TELUS launches Canada’s first sovereign AI factory in $1.5B push

Canada has positioned itself as a leader in sovereign AI development, with NVIDIA joining government officials and industry leaders at the All In Canada AI Ecosystem event in Montreal this week. The gathering highlights Canada’s commitment to building domestic AI capabilities while TELUS launches the country’s first fully sovereign AI factory and RBC Capital Markets develops AI agents for financial services, underscoring the nation’s push for digital independence in the age of artificial intelligence.

What you should know: Canada’s AI Minister Evan Solomon emphasized digital sovereignty as the most pressing policy issue of our time, declaring that nations must develop their own AI rather than outsourcing it.

• “For our government, for our country, ‘All In’ means building digital sovereignty — the most pressing policy, democratic issue of our time,” Solomon said during the panel discussion.
• NVIDIA’s Kari Briski, Vice President of Generative AI Software, reinforced this message, stating that “AI must reflect local values, understand cultural context and align with national norms and policies.”

Key infrastructure developments: TELUS, a Canadian communications technology company, has unveiled Canada’s first fully sovereign AI factory in Rimouski, Quebec, powered by NVIDIA’s latest accelerated computing technology and built in collaboration with HPE.

• The facility offers end-to-end AI capabilities from model training to inferencing while ensuring full data residency and control within Canadian borders.
• The factory operates on 99% renewable energy and TELUS’ PureFibre network, already serving clients including OpenText, a software company.
• Accenture, a global consulting firm, will develop and deploy industry-specific solutions on the TELUS sovereign AI platform to accelerate AI adoption across Canadian clients.

Financial services innovation: RBC Capital Markets is building enterprise-grade AI agents for capital markets research using NVIDIA software, demonstrating practical applications of sovereign AI development.

• The agents are designed using NVIDIA Nemotron open models, customized with NVIDIA NeMo agent lifecycle tools, and deployed using NVIDIA NIM microservices.
• These systems enable faster insights and improved productivity for financial analysts while maintaining local control over sensitive data.

Global context: This event represents part of a broader international movement toward national AI strategies, with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang participating in similar initiatives across France, Germany, India, Japan, and the U.K. over the past year.

• During a previous visit to Canada, Huang described the country as the “epicenter of innovation in modern AI,” building on foundational work by pioneering researchers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.

What they’re saying: Leaders emphasized that maintaining AI leadership requires continuous effort and strategic investment.

• “Leadership is not a birthright,” Solomon noted. “It has to be earned again and again — and the competition is fierce.”
• “You’re all here to deliver the next big thing,” Solomon told attendees. “The AI revolution is the birth not just of a new technology — this is the birth of the age of the entrepreneur.”
• “Canada must own the tools and the rules that matter at this critical moment,” he added. “We need our digital insurance policy — and that’s what we’re building.”