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Craig Tavares, president and COO of BUZZ HPC told RCRTech that access to dedicated, high-capacity connectivity directly affects both the economics and competitiveness of large-scale AI facilities
In sum – what to know:
Fiber priority – BUZZ HPC says dedicated high-capacity fiber is as important as power when building sovereign AI infrastructure.
Canada advantage – The company sees data sovereignty requirements, power availability, and connectivity as key differentiators for the Canadian market.
Grand Falls expansion – BUZZ is upgrading its New Brunswick campus with dedicated 100 Gbps and 400 Gbps wavelength services to support a planned AI factory.
Dedicated high-capacity fiber connectivity is emerging as a critical requirement for sovereign AI infrastructure, alongside power availability, according to BUZZ High Performance Computing (HPC), as the company advances plans for an AI-focused data center campus in Canada.
“Power alone does not make a sovereign AI facility. Fiber is the other half of the equation,” said Craig Tavares, president and COO of BUZZ HPC, in an interview with RCRTech.
Tavares said access to dedicated, high-capacity connectivity directly affects both the economics and competitiveness of large-scale AI facilities. He argued that power, fiber, and regulatory alignment must be combined to support sovereign AI workloads.
“The competitive differentiation is just as clear. Secured power plus dedicated fiber plus regulatory alignment is a different product than any one or two of those attributes. Customers paying for sovereign AI infrastructure need all three. If any element is missing, you have a data center. When all three are present, you have an AI factory. We are building AI factories,” he said.
The executive also highlighted Canada’s position in the global AI infrastructure market, citing power availability, connectivity, and data sovereignty requirements as key advantages.
“The sovereignty angle is where Canada holds a structural advantage no foreign provider can replicate,” Tavares said. “Canadian hospitals cannot route patient data through American clouds without compliance exposure. Canadian financial institutions face the same constraint. Government agencies face it even more acutely,” he added.
According to Tavares, operators building large-scale AI campuses face challenges beyond securing power capacity. “Meeting power requirements reliably and sustainably” remains important. He also identified three additional hurdles: cluster-scale network architecture, operational talent and construction labor, and supply chain constraints affecting equipment and AI infrastructure deployments.
“The companies that own sovereign AI infrastructure in Canada will be the ones that solve all three of these simultaneously, not sequentially,” he said.
The comments follow BUZZ HPC’s announcement that it has contracted a new fiber optic network overbuild and carrier transport network upgrade at its Grand Falls data center in New Brunswick. The project is intended to support the site’s conversion into a Tier III HPC-enabled facility designed for AI workloads.
According to the company, Grand Falls is already energized at 70 MW gross load and is being converted into a 50 MW Tier III+ AI factory targeting enterprise, government and sovereign AI applications. As part of the project, BUZZ is partnering with a Canadian carrier carrier to deploy dedicated optical wavelength services, including multiple 100 Gbps and 400 Gbps connections. Delivery is expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026.
HIVE Digital Technologies, BUZZ HPC’s parent company, said the project forms part of its broader strategy to expand GPU AI and Tier III HPC data center infrastructure in Canada.
