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(Bloomberg) — Demand for data center capacity in Canada is causing BCE Inc. to accelerate work on its new artificial intelligence business, and the construction of new facilities is ahead of schedule, its top executive said.
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Canada’s largest telecom company by revenue introduced its Bell AI Fabric division last year, which aims to provide computing power driven by 73 megawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 30,000 homes.
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BCE has partners in the data center buildout, such as Groq Inc. and Hive Digital Technologies Ltd., which make the bulk of the investment and manage the servers. BCE has committed to invest C$300 million ($216 million), with the expectation that the business will produce about C$400 million in revenue by 2028.
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“The growth of AI Fabric from a standing start in May of 2025 is faster than I anticipated,” BCE Chief Executive Officer Mirko Bibic said in an interview in Montreal.
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A first data center was opened in Kamloops, British Columbia, in June, and another is set to go live by March in the nearby city of Merritt. Other facilities will start operating later this year.
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The company has no current plans to invest more than it has already announced, Bibic said. “If it grows faster, then we’ll deal with that. That would be a wonderful problem to have, but right now, we’re disciplined on the C$300 million or so of capex,” he said.
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Bibic added that Canada could be viewed as “an extremely attractive, neutral site to host data” amid global concerns over data sovereignty. “In that regard, I think Bell AI Fabric could have a significant edge while operating in Canada.”
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Bell AI Fabric has partnered with the Canadian tech unicorn Cohere Inc. for use of Cohere’s generative AI models.
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As part of its AI push, BCE pulled together previous acquisitions into an IT consulting firm, Ateko, and launched Bell Cyber, a service that leverages AI to detect and contain cyber threats.
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Altogether, the company’s goal is to generate about C$1.5 billion in AI-powered solutions revenue by 2028, BCE said during an investor presentation in October.
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