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AI infrastructure

Bell and BUZZ HPC secure 6.5 MW for AI deployment at Merritt, B.C. facility

Bell’s 6.5 MW Merritt announcement concerns BUZZ HPC’s GPU deployment inside Bell’s AI Fabric build-out. A later US$220 million Cohere-linked contract disclosed the hardware and commercial context.

By TheFinanceBase Team 5 min read

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Bell Canada and BUZZ High Performance Computing announced on March 25, 2026, that BUZZ had secured 6.5 megawatts (MW) of immediate gross capacity at Bell’s AI Fabric facility in Merritt, British Columbia. The agreement is best understood as a GPU deployment inside Bell’s previously announced AI-facility build-out—not proof that an entirely separate campus was announced that day.

Bell said the site was expected to come online in the following weeks. A June 18 announcement subsequently linked Merritt to a three-year, approximately US$220 million GPU-cloud contract involving BUZZ, Bell, Cohere and Hypertec.

What Bell and BUZZ announced on March 25

BUZZ HPC, a wholly owned subsidiary of HIVE Digital Technologies, committed to an initial 6.5 MW of gross capacity at Bell AI Fabric’s Merritt facility. BUZZ also received an option to obtain additional power as it becomes available. Bell described the location as intended for high-density, liquid-cooled GPU clusters serving enterprise and government AI workloads in Canada.

The release did not disclose a GPU count, GPU model, rack count, power-usage-effectiveness (PUE) figure or final commissioning date. “Coming weeks” was Bell’s expectation, not a guaranteed public service date.

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Bell’s Q1 2026 materials later described a second Merritt AI data centre as launched in March: BCE Q1 2026 presentation.

Read Bell’s March announcement.

Is this a brand-new data-centre campus?

Not on the evidence publicly available. Bell had announced its broader AI Fabric and AI data-centre plans before the BUZZ agreement. The March announcement primarily identified BUZZ as a capacity customer and GPU-infrastructure operator within the Merritt project.

That distinction matters for investors and customers. “6.5 MW data centre” can imply that the whole facility is exactly 6.5 MW and was created from scratch on March 25. The announcement instead supports a narrower description: BUZZ secured 6.5 MW of gross capacity at Bell’s existing Merritt AI Fabric facility.

What 6.5 MW means

A megawatt measures electrical power capacity. It is not a GPU count, storage capacity or guaranteed computing output.

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Because the figure is gross, it can include electricity required for cooling, power-conversion equipment, networking, storage, lighting, redundancy and other facility systems. The amount reaching computing equipment depends on the site’s electrical design, redundancy configuration, cooling system and PUE.

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Neither the March release nor the later public announcements provides enough engineering information to convert 6.5 MW into a reliable number of GPUs. GPU draw varies by system, utilization, networking and cooling. The companies also have not published a PUE, net IT load or rack-density figure.

What hardware and customer use case emerged later?

On June 18, 2026, BUZZ announced a three-year GPU-cloud contract valued at approximately US$220 million. It said the deployment would include:

  • 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs;
  • NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems;
  • NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking;
  • advanced liquid cooling; and
  • systems built to NVIDIA reference-architecture standards.

The announcement placed the infrastructure at Bell’s purpose-built Merritt facility and identified Cohere as the enterprise-AI participant. Cohere is expected to use the resulting compute layer for enterprise and government workloads. Hypertec was identified as the Canadian hardware partner supplying Canadian-manufactured GPU servers.

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See BUZZ’s June contract announcement.

The June GPU count was not part of the March announcement. Nor do the public releases explicitly state that all 2,304 GPUs consume exactly the original 6.5 MW allocation. The location and chronology strongly connect the announcements, but the electrical reconciliation remains undisclosed.

Who is responsible for what?

Participant Publicly described role
Bell Canada Provides the Merritt facility, AI Fabric platform, connectivity and Canadian operating environment.
BUZZ HPC Deploys and operates GPU-cloud and accelerated-computing infrastructure and commercializes capacity.
HIVE Digital Technologies Owns BUZZ HPC as a wholly owned subsidiary.
Cohere Provides enterprise AI and foundation-model workloads associated with the June arrangement.
Hypertec Supplies Canadian-manufactured GPU servers as the hardware partner in the broader stack.

Bell’s June description of the partnership is available at BCE’s announcement.

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Why the project is described as “sovereign AI”

Keeping computing facilities and workloads in Canada can help organizations pursue domestic data-residency and jurisdictional objectives. That is particularly relevant to government, defence, healthcare, financial, research and other sensitive workloads.

Physical location alone does not create complete sovereignty. Buyers must also examine:

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  • where prompts, training data, outputs, logs and backups are stored;
  • whether telemetry or support access can leave Canada;
  • which legal entities and personnel administer the systems;
  • encryption, identity controls and tenant isolation;
  • incident response and audit arrangements; and
  • the legal treatment of foreign ownership, subpoenas and support.

“Sovereign” is therefore a stated commercial and policy objective, not an automatic legal certification for every workload hosted at Merritt.

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What the announcement means for enterprise buyers

Confirm the access model

Ask whether capacity is offered as bare metal, reserved GPU instances, a managed GPU cloud, hosted model endpoints or an integrated application service. The March release described capacity and an expansion option, not a public retail price list.

Check availability and service levels

Establish whether the required GPUs are live, being installed or reserved; whether capacity is dedicated or shared; and what uptime, maintenance and replacement commitments apply.

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Review networking, storage and recovery

Large-model training depends on interconnect speed and storage throughput as much as on GPU specifications. Buyers should ask about checkpointing, backup, disaster recovery and whether a secondary Canadian site is available.

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Evaluate cooling and operational requirements

Liquid cooling enables dense AI systems but introduces facility-maintenance, leak-detection, service and hardware-compatibility requirements. Request rack-density, cooling and PUE information before comparing the site with conventional colocation.

Separate the contract value from market pricing

The approximately US$220 million figure is a specific three-year GPU-cloud contract reported by BUZZ. It is not a generally available price, and the public information does not support calculating a per-GPU or per-MW rate.

Trade-offs versus other infrastructure choices

Option Potential advantage Potential limitation
Merritt-style sovereign deployment Canadian facility, telecom integration and controlled enterprise procurement. Likely sales-led, with limited public pricing and potentially concentrated geographic redundancy.
U.S. hyperscale cloud Broad managed services, global regions and flexible consumption models. May create cross-border residency, jurisdiction or support concerns.
Customer-owned Canadian GPU cluster Direct control over hardware, data flows and operating policies. Requires capital, specialist staff, power, cooling and lifecycle management.
Managed model API Fastest route for many application teams without operating GPUs. Less control over model hosting, data paths and low-level performance.

What remains undisclosed

  • The exact public commissioning date and production-availability schedule.
  • Net IT load, PUE, rack count and final electrical design.
  • The installation timetable for the 2,304 GPUs.
  • Customer-facing service-level commitments and pricing.
  • Whether the June deployment maps one-for-one onto the original 6.5 MW allocation.
  • The size and timing of any additional power made available under BUZZ’s expansion option.

Why the Merritt development matters

The March announcement established a substantial power commitment inside Bell’s AI Fabric strategy. The June contract gave that site a specific commercial anchor: Cohere-related enterprise and government workloads running on a disclosed NVIDIA accelerated-computing platform.

For Canada’s technology market, the combination could provide an alternative to relying exclusively on U.S. hyperscale regions. Its practical value will depend on commissioning, sustained GPU availability, network and storage performance, security controls, pricing and disaster-recovery arrangements—details the companies have not fully published.

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The Bottom Line

Bottom line: Bell and BUZZ announced 6.5 MW of gross capacity for BUZZ’s GPU deployment at Bell’s Merritt AI Fabric facility, not necessarily a wholly new standalone campus. The project became more concrete in June 2026 when BUZZ disclosed a three-year, approximately US$220 million contract involving 2,304 Grace Blackwell GPUs, Cohere and Hypertec. Merritt is emerging as a significant Canadian sovereign-AI site, but its usable power, commissioning schedule, pricing and exact relationship between the 6.5 MW allocation and the GPU contract remain private.

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