Bell expands BUZZ HPC AI data centre deal in Merritt

Bell Canada has expanded its partnership with BUZZ HPC at its AI data centre in Merritt, British Columbia. Under the deal, BUZZ HPC has secured 6.5 MW of compute capacity at the site.

The facility is part of Bell AI Fabric, the telecoms group's Canadian artificial intelligence infrastructure programme. The Merritt site is intended to support enterprise and government users that want to run AI workloads in Canada and keep data within the country.

BUZZ HPC, a subsidiary of HIVE Digital Technologies, will use the capacity to scale its GPU clusters for commercial customers. The site is designed for demanding AI tasks, including model training and inference, with liquid-cooled systems and dense compute infrastructure.

The announcement builds on an earlier agreement between the two companies to deploy GPU clusters in Bell's sovereign AI facilities. The Merritt site is the latest step in Bell's data centre build-out in British Columbia, where it has been assembling what it describes as a supercluster for AI computing.

Canadian telecoms and data centre groups have been moving to position themselves as domestic suppliers of AI infrastructure as businesses and public bodies seek computing resources that meet national data residency requirements. Demand for graphics processing units has also risen sharply as companies build and run large language models and other generative AI systems.

For Bell, the partnership strengthens a broader push into AI-related services for business customers. Bell AI Fabric is tied to its wider enterprise offering, which includes network services, cloud tools, software, integration work and cyber security.

John Watson, Group President, Business Markets, AI and Ateko at Bell, linked the Merritt project to that strategy. "We are excited to deliver cutting-edge AI infrastructure and deployment expertise to our customers through our partnership with BUZZ HPC at our Merritt facility. This partnership provides another important layer to the Bell AI Fabric ecosystem, delivering the advanced workloads our customers need in a sovereign, private and secure Canadian facility. Partnerships like these are instrumental to BCE Inc. delivering on our ambition to grow our revenue from AI-powered solutions to $2 billion by 2028," he said.

That revenue target signals Bell's intention to make AI a larger part of its business-to-business operation at a time when telecoms groups are under pressure to find new sources of growth beyond consumer connectivity. By combining data centre assets with managed services and software, operators are trying to win a larger share of enterprise technology spending.

BUZZ HPC said the additional capacity in British Columbia will extend its reach across Canada. The company already operates GPU infrastructure in several regions and positions itself as a domestic provider of sovereign AI computing.

Craig Tavares, President and COO of BUZZ HPC, said the latest agreement would expand that footprint. "BUZZ HPC is expanding its AI infrastructure with Bell AI Fabric across two Canadian provinces, including new capacity in British Columbia to scale near-term deployments. This marks a major step in BUZZ's journey to become a leading national sovereign AI platform, scaling our reach to serve both Canadian innovators and international customers. Together, Bell and BUZZ are delivering the secure, high-performance accelerated compute Canada needs to compete globally in AI," he said.

Data sovereignty

The emphasis on sovereignty reflects a wider debate in Canada over where sensitive AI workloads should run. Government departments, healthcare organisations and regulated industries are increasingly weighing the risks of relying on foreign cloud infrastructure for data-intensive systems, particularly where privacy, security and jurisdiction are central concerns.

Bell and BUZZ are pitching the Merritt site as an answer to those concerns, offering domestic infrastructure for training and operating AI systems. The facility is aimed at customers with complex workloads, including those that require large-scale compute for generative AI applications.

Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of BUZZ HPC, framed the site as part of that national infrastructure effort. "Purpose-built AI infrastructure - sometimes described as AI factories - is essential to transforming compute power into intelligence at scale and accelerating the potential of AI technology. Through our partnership with Bell AI Fabric, we are providing Canadian companies with sovereign compute to help them deploy AI securely and at scale to support advanced use cases across sectors ranging from healthcare to defence and beyond," he said.

The Merritt facility gives Bell another asset in a market where control of energy supply, cooling systems and GPU availability is becoming central to AI service provision. BUZZ HPC said the 6.5 MW figure refers to gross power at the site, while critical IT power amounts to 5 MW.

That level of power underlines the economics of modern AI infrastructure, where access to electricity and specialised cooling has become as important as access to chips. In Canada, regions with suitable power and room for data centre expansion are becoming increasingly valuable as demand for AI compute grows.