Powering our future: inside the ecosystem preparing Canadians to lead the world in AI

By Sam Collins, Senior Technical Product Manager, AI

If you look past the hype, most industry and government leaders already understand that AI is increasingly integral to the fabric of our global economy: revolutionizing business operations, enhancing our standard of living and redefining how communities serve their residents. In my AI research and development work here at Bell, I’ve had a front row seat to both the opportunities and challenges AI represents. This includes the importance of putting the right infrastructure in place to ensure Canadian organizations have the tools to compete and lead.

Navigating the dual challenges of AI

This incredible promise comes with significant challenges. The very data that fuels AI raises critical questions about privacy, security and national control. As we increasingly rely on AI, the need to protect sensitive information and ensure data sovereignty – keeping Canadian data on Canadian soil – has become a matter of economic and national security. With data breaches costing Canadian organizations an average of $6.3M per incident,¹ relying on foreign infrastructure creates risks, from data breaches to economic leakage, that Canada must address to chart its own course.

Simultaneously, the immense computational power required for AI creates a staggering demand for energy. The increasing environmental impact of AI processing is a growing global concern. As adoption accelerates, energy consumption could well undermine sustainability goals if it is not managed responsibly. These challenges are not separate; they are intertwined and demand a solution that is both technologically advanced and ethically grounded.

Canada's moment to lead with Bell AI Fabric

Canada stands at a unique crossroads, possessing the key ingredients to become a world leader in responsible and sustainable AI. Our abundance of clean hydroelectric power offers a powerful answer to the energy challenge. This natural advantage, combined with a strong commitment to innovation and data privacy, gives us a distinct opportunity to build an AI ecosystem that is powerful, secure and green.

This is the vision behind Bell AI Fabric, a groundbreaking initiative to create Canada's most advanced, sovereign AI ecosystem. It’s more than just infrastructure; it’s a comprehensive platform designed to empower Canadian businesses, researchers and public institutions to innovate freely and securely, right here at home.

The material for an end-to-end AI ecosystem

Bell AI Fabric is an integrated solution built on several key capabilities, each addressing a critical aspect of the AI journey.

The foundation: Bell's network
Our world-class fibre network serves as the national backbone to provide the high-speed, low-latency, and reliable connectivity that is non-negotiable for critical AI workloads. For our customers, this means a direct, secure pipeline to our data centers, ensuring unparalleled performance.

Facilities nationwide: Secure, sovereign and sustainable data centres
We’ve started with a supercluster of six facilities in British Columbia with over 500MW of power announced. And we’re not finished: We’re building out a national network of data centers engineered to provide high-performance, sovereign and environmentally responsible AI compute services. By ensuring data remains within Canadian borders, managed by Canadian entities, we offer a secure and compliant solution for sensitive information and critical workloads.

Building intelligence: LLM training
Before your AI can do its work, a large language model (LLM) must be trained. This is an incredibly power-intensive process. With partners like Canada’s own Buzz HPC and data centres equipped with clusters of high-performance NVIDIA GPUs, we provide the massive, on-demand compute power needed to train sophisticated LLMs.

Inferencing: Work at the speed of thought
Once you’ve trained the model, it needs to be put to work making decisions and predictions – a process called inference. We’ve equipped Bell AI Fabric with Groq’s revolutionary Language Processing Units (LPUs). Unlike general-purpose processors, LPUs are purpose-built for AI inference, more than doubling the speed of other hosting providers while power efficient than GPUs while being up to 10 times as power efficient.^{2, 3} By running AI applications faster and more affordably, organizations can unlock real-time insights that were previously out of reach.

Tailored intelligence: Customized model development
For some public sector organizations and larger enterprises, off-the-shelf AI models and data sets are not enough. They require solutions tailored to their unique data and business challenges. That’s why we’ve partnered with a Canadian leader in enterprise AI; our work with Cohere allows provides a "white glove" service to develop secure, custom models that deliver precise and reliable results.

Managing change: From planning to business transformation
Supporting all this work is Ateko, our technology services company, which acts as the crucial link between raw infrastructure and tangible business results. Ateko’s experts help organizations integrate AI into their core processes, turning technological potential into real-world efficiency and value.

A commitment to sustainability that sets Canada apart

Sustainability is at the core of Bell AI Fabric. Our initial data centers are strategically located in British Columbia to harness the province's abundant and cost-effective hydroelectric power. Data from WaterPower Canada shows that hydroelectricity in Canada has an ultra-low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions profile, while being a stabler source of energy than wind power or solar options.⁴ This commitment to green energy dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of AI workloads, positioning Canada as a leader in environmentally responsible computing.

We’re also implementing innovative solutions like open-loop groundwater cooling systems and waste heat utilization. For example, at our facility on the Thompson Rivers University campus, excess heat from the data center will be repurposed to help warm campus buildings. This holistic approach ensures that as we build Canada's digital future, we are also protecting our natural environment.

The sovereign advantage for Canadians and our customers

Bell AI Fabric provides a clear and powerful advantage for Canadian organizations. It offers a scalable, sustainable, and sovereign alternative to those providers whose facilities may be based in other countries. This substantially reduces the risks associated with data residency and security while also helping businesses maintain their environmental commitments.

Governments can process sensitive citizen data with confidence. Healthcare institutions can innovate with patient records securely. And businesses of all sizes can develop proprietary AI solutions without fear of their intellectual property leaving the country. By lowering the barriers to entry and reducing operational costs, we’re enabling a new wave of Canadian innovation and AI leadership.

I’m excited about the future of AI in Canada. If you’d like to have a conversation about AI transformation at your organization, contact your Bell representative or request a call back today.

A Senior Technical Product Manager working on AI at Bell, Sam Collins works on AI research and innovation, with a particular emphasis on the infrastructure needed to support AI models and functionality.