Montréal-based artificial intelligence (AI) institute Mila is working with local AI infrastructure companies Hypertec and 5C to establish a Sovereign AI Research Hub, which aims to provide computing resources to researchers and startups.
“Developing state-of-the-art compute with less energy and more intelligence is the way forward to scale Canada’s global impact.”
Valérie Pisano, Mila
The research hub will be based out of Hypertec’s new headquarters in LaSalle, on the south end of Montréal. It’s meant to create more than 50 jobs, provide resources to accelerate AI research and entrepreneurship, and deliver services with a lower energy footprint than other compute facilities.
Hypertec and 5C are investing up to $250 million in the development, which will serve as Hypertec’s global headquarters. The company broke ground on the facility in March, claiming it would create several hundred new jobs.
The announcement came during the third annual ALL IN conference in Montréal, which saw more than 6,000 tech companies, business leaders, researchers, and government officials convene to discuss the Canadian AI industry.
Valérie Pisano, president and CEO of Mila, welcomed the news as a win for both researchers and local startups. “Developing state-of-the-art compute with less energy and more intelligence is the way forward to scale Canada’s global impact,” she said in the statement.
Founded by AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, Mila specializes in deep learning research and has partnerships with several Canadian academic institutions. It recently appointed a new scientific director, Hugo Larochelle, who has said that he intends to better support academics in commercializing their research and building companies.
Hypertec said its new LaSalle campus will provide up to three megawatts (MW) of “secure” AI infrastructure, with graphics processing units (GPUs) from leading chip developers Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. Lab testing at the new AI hub will aim to develop “frugal AI,” or the best AI application performance for every dollar spent.
Traditional data centres provide computing power to store data and run applications. While these require between five and 10 MW of power, one AI “hyperscale” data centre typically demands more than 100 MW, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
For Mila, one of three federally backed Canadian AI institutes with more than 1,000 researchers, the new hub is an opportunity to unite its academic efforts with AI computing power—something that academics have said is difficult to procure given high demand from the tech sector.
According to a federal consultation, a majority of AI researchers interviewed said that the demand for public compute infrastructure often exceeds supply and impacts what projects researchers choose to pursue. This isn’t just a challenge in Canada: a Nature survey of academics worldwide showed frustration with a lack of access to compute for AI research.
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Founded in 1984 in Saint-Laurent, Que., Hypertec builds and operates data centres that offer cloud infrastructure and services to thousands of customers. It spun off Hypertec Cloud and acquired the American company 5C in April, giving it a larger footprint in the United States, with roughly 600 MW of computing capacity through 5C’s existing data centres.
Hypertec’s business has grown as companies in Canada and globally have sought to build more data centres to capture demand for AI services. This summer, the company announced a $5-billion plan to build two gigawatts of AI computing capacity in Europe with new data centres. To fuel this buildout, it secured more than $1 billion in equity and debt financing from Brookfield Asset Management and Deutsche Bank.
The project has support from all three levels of government. Federal AI minister Evan Solomon said the initiative is “advancing Canada’s digital sovereignty” as the data centre operator is Canadian. Christine Fréchette, Québec’s minister of the economy, said it would “further strengthen Québec’s leadership in the field.” The city of Montréal struck a deal with Hypertec to sell it the plot of land in LaSalle, successfully deterring its plans to build a facility on Technoparc Montréal.
Feature image courtesy Hypertec Group via LinkedIn.