San Francisco-based Anthropic has been revealed as a long-term leaseholder for a large Nova Scotia data centre project—the AI giant’s first data centre in Canada.
The news: Halifax-based EverWind Fuels announced plans for a $10-billion data centre project at its existing campus in Point Tupper, NS, on Friday. The investment includes more than $8 billion to develop the campus, alongside $2 billion for its onshore wind energy portfolio.
The campus is planned to begin with a 95-megawatt (MW) phase in late 2027, followed by a 325 MW expansion slated for 2028. At full development, the campus would hold 420 MW in compute capacity.
While EverWind didn’t initially reveal the project’s inaugural long-term leaseholder, Anthropic told media that the data centre will power Claude models and serve growing demand from its Canadian and global customers.
From the source: “Canadians are using Claude in growing numbers, and we want our infrastructure to be closer to the people who rely on it,” Anthropic Canada Public Policy head Jacob Glick said in a statement, according to Global News. “Canada has set a high bar for responsible data centre development, as has the Premier of Nova Scotia, and we are committing to meeting it.”
The context: Anthropic and EverWind have both signed onto Canada’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, a voluntary, non-enforceable framework that guides hyperscalers and regulators on how data centre projects should consider factors like electricity and water use. So far, in line with the framework, EverWind has committed to fully funding all electricity system network upgrade costs associated with the project and to use a closed-loop cooling system.
Anthropic’s involvement in the project comes shortly after the company opened job postings for a Canadian data centre community engagement manager and compute lead, the latter of which would be responsible for bringing “gigawatts of compute online in Canada.”
Final thought: Despite public pushback, data centre projects continue to facilitate record-breaking investment for provinces. EverWind said its project represents the largest privately funded investment in Nova Scotia’s history, shortly after Bell’s $50-billion data centre buildout in Saskatchewan broke that province’s investment record as well.
Feature image courtesy Tim Houston via X.