TORONTO — Bell aims to double the revenue it makes selling AI tools and services to businesses to $1.5 billion by 2028, but the telecom giant is spending sparingly to capitalize on the data centre boom.

“Everybody’s talking about AI,” CFO Curtis Millen said in an interview on the sidelines of Bell’s investor day in Toronto on Tuesday. ”We actually have revenue.”

Bell’s AI-powered solutions business makes money by leasing capacity in its new data centres to companies and public-sector organizations, selling them cybersecurity tools, and installing and managing technology systems for them via its Ateko consulting arm. 

The firm estimates the unit will generate about $700 million in sales in 2025 and grow up to 29 per cent on a compounded annual basis over the next three years. That’s in contrast to the two per cent to four per cent growth estimated for its enterprise division as a whole in the same period.

In May, Bell announced plans for six data centres in British Columbia that will use 500 megawatts of power. The buildout will cost about $300 million over the next three years, according to Millen—a relatively small share of its capital expenditure budget, which is $3.7 billion this year.

The firm can afford to spend on data centres because it’s already installed most of the fibre lines and 5G wireless equipment it needs, Millen said. It’s also offloaded some of those costs. In May, Bell announced that the Public Sector Pension Investment Board will help pay for the expansion of its fibre network in the U.S. “Our capital envelope has been freed up,” Millen said.

While Bell can easily pay for its data centre plans on its own, it’s considering partnerships similar to the fibre deal with PSP Investments. “If there’s a way for us to accelerate our capture of the opportunity, then we should be looking at it,” Millen said. Bell has held discussions with potential investors since announcing its compute plans, but no deals are imminent, he said. 

Bell projects the six data centres will generate up to $150 million in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It will make money by leasing space and power, and by linking customers to the facilities via its fibre networks.

Unlike Canadian competitors like Telus and Hypertec’s 5C Group, Bell isn’t itself buying or leasing chips for its data centres. Instead, California semiconductor startup Groq has already leased much of Bell’s first site, in Kamloops, B.C. for its cloud service. AI-focused cloud provider Buzz HPC is putting Nvidia graphics processing units into a five-megawatt Bell facility in Manitoba. Chips are “the more expensive part of the build” for data centres, Millen said, adding, “our returns are actually better if you don’t have to invest in that.” 

Earlier this year, Bell announced a partnership with Cohere to run the AI firm’s models and North agent-builder system on Bell’s infrastructure, and jointly sell them to Canadian businesses and governments. 

Bell is now Cohere’s largest commercial customer, according to John Watson, the telecom firm’s group president of business markets. “We wanted to bring a wall-to-wall AI capability into the company,” he told The Logic last month. Ateko will use what the firm learns from Bell’s in-house use of North to roll the system out for large organizations.

Bell projects Ateko alone will generate $700 million in annual revenue by 2028. Much of the firm’s consulting business currently comes from installing and running ServiceNow and Salesforce software for customers. Still, Bell is open to partnerships like the one it has with Cohere to help other Canadian AI firms sell their technology, Watson said.

Despite Bell’s big AI plans, selling the technology will remain a relatively small part of its business. The firm estimates its Crave streaming service alone will bring in $1 billion in revenue in 2028. The firm’s financial outlook calls for $27.8 billion in total annual revenue by then.

Update: This story has been updated with details of Bell’s earnings estimates for its data centre business. A company executive shared incorrect information at its investor day.