Telus outlined a plan to employ Nvidia’s Hopper- and Blackwell-based supercomputers at a pair of sovereign AI factories it stated would position Canada at the forefront of innovation involving the technology.
The Canadian operator stated it is the first official Nvidia Cloud Partner in North America, and the AI factories in the provinces of Quebec and British Columbia would be a significant boost to a nationwide strategy involving the technology.
Telus explained it chose sites on each side of Canada to ensure “equitable access to advanced computing resources”.
“Our sovereign AI factories are the first of their kind in Canada”, Telus president and CEO Darren Entwistle asserted.
The executive explained the factories would be located “within Telus’ state-of-the-art data centres” in the provinces, ensuring “every piece of data, every computation and every breakthrough will be born and remain within our borders”.
“This will not only make Canada even more competitive and future-ready, it will also enable the acceleration of innovations in key areas” including health, agriculture and sustainability.
Telus predicted the AI factories would prove equally beneficial to Canada’s economy as its data centres did a decade ago, creating fresh opportunities in a “rapidly expanding” economy involving the technology.
The operator plans to obtain 99 per cent of the factories’ power from renewable sources and employ a natural water-cooling system capable of cutting consumption by 75 per cent compared with systems used in traditional data centres.