Canada's data center sector is undergoing a technology shift that goes beyond incremental upgrades. Artificial intelligence workloads are fundamentally changing what a data center needs to do, and operators across the country are responding with purpose-built infrastructure designed to handle the demands that AI places on power, cooling, and density.
AI-Ready Facilities Take Shape The investment signals are clear and specific. In October 2024, eStruxture announced plans to develop a new AI-ready facility in Calgary with a total investment of approximately USD 540 million. The planned site will deliver 90 MW of power capacity and support rack densities reaching 125 kW per rack, a specification that far exceeds what conventional enterprise workloads require. The facility is targeted for completion by 2026. This kind of high-density, high-power infrastructure is the physical prerequisite for running large language models, GPU-accelerated computing, and real-time AI inference at meaningful scale. Building it requires rethinking thermal management, power delivery, and facility layout from the ground up. Liquid Cooling Becomes a Priority As rack densities climb, traditional air cooling reaches its practical limits. Direct-to-chip liquid cooling has emerged as the solution for AI-grade deployments, and adoption is accelerating in Canada. In January 2025, Bit Digital announced plans to retrofit its acquired MTL2 facility in Montreal with direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology, specifically to support AI and other high-performance workloads. This trend will only intensify. The combination of rising power density requirements and increasing scrutiny around energy efficiency is pushing operators toward liquid cooling as a baseline capability rather than a premium option. Cloud Giants Expand Their Footprint The major cloud providers are not sitting still. Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Tencent Cloud all maintain a meaningful presence in Canada, and several are actively expanding. Microsoft broke ground on the first phase of a new Quebec data center in June 2024, with completion expected by 2026. These expansions reflect growing enterprise demand for cloud services delivered with Canadian data residency, a compliance requirement that matters to a wide range of organizations operating under Canadian privacy regulations. Workforce Development Keeps Pace Technology investment without trained talent creates bottlenecks. AWS is addressing this directly through its AI Ready initiative, which commits to providing free AI and generative AI training to two million people by 2025. The Canadian government has similarly prioritized workforce upskilling to ensure that the country's digital economy expansion is supported by people with the right capabilities to operate and develop next-generation infrastructure. Know More: Canada Data Center Market - Investment Analysis & Growth Opportunities 2025-2030
