Bell Canada and Cisco have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a sovereign AI infrastructure offering for Canadian organizations, combining Bell’s domestic data centres and networks with Cisco’s computing, security and infrastructure management technologies.
Announced September 29, the collaboration targets government, regulated industries and other organizations seeking greater control over where sensitive AI workloads run and how they are managed. The proposed infrastructure would support both AI training and inference.
The companies will explore combining Bell’s space, power, cooling, connectivity and operations with Cisco’s technology portfolio. They will also assess Cisco AI PODs, modular architectures for different AI workloads, and commercial models that align customer costs with capacity used or reserved.
“Bell is focused on helping turn sovereign AI from ambition into infrastructure Canadian organizations can use,” said John Watson, Bell’s Group President, Business Markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric and Ateko.
The agreement adds to Bell’s growing AI Fabric ecosystem. As DataCentre.ca previously reported, its Merritt, B.C. facility is anchoring a partnership with Cohere, Hypertec and BUZZ HPC to deliver Canadian-hosted AI infrastructure.
Bell also recently outlined plans to expand its Saskatchewan AI data centre development to as much as 1.2 gigawatts, subject to customer commitments and approvals.
The Cisco collaboration remains at the MOU stage. The announcement did not specify deployment locations, capacity commitments, pricing or a launch date.