Nvidia is throwing some of its considerable weight in the compute market behind Hypertec, which the Montreal-based AI infrastructure firm hopes will help it win more business at home and abroad.

On Thursday, the chip giant will name Hypertec’s Ciara division its first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner in Canada. Benefits include greater pre-release access to Nvidia products, the ability to work directly with its engineering staff, and the backing of its marketing and sales staff. “Having support to get known is going to help us succeed in the market,” Hypertec CEO Simon Ahdoot told The Logic. 

Founded in 1984, Hypertec designs and manufactures the equipment that fills AI and high-performance computing data centres. Its products include servers and desktops under the Ciara brand, customized compute clusters and cooling systems. Hypertec also has a construction unit that builds data centres for clients, and an offshoot called 5C that builds them to manage itself. 

Private-equity firms, telecom companies, upstart cloud providers and existing operators are all planning to add significant new AI infrastructure in Canada. Worldwide, trillions of dollars are pouring into the data-centre buildout. 

Hypertec already sells hardware containing Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), the most popular AI chips on the market. But Nvidia’s formal stamp of approval makes Hypertec’s equipment significantly more attractive to buyers, according to Ahdoot. 

Servers filled with GPUs can now cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars. “There’s a huge sensitivity to making sure that these are authorized systems,” Ahdoot said—customers don’t want to pay that much for a box, only to have a chipmaker not respect the warranty when a processor burns out. Nvidia’s certification is “hugely important in this market,” he said.

The partnership also brings technical advantages. Previously, when Nvidia announced a new generation of processors, Hypertec would have to go looking for a test unit so it could adapt its equipment accordingly. That often meant borrowing from another firm that would expect some business in return, Ahdoot said. 

Now, Hypertec will be able to go direct to Nvidia for testers. More time means the hardware firm can better prepare its equipment before a new chip launches and sweeps the market. “These systems are not always perfectly lined up—it’s not like IKEA instructions,” Ahdoot said. Hypertec will also be able to run new features and tweaks past Nvidia’s engineering staff.

Nvidia country sales director Eric Dahan said in a statement that the partnership will enable local production of systems using its technology that “will power innovation across industries and help scale AI globally.” 

Many Canadian firms have taken their place on one end of the AI stack or the other, either generating the power that goes in at the bottom, or using the processing power that comes out to run AI models and applications. 

Hypertec’s technology goes in the middle. By selling hardware manufactured domestically, it’s “increasing the share of Canadian content,” Ahdoot said. A few other Canadian firms like Ranovus and Inpho are all also producing components domestically for the global data-centre market. 

Ahdoot claimed Hypertec’s Nvidia nod will also contribute to the push for so-called “sovereign” AI infrastructure. Canadian governments and some companies have signalled plans to expand domestic compute capacity to ensure the country remains in control of critical tools and technology. Much of that AI infrastructure will likely be powered by Nvidia’s chips. “Canada can take a bigger slice of sovereign revenue [and] of the value chain” with a Canadian-built product incorporating Nvidia’s technology, Ahdoot said.

Bell has already chosen Hypertec to supply five of its new data centres in British Columbia.

The sovereignty message may help at home, but Nvidia already has 27 OEM partners, including a dozen that sell compute systems. Hypertec is competing in the global AI infrastructure market with the likes of better-known brands like Dell and HP. 

Hypertec wins business around the world because of its flexibility and its experience in high-performance computing, according to Ahdoot. He claimed larger OEMs stick to a set range of products, only customizing hardware for clients that make huge orders. AI labs and startups often want to tweak and tune the machines to their needs, and it’s here that Hypertec could have an edge. AI applications “start small, and they scale very quickly,” Ahdoot said, adding that by growing alongside its customers, Hypertec can “take a big part of the market.”