CALGARY — Beacon AI Centers has plans to build upward of $10 billion worth of AI data centres in the coming years and has tapped former Blackstone chief technology officer Josh Schertzer to take over as CEO.

Schertzer takes on the role as Calgary-based Beacon looks to develop six sites spanning more than 2,000 acres around Edmonton and Calgary.

The firm is among a handful of companies scrambling to build large-scale AI data facilities for “hyperscalers” like Microsoft, Amazon and Google. Alberta, with its vast natural gas supplies and relatively low taxes, is seen as a jurisdiction with major potential. The province’s innovation minister has been actively courting the biggest Silicon Valley tech giants, promoting Alberta as a shovel-ready destination to build their data centres.

Beacon’s facilities, if built, would devour up to 4.5 gigawatts of power in Alberta to provide major tech firms with a training ground to test and develop their latest AI programs. Beacon’s first facilities are expected to come online in 2027 or 2028 at the latest. 

“Our roadmap is quite ambitious,” Schertzer told The Logic. He did not clarify which companies Beacon is working with, but said the firm is likely to publicize more of its plans and partners later this year. 

Beacon is majority-owned by Nadia Partners, a New York firm that launches companies to break into various pockets of the AI market. Beacon currently has about 30 employees, said Schertzer, who is currently based in Miami and will split his time between there and Calgary.

After spending 17 years at Blackstone—including as the investment giant’s head of technology—Schertzer said he was drawn to joining Beacon because of the immense potential he sees in AI data centres, particularly in Alberta. As major developers rush to train and release their latest AI programs, companies are urgently looking to secure the hardware they need to run them.

“It’s a race, because if you don’t solve the challenge of providing compute capacity, these companies hit a wall,” he said. “It’s an arms race.” 

 

Such facilities require immense amounts of electricity to power them, which has caused some tech firms, most notably Microsoft, to likely miss its CO2 emissions reduction targets as it rapidly looks to build out its AI hardware needs. The Redmond-based company has already outlined plans to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in order to fuel its AI facilities without massively increasing emissions.

A shortage of emissions-free power capacity in North America has left many companies to turn to natural gas to power their facilities in the near term. Beacon’s facilities, Schertzer said, will initially draw from the grid, but will later use a mix of natural gas and renewables to generate their own power outside of the public network. 

Among the other companies looking to expand AI compute capacity in Alberta is Montreal-based eStruxture Data Centres, which is already operating two data centres around Calgary, with plans for a third coming online next year.

Other developers have touted plans that remain in the very early stages. The most prominent among them is Wonder Valley, an effort led by the Canadian entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary to secure as much as $70 billion in investment for a site northwest of Edmonton. Wonder Valley has laid out plans to attract data centre investments on a 7,000-acre tract, but hasn’t yet announced any agreements to build. 

“The only person that has an ambitious pipeline larger than ours is Kevin O’Leary, but he’s years and years behind us,” Schertzer said.