Bell, Cohere, and partners announce sovereign AI deal

Bell Canada, Cohere, Hypertec, and BUZZ High Performance Computing announced a partnership today for a major AI infrastructure deal.

The collaboration will combine Bell AI Fabric’s data centre and connectivity out of its Merritt, British Columbia facility, Cohere’s enterprise-grade AI solutions and LLM, and BUZZ HPC will handle the accelerated computing infrastructure, running on Hypertec’s Canadian-manufactured hardware and NVIDIA’s DSX AI factory platform. 

“Canada has the talent and innovation to lead in AI,” said Michel Richer, president of Bell AI Fabric, in a news release. “What’s been missing is the ambition to bring the right ingredients together. This landmark deal helps close that gap.”

With Canadian partners using Canadian infrastructure, R&D on AI models can be refocused, and the country’s digital sovereignty and economic resilience prioritized.

“For enterprises and governments, adopting AI is not just about having access to powerful models,” said Michael Pelosi, country manager (Canada) at Cohere. “It’s about knowing where those models run, how data is protected and whether the technology can be deployed with the security and reliability their work requires.”

The deal builds on the previously announced Canadian Sovereign AI Alliance and the launch of Bell AI Fabric.

Demand for Canadian AI infrastructure is growing as organizations move from experimentation to large-scale deployment, though outcomes will depend on infrastructure performance, and whether enterprise and government customers follow through on that demand.

“AI does not scale on ideas alone, it scales on data centres, specialized GPU compute, sophisticated models and operational execution,” said Craig Tavares, President and COO of BUZZ HPC. “This partnership brings together a combination of capabilities that does not exist anywhere else in Canada today.”

Final Shots

• Bell AI Fabric’s Merritt, BC facility is purpose-built for advanced AI workloads and serves as the data centre and connectivity foundation for the partnership.
• The deal builds on the Canadian Sovereign AI Alliance, positioning the four partners as a combined alternative to US-based hyperscaler infrastructure.