Bell announced Wednesday an expanded partnership with Buzz High Performance Computing (HPC), a wholly owned subsidiary of HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., to deliver advanced, sovereign AI infrastructure at a new Bell AI Fabric facility in Merritt, B.C.
Bell said in a press release the new facility is expected to come online in the coming weeks and “represents the next step in Bell AI Fabric’s data centre supercluster, providing Canadian organizations with the high-performance computing capacity needed to drive the next generation of AI innovation.”
When Bell originally announced its B.C. data centre supercluster in May 2025, it said the Merritt facility was expected to open by the end of 2025. The first of the Bell AI Fabric facilities opened in Kamloops in June 2025.
The Merritt data centre will be powered by Buzz HPC’s specialized high-density, liquid-cooled infrastructure and accelerated graphics processing unit (GPU) compute, and will provide the design, implementation and scaling expertise needed for complex AI workloads, including inference and training, Bell said Wednesday.
Buzz HPC has secured 6.5 megawatts (MW) of gross capacity at the Bell AI Fabric Merritt facility with an option for potential additional power that may become available over time, Bell said. At this site, Buzz HPC will continue scaling its next-generation GPU clusters for commercial use, Bell added.
“This partnership brings together BUZZ HPC’s expertise in GPU-accelerated computing with Bell AI Fabric, a full-stack AI offering anchored by the company’s nationwide fibre network, data centre infrastructure, software, cloud capabilities, advanced professional integration services and partner ecosystem — allowing Canadian innovators to access massive compute power while adhering to strict data residency standards with a comprehensive, made-in-Canada AI solution,” reads Bell’s press release.
“We are excited to deliver cutting-edge AI infrastructure and deployment expertise to our customers through our partnership with BUZZ HPC at our Merritt facility,” John Watson, Bell’s group president of business markets, AI and Ateko, said in a statement. “This partnership provides another important layer to the Bell AI Fabric ecosystem, delivering the advanced workloads our customers need in a sovereign, private and secure Canadian facility. Partnerships like these are instrumental to BCE Inc. delivering on our ambition to grow our revenue from AI-powered solutions to $2 billion by 2028.”
Wednesday’s announcement expands upon Bell and Buzz HPC’s previously announced partnership to deploy high-performance GPU clusters in Bell AI Fabric’s facilities.
In addition to its data centre supercluster in British Columbia, Bell announced last week Bell AI Fabric plans to build a 300 MW data centre in the rural municipality of Sherwood, Saskatchewan, just outside Regina.
