CoreWeave Inc. unveiled NASDAQ this year, earning a market capitalization of over USD 7 billion.Brendan McDermid/Reuters
US company CoreWeave Inc. CRWV-Q will operate a data center that will open in Cambridge, Ontario next month. Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere Inc. will become its customer.
Finally, valued at US$5.5 billion, Cohere is building large-scale language models and generation AI tools for business customers. The federal government announced in December that it would give up to $240 million to the company for computer processing needs in industry jargon, or calculations.
The funding comes from a $2 billion spending package created last year to encourage Canadian companies to access the computing infrastructure needed to build and implement AI models and to encourage companies to develop more data centers here.
The government said it announced funds to work with helping to encourage other businesses to build new multi-billion-dollar AI data centres in Canada that have the capabilities of other businesses as well.
“By bringing cutting-edge calculations to Canadian soils, we are creating the foundation that will enable Canadian researchers, startups and businesses to compete globally,” Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, said in a statement Wednesday.
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The Cambridge data center, which is scheduled to be fully operational in August, will be owned by Blackberry Inc. BB-T until 2017, with French company Ovhcloud currently a building tenant. The zoning application submitted to the city of Cambridge last July shows property owners who intended to convert the warehouse portion of the building into a new data center.
Property Ownership Records link the property to Towerbrook Capital Partners, a private corporation with offices in New York and London. Sources familiar with the issue say TowerBrook is partnering with Digital, related to the facility.
Globe and Mail does not identify sources as they are not allowed to speak publicly. TowerBrook and associated digital declined to comment.
Related Digital said earlier this year it was developing a 64-megawatt data center expansion project in Ontario.
When the government announced Cohere's funding in a press release last year, it didn't take note that the data center infrastructure would be operated by CoreWeave. Funding arrangements have been criticized by observers in several industry. Because public dollars ultimately flow to American companies.
Evan Solomon, Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, defended the deal in an interview last week.
“What I don't want to do is a purity test of sovereignty. The main thing is to maintain a Canadian-based company,” he said.
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Founded in 2019 by Gomez, Nick Frossst and Ivan Chang, Cohere is defended by the federal government. Gomez recently met with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Mark Carney wants to use AI to improve government productivity and efficiency.
CoreWeave did not immediately reply to requests for comment. The company was released on NASDAQ this year and has a market capitalization of over USD 70 billion.
Data center demand is booming thanks to generation AI, and access to this infrastructure is seen as a competitive advantage. Many countries, including Canada, see it as an economic security issue.
Telecommunications Firms Telus Corp. TT and BCE Inc. BCE-T are also entering the market. Telus plans to convert two data centers to handle AI, but BCE said it will open six facilities in British Columbia in May.
