Pranav Hotkar
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - May 11, 2026 - TELUS and the Canadian federal government have announced plans to develop a large-scale AI infrastructure cluster in British Columbia aimed at strengthening Canada’s sovereign computing capabilities and expanding domestic AI data center capacity. The initiative includes three AI-focused facilities across Vancouver and Kamloops and is being positioned as one of the country’s largest sovereign AI infrastructure projects to date.
The project will combine an expansion of TELUS’ existing Kamloops data center with two new AI facilities in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood and downtown core. According to TELUS, the developments are intended to create “one of the world’s most powerful and sustainable AI infrastructure clusters,” supporting advanced AI model training and inference workloads entirely on Canadian-owned and Canadian-operated infrastructure.
Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, said the project reflects the country’s broader effort to remain competitive in the global AI race while maintaining national control over critical computing infrastructure. Speaking at the announcement event in Vancouver, Solomon acknowledged the financial risks associated with large-scale AI infrastructure investment but said Canada could not afford to remain passive during a major technological transition.
TELUS said the Kamloops AI Factory facility is expected to come online later this year, while the Mount Pleasant campus is scheduled to open in late 2026 and scale through 2028. A third downtown Vancouver facility is planned for 2029. According to details shared by the company, the cluster is expected to scale beyond 150MW of capacity by 2032.
The project will initially utilize 85MW of renewable electricity secured from BC Hydro, with TELUS stating that more than 98% of the facilities’ power supply will come from renewable sources. The Vancouver sites are also designed to integrate with district energy systems, using waste heat generated from AI operations to support building heating infrastructure across the city.
TELUS said the facilities will deploy closed-loop liquid cooling systems designed to reduce cooling-related energy consumption by approximately 80% compared to traditional data center designs while significantly lowering water usage. The company also plans to incorporate recycled water systems into future operations.
Outgoing TELUS CEO, Darren Entwistle, described the initiative as a “seminal announcement” for Canada’s digital economy, stating that the infrastructure would provide enough processing power to run some of the world’s most advanced AI models domestically.
The announcement follows the Canadian government’s earlier commitment of CUD 2 billion over five years to support sovereign AI infrastructure and large-scale domestic data center development. The federal program was launched earlier this year as part of a broader strategy to strengthen Canadian AI competitiveness and reduce dependence on foreign-owned computing infrastructure.
The project also reflects a growing global push toward “sovereign AI” infrastructure, where governments and domestic operators seek greater control over AI training environments, data residency, and compute resources amid increasing geopolitical and regulatory concerns surrounding artificial intelligence.
