assets aggressively. BC needs to treat energy capacity as the economic development asset it is — expanding generation and transmission infrastructure to meet demand — before that window closes.

Chips is a longer game, but BC Tech members are already playing it. While no one expects BC to out-fab Taiwan, our members are carving out defensible positions in the parts of the chip economy that matter most for AI. Photonic Inc. is building scalable quantum computing hardware backed by Microsoft and the UK government. D-Wave has been at the quantum frontier for two decades. Redlen Technologies, a Technology Impact Awards (TIAs) winner in 2022, makes the high-performance semiconductor detectors found in medical imaging systems worldwide. And Daanaa, a UBC spinout and 2024 TIAs Company of the Year – Startup Award winner, has developed a single chip that moves both power and data simultaneously — wired or wireless — collapsing what used to require multiple components into one. The common thread: BC companies finding the gaps in the global chip stack and building into them.

Infrastructure — the data centres, compute clusters, and networks that AI runs on — is where BC is actively winning. Bell Canada chose BC as the launchpad for its national AI data centre supercluster, anchored by clean hydropower, and BC Tech member TELUS is building the connectivity backbone that ties it together. But infrastructure isn’t just physical compute — it has to be secure. BC Tech member Absolute Security has built persistent endpoint protection across 600 million devices globally, and is at the frontier of making AI infrastructure trustworthy at scale. For government, a BC Strategic Response Fund co-investing alongside federal dollars in AI infrastructure projects would accelerate all of it.

Models is the layer where BC plays a supporting role — and that’s okay. Training frontier AI models is a capital and compute-intensive game dominated by a handful of global players. Montreal-based Cohere is the standout Canadian example. BC’s opportunity here is less about building the next foundation model and more about ensuring our research institutions stay connected to where that work is happening.

Applications is where BC’s traditional economy and its tech sector finally converge. BC Tech members are already leading the charge: MineSense and Ideon are transforming mineral extraction with AI-powered sensing; Semios is doing the same for agriculture; and Novarc is deploying AI welding robots that are redefining industrial fabrication. SenseNet’s AI-driven network of cameras and gas sensors can detect wildfires hours before flames appear — a capability that hits close to home in BC. Variational AI is generating novel drug candidates for global pharma partners including Merck. And through Innovate BC’s Integrated Marketplace, BC’s digital pathology companies are bringing AI into the health system. Government can accelerate all of it by fixing a procurement system that too often sends BC taxpayer dollars to foreign vendors when homegrown alternatives exist.

Every layer of the AI stack reinforces the ones beneath it. A strong applications sector drives demand for better models. Better models require more infrastructure. More infrastructure consumes more power. More power rewards jurisdictions with clean, affordable electricity. That full cycle runs through BC — if we connect the dots.

Jill Tipping is the President and CEO of the BC Tech Association.