HIVE Digital Technologies (data center company) has announced plans to build one of Canada's largest artificial intelligence infrastructure facilities in the Greater Toronto Area, with its wholly owned subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing Inc. targeting a 320 megawatt facility capable of hosting more than 100,000 GPUs at full build-out.

Land Acquisition and Site Details

BUZZ HPC has already acquired the land underpinning the project, purchasing a main parcel of approximately 21 acres for USD 46 million and an adjacent parcel of approximately four acres for USD 12 million.

The two parcels form a contiguous site that carries a 320 MW power allocation. The facility is positioned in the Toronto–Waterloo corridor, placing it between the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute to the east and the engineering and systems talent concentrated in Waterloo to the west.

The company describes the location as sitting within one of the most important 100-kilometer corridors in global artificial intelligence, citing the region's proximity to research institutions, enterprise demand centers, and low-latency global network connectivity.

The project is intended to serve enterprise, research, and public sector AI workloads, with the company characterizing the facility as an AI gigafactory infrastructure, which it defines as converting compute capacity into intelligence at an industrial scale.

Scale and Timeline

HIVE and BUZZ are targeting a second-half 2027 online date for the facility. The total capital investment is projected at approximately CAD $3.5 billion. The project is expected to generate more than 800 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent high-skill roles once operational.

At full build-out, the gigafactory is designed to support fully vertically integrated AI supercomputers and deploy more than 100,000 GPUs. The facility will use closed-loop cooling systems described as a no-water-use approach, consistent with what the company calls BUZZ HPC's broader sustainability strategy. Power for the facility is expected to be drawn from Ontario's electricity grid, which the company highlights for its clean energy profile.

HIVE's Broader Infrastructure Position

The announcement expands HIVE Digital's stated global power footprint to more than 850 MW, comprising 450 MW of operating data centers and a pipeline of 400 MW expected to come online in 2027. Within Canada specifically, HIVE currently operates 100 MW of data center capacity and now holds a pipeline of 320 MW targeted for 2027 deployment.

Aydin Kilic, President and Chief Executive Officer of HIVE Digital Technologies, said the company has been strategically acquiring land near regional substations and characterized the announcement as part of a globally diversified growth strategy.

HIVE currently has 5,500 GPUs online performing AI compute, alongside a 70 MW site in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. Kilic said the combination of the Grand Falls site and the new GTA location gives the company the land and power to support approximately 130,000 GPUs in Canada alone.

The GTA gigafactory is described as the anchor of BUZZ's national AI platform, which the company says spans British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.

Sovereign AI Rationale

A central theme running through the announcement is the concept of sovereign AI infrastructure, the idea that nations controlling their own compute capacity retain data within their borders and maintain strategic independence from foreign cloud providers.

HIVE and BUZZ frame the project explicitly around that argument, stating that countries renting compute from data centers abroad cannot guarantee that sensitive data remains within national boundaries.

Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of both HIVE and BUZZ, drew on Canada's academic legacy in deep learning to make the case. Canada produced researchers who Holmes described as the Godfathers of deep learning, a reference widely understood to point to figures including Geoffrey Hinton, who is identified by name in the announcement in connection with the University of Toronto.

Holmes argued that Canada had historically produced foundational AI research while relying on foreign infrastructure to run it, and said that era was ending. Holmes stated that the facility at full build-out would create one of North America's largest domestically controlled AI clusters and said the intended workloads include low-latency inference, AI agents, financial platforms, healthcare applications, and national priority computing tasks.

National Infrastructure Framing

Craig Tavares, President and Chief Operating Officer of BUZZ HPC, described the investment as nationally important to Canada's efforts to build infrastructure for the next generation of AI innovation.

Tavares argued that Canada possesses the necessary ingredients to lead AI innovation globally: clean energy resources, network connectivity, and a strong research ecosystem, but requires the physical infrastructure layer to convert that potential into capability.

Tavares characterized the gigafactory as the engine Canada needs to lead what he called the intelligence economy, and said BUZZ is building the infrastructure that turns Canada's AI ambition into reality.

The announcement was made jointly under the HIVE Digital Technologies name and the BUZZ HPC brand, with BUZZ described throughout as a wholly owned subsidiary of HIVE. HIVE Digital Technologies trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ under the ticker HIVE, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker YO0.

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