Bell makes a significant investment in B.C. with six new AI data centres
Bell Canada announced a significant investment in artificial intelligence (AI) compute in Canada, backing what it says is the largest compute project in the country.
The company’s “Bell AI Fabric” investment will create six AI data centres in B.C., totalling 500 megawatts (MW) of AI compute powered by clean hydroelectricity.
Bell AI Fabric will start with a 7MW centre that will go online in Kamloops, B.C., in June. Additional data centres will come online later this year and early next year, including another 7MW data centre in Merritt, B.C., by the end of the year.
The company outlined plans for two 26MW AI data centres, also in Kamloops. The first will open in 2026 at Thompson Rivers University (TRU), with the second coming in 2027. The final two data centres are in advanced planning stages and will total over 400MW. Along with the facilities in B.C., Bell is planning other data centres across the country.
Notably, the TRU data centre will be designed to host AI training and inference. Through an integration with non-profit BCNET, students and faculty at TRU and nationally will be able to access advanced compute capabilities.
Further, Bell announced it is working with AI chip provider Groq (not to be confused with the Grok chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI company). Bell chose Groq as its “inference infrastructure partner,” which will see Groq’s language processing units (LPUs) used to deliver faster performance at lower costs than alternative providers.
Bell said the investment is part of its long-term goal of driving AI innovation and economic growth in Canada. The data centres will position Bell to offer secure and reliable AI solutions to businesses and communities.