Bell AI Fabric 7MW sovereign AI data centre in Merritt, BC; hosts Buzz HPC and Cohere GPU clusters under a $220M compute deal.
Bell AI Fabric – Merritt is a 7MW AI-optimised data centre located in Merritt, British Columbia, Canada. Developed by Bell Canada as part of its AI Fabric supercluster initiative, the Merritt facility is one of six data centres being constructed across British Columbia with a combined power allocation of 500MW drawn from clean, renewable hydroelectric sources.
The facility has been specifically designed to support sovereign AI workloads for Canadian enterprises, government bodies, and research institutions. Buzz HPC, the AI cloud subsidiary of Hive Digital Technologies, secured 6.5MW of capacity at the Merritt site in March 2026 to host GPU clusters as part of a partnership with Bell and AI company Cohere. The site subsequently became the foundation for a $220 million, three-year sovereign AI contract between Buzz HPC, Bell, and Cohere, targeting deployment of Nvidia Grace Blackwell NVL72 GPU systems.
Merritt's proximity to Kamloops and the broader Thompson Okanagan region, combined with access to abundant renewable power, positions this facility as a key element of British Columbia's emerging AI infrastructure corridor. The data centre supports Bell Canada's stated goal of growing AI-related revenue to $2 billion by 2028 while maintaining full Canadian data sovereignty.
