PowerBank has signed its first lease, a 2 MW data center in Ontario hosting around 500 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs.
PowerBank Corporation announced that its joint development partner has executed the first lease for a 2 MW modular data center in Ontario, which is being developed under a joint development agreement. The Toronto-based energy developer, listed on Nasdaq, Cboe Canada and the Frankfurt exchange, said the project is the first of several sites it plans to advance across the province.
The facility is designed to accommodate approximately 500 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs, which would be supplied by an AI cloud tenant that would install and operate its own computing equipment. PowerBank expects to earn revenue by leasing the powered shell of the project to that operator.
If a tenant is secured on the assumed terms and the project is permitted, financed, constructed and operational, PowerBank estimates it could generate roughly C$2 million in annual lease revenue, shared with its partner under the joint development agreement. The company said the estimate covers the first full year after commercial operation and is a gross figure that excludes incremental property tax, insurance and maintenance costs borne by the partners.
The estimated capital cost of the facility, including land, the modular shell, electrical systems, direct-to-chip liquid cooling and fiber connectivity, is about C$10 million, to be funded by PowerBank and its partner. GPUs, servers and related computing equipment are excluded from that figure and are expected to be purchased by the tenant. Based on current-generation NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems, a facility with approximately 1.77 MW of IT capacity could hold about 500 GPUs across 11 racks, with roughly 220 TB of aggregate GPU memory.
The project is expected to require a zoning by-law amendment and a building permit from the local municipality, and the parties are coordinating a pre-consultation meeting to confirm requirements. None of the approvals has yet been obtained. Subject to approvals, construction is expected to take about 8 to 12 months, with commercial operation anticipated in PowerBank's fiscal year 2028, which ends June 30, 2028. PowerBank has not yet signed a tenant agreement and said it is in discussions with several potential tenants.
PowerBank framed the project around a shift in AI computing toward inference. It cited McKinsey & Company projections that inference could account for about 60% of AI compute demand by 2030 and grow roughly 36% per year. It also cited Grand View Research estimates that the global edge data center market will reach US$105.8 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual rate of 14.9% from 2026, with North America holding the largest regional share at 35.5% in 2025.
Chief Executive Officer Dr. Richard Lu said compute is following power and that companies with power already in place are positioned to benefit from the next phase of AI. He described the first lease as showing an existing energy site positioned to earn a second revenue stream from AI infrastructure, and said North America will need many smaller data centers built in months rather than a few large campuses built over years.
The company acknowledged that the AI data center market is highly competitive, with the project competing for tenants against other developers and operators, including colocation providers and modular and edge facility developers. Prospective tenants would in turn compete with hyperscale cloud providers, established AI cloud providers and government-supported compute initiatives. Management believes access to existing power and proximity to users in Ontario may be competitive advantages for distributed inference workloads, but cautioned that there is no assurance the project will compete successfully.
PowerBank said its estimates rely on third-party market research and industry benchmarks as of October 2026 and have not been derived from an independent engineering study or binding vendor quotes. It noted that primary North American data center markets recorded a record-low vacancy rate of 1.4% in the first half of 2026, while colocation vacancy in the Toronto market was about 7.2% as of mid-2026. The estimates assume no funding from, or demand attributable to, Canadian federal or provincial AI compute programs.
PowerBank describes itself as a vertically integrated North American energy company that develops, builds, owns and operates solar and battery energy storage systems. It said it has a potential development pipeline of almost one gigawatt and has built energy projects with a combined capacity of more than 100 megawatts.