Nigel Wallis

@nwallis

IDC Industry Insights

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In a low-key way? It can be pretty pretty rewarding helping out. That’s volunteer-installed lights on a volunteer-groomed Nordic ski network in my neighbourhood (and we got done before the temperatures plummeted, so pretty pleased about that).

Nigel Wallis@nwallis· Nov 5

By comparison? Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft & Amazon collectively expect to spend US$380 BILLION this year on capex - mostly infrastructure for data centres. That's C$536 billion. I'm unsure what spending an incremental C$185 million per year gets you as in terms of "Sovereign AI compute capacity"...

Seizing the Full Potential of AI
The transformative nature of AI can create opportunities for millions of Canadians, businesses, and the economy. Budget 2025 helps Canada
build necessary AI compute infrastructure, including the development of a Sovereign Canadian Cloud. This will help businesses seize the opportunities from AI, creating new jobs and economic growth.
Budget 2025 proposes to provide $925.6m over five years, starting in
2025-26, to support a large-scale sovereign public AI infrastructure that will boost AI compute availability and support access to sovereign AI compute capacity for public and private research. The investment will ensure Canada has the capacity needed to be globally competitive in a secure and sovereign environment. Of this amount, $800M will be sourced from funds previously provisioned in the fiscal framework.
The Minister of AI and Digital Innovation will engage with industry to identify new promising AI infrastructure projects & enter into MoU with those projects.
Budget 2025 also announces the government’s intention to enable the Canada Infrastructure Bank to invest in AI infrastructure projects.
Understanding the broader effects of AI is also essential, helping to guide our efforts to maximise its benefits. Budget 2025 allocates $25M over 6 years, starting in 2025-26, and $4.5M ongoing for StatCanada to implement the Artificial Intelligence & Technology Measurement Program (TechStat). TechStat will use data & insights to measure how AI is used by organisations, and understand its impact on Canadian society, the labour force, and the economy. This amount will be fully sourced from existing departmental resources.
The government will also explore options for the NRC of Canada’s Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre to best position it to attract private capital, scale its operations, and serve as a platform for Canadian innovation and new photonic applications, including in the face of the rise of AI & related compute infrastructure.

Nigel Wallis@nwallis· Apr 28

But it has the most delightful skating rink - so a fair trade?