The province of Alberta hopes to become the most attractive place in North America for building artificial intelligence (AI) data centres with a new strategy to lure investment and leverage the emerging sector.

The world’s largest AI companies are searching for opportunities to build and energize their data centres. The new strategy contains three pillars: power capacity, sustainable cooling, and economic growth, which aim to manage the growing demand for this technology while preparing to meet future energy needs and keeping utilities reliable and affordable.

AI data centres generate a lot of heat and require cooling. The strategy encourages operators to determine the cooling technology best suited for their needs, water license availability and regional and project circumstance. As well, Alberta’s climate offers significant advantages for AI data centres. The province’s cold winters would reduce the need for artificial cooling systems.

Over the past several months, the strategy was developed through extensive consultation with organizations and businesses in the AI space and market participants.

“For AI companies to build and scale in Alberta, they need access to computing power,” says Cam Linke, CEO of Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (amii). “Data centers are economic growth engines that provide the computing power AI companies need to develop and deploy their innovations. grow their companies and stimulate the local economies.

“Beyond its natural advantages, Alberta boasts a robust AI ecosystem anchored by world-class research and talent. Many of the algorithms the world’s data centers are running on have been pioneered by Amii researchers right here in Alberta. The opportunity for those companies to be close to the source of some of the leading AI research gives them a competitive advantage in being at the forefront of what is coming next.”