Canada Gets Its Own Sovereign AI Infrastructure
Bell Canada and Cisco have partnered to create a sovereign AI infrastructure in Canada, providing companies with an alternative for hosting their artificial intelligence tools. The collaboration combines Bell's data centers and networks with Cisco's AI, security, and observability technologies.
The goal of the partnership is to help organizations deploy, secure, and manage AI systems without moving the underlying infrastructure outside the country. This is particularly important for industries where trust, control, and resilience are critical, such as government and regulated sectors.
The agreement follows the federal government's national AI strategy, which aims to build sovereign Canadian AI foundations in compute, cloud, connectivity, data, and talent. The plan targets 250,000 new AI-related jobs over five years and aims to lift AI adoption from just over 12% to 60% by 2034.
John Watson, group president of Bell's business markets division, emphasized the importance of creating infrastructure that Canadian organizations can use. Raj Juneja, president of Cisco Canada, highlighted customer choice as a key aspect of the collaboration.