Three big U.S. tech companies control the vast majority of Canada’s publicly-available cloud infrastructure, says a new report released ahead of the government’s national AI strategy, which is expected to include measures targeting AI sovereignty.
Canada’s small population to serve inference to is an advantage to some extent in such a capex heavy space, but the money being committed federally is pretty tiny. I look at $3.3 billion committed for AI over 5 years when compared with $60B for new subs, $3B for Arctic patrol ships, and up to $27B on F-35s if we go through with that order and don’t think we’re being serious about sovereign AI at all. We don’t have to be an OpenAI spending half a trillion on data centers for training and inference to reach a market of a billion+ people, but $3.3B over 5 years is not being serious about carving out our own independence from hyperscalers.
Canada’s small population to serve inference to is an advantage to some extent in such a capex heavy space, but the money being committed federally is pretty tiny. I look at $3.3 billion committed for AI over 5 years when compared with $60B for new subs, $3B for Arctic patrol ships, and up to $27B on F-35s if we go through with that order and don’t think we’re being serious about sovereign AI at all. We don’t have to be an OpenAI spending half a trillion on data centers for training and inference to reach a market of a billion+ people, but $3.3B over 5 years is not being serious about carving out our own independence from hyperscalers.