Telus is to deploy AI hardware at two new data centers in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Canadian telco this week announced it was working with the Canadian Government on a ‘Sovereign AI Factory’ cluster under the federal Enabling Large-Scale Sovereign AI Data Centres initiative.

As part of the announcement, Telus is expanding its existing Kamloops data center and developing two new Vancouver facilities with Westbank and its partners.

The Kamloops AI Factory – which will rely on 85MW of power secured from BC Hydro – will come online later this year.

The M3 facility in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood will open at the end of 2026 and scale through 2028. Westbank is converting an existing office building into a data center. Located at 111 E 5th Avenue and known as M3, the three-story office building was built in 1977. Social media management software provider Hootsuite had previously occupied the building.

The 150 West Georgia facility will come online in 2029, with the cluster’s total capacity scaling to more than 150MW by 2032. Canadian real estate firm Allied Properties Real Estate Investment Trust is developing a 10-story AI data center at 150 West Georgia in Vancouver, in partnership with Westbank.

“We are incredibly proud to be working with the Government of Canada to help build Canada’s sovereign AI infrastructure,” said Darren Entwistle, president and CEO of Telus. “The unprecedented demand that completely sold out our first AI Factory in Rimouski proves that Canadian innovators want cutting-edge AI built right here on Canadian soil. Following this modular, demand-driven approach, we are developing our British Columbian sovereign AI cluster as a direct response to that market demand.

“This will serve a rapidly growing ecosystem of Canadian businesses, entrepreneurs, startups, researchers, public institutions, and government organizations that require world-class AI compute without sending their data, intellectual property, and competitive advantage outside Canadian borders.”

Entwistle said the company aims to scale its infrastructure to more than 60,000 high-performance GPUs, and will be utilizing liquid cooling and heat recovery technology.

“By recycling waste heat back into the grid, these facilities will heat more than 150,000 homes in Metro Vancouver, lowering energy costs for British Columbians and eliminating the overall carbon footprint,” he added.

Utilizing closed-loop liquid cooling, the Vancouver facilities are designed to integrate into the City of Vancouver’s Neighbourhood Energy Utility in Mount Pleasant and Creative Energy’s downtown district energy system.

Telus’ first Sovereign AI Factory in Rimouski, Quebec, opened in September 2025. It is ranked 78th on the Top500 list of most powerful supercomputers, and is the most powerful system in Canada. The HPE Cray system is equipped with Intel Xeon CPUs and Nvidia H200 GPUs, offering a total of 27.44 petaflops of compute capacity.

The Enabling Large-Scale Sovereign AI Data Centres initiative is a program designed to “build the sovereign, high-performance AI compute infrastructure Canada needs to compete in the global AI economy.”

“People toss around the word innovation lightly, but this is a story of true Canadian innovation,” said Ian Gillespie, founder and CEO, Westbank. “We first became involved in district energy after our success developing a low-carbon utility, Telus Garden. After years of R&D, working with our partners at Telus, BC Hydro, Creative Energy, the City of Vancouver, Province of BC, and now the Federal Government, we have arrived at the most elegant low-carbon solution – effectively using every electron twice, to produce environmentally responsible Sovereign AI infrastructure. This, as our Prime Minister would say, is using our values to create value.”

Telus was formed by the Alberta government as the Alberta Government Telephones in 1906. The company, since privatised and rebranded to Telus, acquired the British Columbia Telephone Company (BC Tel) in 1999. BC Tel could trace its roots back to 1904.

Telus operates data centers in Calgary, Alberta; Kamloops, British Columbia; East York, Ontario; and Rimouski, Quebec.

Last year, the telco announced plans to invest more than CA$70 billion (US$50.6bn) to expand and upgrade its network infrastructure and operations over the next five years, including plans for new AI facilities in Kamloops and Rimouski.

The company is in the midst of shutting down its copper network to focus on fiber, and is converting many of its central offices (aka telephone exchanges) into residential developments.