Another AI giant is coming to Alberta — and it could build data centres

A world-leading AI firm appears to be laying the groundwork for a Canadian expansion — one that could mean new data centres and more demand for Alberta’s natural gas.

San Francisco-based Anthropic is looking to bring “gigawatts of compute” to Canada and expand its on-the-ground presence in Alberta, according to two separate job postings from the company.

“I’m not surprised in the least,” Harish Consul, chief executive of Calgary-based private equity firm Ocgrow Ventures, said. “We’ve got almost all the major hyperscalers looking at Alberta.”

Anthropic’s Claude AI model is one of the world’s most advanced, and a key competitor with other large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

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Consul has been watching closely as Alberta’s opportunities in the province’s tech space — including data centres — have grown.

Anthropic’s interest in the province comes over a month after Meta Platforms Inc., owner of Facebook and Instagram, announced it’s building a $13 billion data centre about 35 kilometres north of Edmonton.

“Meta making a final investment decision is showing the market more broadly that Alberta can be a destination for large-scale data centres,” John Mould, a power and utilities analyst with TD Securities, said in an interview.

Analysts at TD had previously found that Anthropic intends to add at least one gigawatt of load in Canada, likely for data centres, according to Mould.

However, the timing of a potential project from Anthropic remains uncertain.

The company’s build-out in Canada could lead to a “meaningful” rise in power demand, most likely in Alberta, Mould says.

Alberta’s provincial government has been encouraging data centre proponents to bring their own generation, rather than plugging into the province’s grid. The province’s cheap and abundant natural gas is likely the power source for many projects. “If you’re looking to add like load at scale, you really need to be figuring out what your power solution is going to be,” Mould said.

One of Anthropic’s roles, a community engagement manager, aims to “make Anthropic a trusted, visible, and valued neighbour” in communities where data centres could be built. They would be involved throughout the whole process from site selection to operations.