BCE Plans 300-MW AI Data Centre in Saskatchewan

BCE Inc., the parent company of Bell Canada, announced plans Monday to construct a 300-megawatt artificial intelligence data centre in the rural municipality of Sherwood, Saskatchewan, just outside Regina, marking a significant step toward enhancing Canada's AI infrastructure.

Construction on the facility, which will span 90,000 square feet and include four data halls, is set to begin in the second quarter of this year, with the first phase expected to become operational in the first half of 2027. The project represents BCE's largest investment in the province, with an estimated capital expenditure of 1.7 billion Canadian dollars for the physical structure. An additional 10 billion will go toward specialized compute hardware from U.S.-based partners Cerebras and CoreWeave, which will provide high-performance wafer-scale technology for AI training and inference, as well as scalable computing powered by Nvidia GPUs.

The data centre aims to bolster Canada's AI sovereignty by offering domestic compute capacity for governments, researchers, and enterprises, ensuring data remains under Canadian management and laws. BCE has partnered with SaskTel, the provincial Crown corporation, to...