Ottawa is moving forward with plans for a public supercomputer that researchers and firms can use to make AI breakthroughs and is offering $890 million in funding to potential builders that meet its sovereignty and speed requirements. 

The federal government says the Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program (SCIP) will help fill a gap in R&D processing power, as it simultaneously tries to encourage the private sector to build out commercial data centres. 

The program will create “one of the world’s most advanced public supercomputers,” said Peter Wall, a spokesperson for AI Minister Evan Solomon. He added that the SCIP will ensure “Canadian researchers and companies have access to world-class infrastructure, owned and operated here, so we can build the next generation of AI on our own terms.”

The launch of the bidding process has been much anticipated among Canadian universities, compute service providers and hardware firms. Bidders have until June 1 to submit their applications, and must have the supercomputer operational within 18 months of signing the contract with the government. The federal innovation department had previously solicited proposals for what the system could look like.

Groups bidding on the supercomputer contract must be led by a post-secondary institute or not-for-profit. The federal innovation department is seeking assurances that Canadian organizations will own or at least have technical control over the infrastructure, including what components go into it, who can access it, and what they can do with it. 

Bidders must also show they’re planning to use Canadian hardware, software and services when they’re available, and to partner with Canadian startups. The program does allow for foreign technology and participants, and requires that the groups “limit instances” in which they can “unilaterally restrict use or access” to the supercomputer, according to the innovation department’s bidding guide. While the innovation department asks bidders to prioritize data residency in Canada, it doesn’t absolutely mandate it. 

The Liberal government first announced plans for a new supercomputer in the April 2024 federal budget, initially allocating $700 million under its $2 billion strategy to increase Canada’s compute capacity. Last November’s federal budget increased the SCIP to $925.6 million.

Ottawa plans to spend most of that on building the supercomputer. Bidding groups don’t need to put all their compute clusters in one place, although they have to show they’ve secured any sites they’ll build on. They must also demonstrate that they’ve pre-purchased power, or at least checked with the local utility to ensure there’s enough spare capacity. 

While the program guide does not include a specific matching requirement, Ottawa does expect applicants to solicit provincial and municipal funding, and to try and attract private-sector capital. It will allow the group running the supercomputer to sell access to industry, but it must reinvest that revenue to expand the system. 

The supercomputer will eventually hook into a new service layer, which Ottawa will select separately, that will allow researchers and firms to access the infrastructure and connect it to other public compute clusters. 

Other countries have recently built new supercomputers as they try to secure their place in the AI race. The U.K. government put up £225 million to build Isambard-AI at the University of Bristol, the 11th-fastest machine of its kind in the world when it launched in July 2025. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to use 100,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced chips in Solstice, a new supercomputer for scientific research. 

As of November 2025, none of the 50 most powerful supercomputers in the world were located in Canada, according to Top500, which tracks the size and locations of the machines. Simon Fraser University’s Fir system, launched in September 2025 with $80 million in public funding, ranks 78th.

Some potential bidders are already lining up for SCIP. Simon Fraser and Queen’s University announced last month that they plan to jointly design and build a new “national sovereign, secure and sustainable high-performance supercomputing system.” 

The Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC), a federally funded non-profit that pools computing power from universities, has also publicly expressed interest. Last April, the innovation department awarded DRAC $341 million under a different program for digital research infrastructure.