BUZZ High Performance Computing Inc., the wholly owned subsidiary of HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (TSX: HIVE, NASDAQ: HIVE, FSE: YO0), unveiled plans for a major Ontario infrastructure project anchored by a new AI gigafactory in the Greater Toronto Area. The facility is designed to tap approximately 320 megawatts of utility capacity and to house fully vertically integrated AI supercomputers, with the goal of hosting more than 100,000 GPUs at full build-out. The announcement positions the project as a landmark investment intended to bolster Canada’s sovereign AI capabilities and to place a large-scale, domestically controlled compute platform at the heart of the country’s AI economy.
Scale, timing and financials of the GTA project
BUZZ HPC acquired land totaling roughly 21 acres (the Main Parcel) for CAD 46 million, along with an adjacent approximately 4-acre parcel (the Additional Parcel) for CAD 12 million. Together, the parcels create a contiguous site that benefits from a 320 MW power allocation, a critical element in the plan to construct sovereign AI infrastructure along Canada’s Toronto–Waterloo innovation corridor. The project is designed to integrate into the region’s technology and financial services hubs, leveraging the area’s deep talent pool and access to high-speed networks.
The project is structured to advance through milestones aligned to the 320 MW power pathway as BUZZ builds out sovereign AI capacity in the GTA. In its design, the facility aims to sit at the intersection of research excellence, enterprise demand and world-class network connectivity, anchoring BUZZ’s national AI platform as part of a broader Canadian strategy to bring AI compute onshore and under domestic governance.
Key highlights include a target online date in the second half of 2027, an approximate CAD 3.5 billion capital outlay, and a construction footprint that is expected to create more than 800 construction jobs along with hundreds of permanent, high-skill roles once fully operational. The project will be powered by Ontario’s clean grid and is designed around high-efficiency AI compute with closed-loop cooling capable of delivering no-water use, aligning with BUZZ HPC’s sustainability objectives. The developers emphasize a community-first approach, focusing on responsible development, local economic participation and alignment with national priorities.
Strategic geography and the sovereign AI vision
Located within one of the globe’s most consequential AI corridors, the GTA gigafactory sits between the historical influence of Geoffrey Hinton’s legacy, the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute to the east, and Waterloo’s renowned systems and engineering expertise to the west. The site’s placement is deliberate, intended to offer low-latency networking and proximity to premier research and enterprise demand. The objective is to create a physically integrated backbone for Canada’s intelligence economy, where compute resources remain under Canadian control and data sovereignty is prioritized.
“AI is the new industrial base and compute is the factory floor. Canada produced the Godfathers of deep learning but kept renting the factories. That era is over. Between Toronto and Waterloo, BUZZ is building the sovereign AI infrastructure that turns Canadian intelligence into Canadian dominance. At full build-out, this intelligence factory will deploy over 100,000 GPUs, creating one of North America’s largest domestically controlled AI clusters. Low-latency inference, AI agents, financial platforms, healthcare breakthroughs, scientific discovery, and national priority workloads will finally run on Canadian iron, under Canadian control. Our vision is to build AI infrastructure that will serve humanity, with the potential to improve quality of life for millions of Canadians.”
President and CEO of BUZZ HPC Craig Tavares described the investment as nationally significant for Canada’s AI ambitions, underscoring the need to “build the infrastructure layer that turns Canada’s AI ambition into reality.” He highlighted the broader national footprint of BUZZ’s platform, noting that the GTA project complements BUZZ’s existing capacity and pipeline, including Canada’s current and planned data-center assets. Tavares emphasized the project’s role in anchoring a nationwide, Canadian-governed, fully vertically integrated supercomputing platform designed for the age of inference and enterprise AI, with a particular focus on local community engagement and long-term value for the GTA region.
HIVE Digital Technologies executive leadership also weighed in on the expansion. Aydin Kilic, President and CEO, stated that the company has been strategically land-banking around regional substations and is pleased to announce this expansion, noting that HIVE now has more than 850 MW of power globally. This total includes about 450 MW of operating data centers plus a pipeline of 400 MW of capacity expected to come online in 2027. Kilic added that the company’s Canadian footprint now includes 100 MW of operating data centers with a 320 MW pipeline for 2027, suggesting the potential to develop a capacity to support approximately 130,000 GPUs across BUZZ’s platform. He described BUZZ as expanding Canada’s AI footprint to scale a globally relevant AI-native cloud while maintaining domestic governance and a diversified portfolio of assets.
Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE and BUZZ, framed the project as a foundational step in Canada’s broader AI strategy. He described AI as the industrial core of the future economy and asserted that the era of renting AI compute is ending in Canada, with BUZZ aiming to deploy a domestic, sovereign compute infrastructure that will enable a wide range of critical workloads—from financial platforms to healthcare research—to run on Canadian hardware under Canadian oversight. Holmes characterized the GTA gigafactory as a national asset and a potential catalyst for broad-based improvements in the quality of life for Canadians.
In addition to the project’s core aims, BUZZ and HIVE stressed that the development aligns with a broader, multi-province national strategy. The GTA site is positioned to support BUZZ’s national platform that already includes assets in British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and New Brunswick, reinforcing Canada’s ambition to scale sovereign AI computing capabilities across multiple regions and time zones. The company’s Green GPU initiative, emphasizing sustainable compute powered by renewable energy and ultra-low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metrics, is presented as an integral part of the project’s design, with cooling systems intentionally structured to minimize water use.
For those seeking more information, BUZZ maintains a public profile tied to its parent company and its broader data-center and GPU-hosting operations. The press release also provides contact details for BUZZ leadership for further inquiries.
Source: source
About HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. and BUZZ
HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., established in 2017, began as an early adopter of green-powered digital asset mining and has since expanded to building and operating Tier-I and Tier-III data centers across Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay, serving both Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing clients. BUZZ High Performance Computing, a wholly owned subsidiary of HIVE and an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, provides enterprise-grade cloud services and large-scale GPU clusters within vertically integrated data centers. BUZZ operates as a Canadian-governed, globally connected sovereign AI platform, delivering managed services such as Kubernetes, Slurm, virtual machines, and bare-metal deployments optimized for AI, machine learning, and scientific workloads. Learn more at buzzhpc.ai.
Craig Tavares, BUZZ President and COO, can be reached at (604) 664-1078 for additional information.
