Canada's Bell triples planned capacity at Saskatchewan datacenter campus to 900MW, with scope for further expansion

Canadian telco Bell is expanding its planned data center development in Saskatchewan. Bell Canada and the Government of Saskatchewan have announced a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to expand Bell AI Fabric in Saskatchewan, with the phased development of up to 900MW of additional capacity.

The site has a path to 1.2GW of total capacity, representing the largest capital investment in Saskatchewan's history. At full buildout, the total capital investment associated with this project—including data center infrastructure, tenant compute, and related power generation—could exceed $50 billion.

The additional capacity will rely on partner-developed natural gas power generation. Bell said the proposed facilities will use closed-loop cooling technology that requires no municipal water. Development will be phased as customer commitments are secured, with timelines to be determined.

"Canada's next generation of economic growth will be built on Canadian infrastructure," said Mirko Bibic, president and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada. "By creating a path to 1.2GW of AI capacity in Saskatchewan, Bell AI Fabric will give governments, businesses, researchers and innovators the secure, sovereign foundation they need to deploy AI at scale and compete globally."

Bell first announced plans to develop a data center campus on a 160-acre site outside Regina in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood in February. The company initially announced plans for a 300MW campus, with CoreWeave and Cerebras as customers. The first stage is expected to come online in the first half of 2027 and reach full build-out by the end of the year.

"This historic investment will create thousands of good jobs and new opportunities for Saskatchewan people," said Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan. "It will also strengthen Canadian data sovereignty by keeping Canadian data here at home, stored by a Canadian company and protected under Canadian rules. When it comes to data storage, keeping that home ice advantage means Canadians set the rules and remain in control."

The Saskatchewan campus is part of a broader AI infrastructure buildout across Canada by Bell. Last year, the company announced plans to build AI data centers across the country, starting with six data centers in British Columbia supported by 500MW of hydroelectric power. These include a 7MW facility in Kamloops alongside chip firm Groq, followed by two additional 26MW facilities in the area, and a 7MW facility in Merritt. Bell is also partnering with Hive's AI cloud unit Buzz on a 5MW Nvidia GPU cluster in Manitoba. An AI facility in partnership with Ontario-based Queen's University is also planned.

Bell previously sold a portfolio of data centers across Canada to Equinix in 2020, retaining select key networking facilities. The company has more recently expanded its data center footprint through its acquisition of Ziply Fiber, which operates an Edge data center business in the US.