TORONTO — Canada’s largest pension fund managers are making huge investments in data centre and infrastructure companies as they look to cash in on the AI boom, an analysis by The Logic shows.

The Maple 8 have nearly US$6.6 billion combined invested in data centre and digital infrastructure firms whose shares trade on U.S. stock markets. That’s up from US$2.3 billion by the end of September 2022, which capped the last quarter before ChatGPT’s rise sparked the current wave of AI hype.

The Logic analyzed the Maple 8’s holdings in 13 of the top U.S.-listed companies in the AI data centre and digital infrastructure sector, including Digital Realty, Intel, Broadcom and Lam Research, among others. 

CPP Investments led Canada’s pension funds with more than 32 million shares invested in the group of companies worth over US$3.7 billion, as of March 31. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) followed with 10 million shares in the group of companies The Logic reviewed, worth nearly US$852 million. Meanwhile, OMERS’s investments in the firms increased more than any of its Maple 8 peers since Q3 2022, growing 6,000 per cent in value to almost US$227 million.

The AI boom has triggered an investment frenzy in both public and private companies. Startups in the sector captured the bulk of all venture capital spent in the U.S. last year, and AI bets have lifted the share prices of Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia to new heights. 

The success of these companies depends on having the energy and infrastructure to power them. The U.S. data-centre market doubled in size from 2020 to 2024, with vacancy rates hitting a record low of 3 per cent, according to real estate firm JLL. Big financiers are eager for a piece of that market. 

CPP Investments CEO John Graham previously told The Logic that of the AI investment opportunities, his firm was particularly interested in data centres and other infrastructure that can power the technology. 

CPP—the biggest of the Maple 8, with $714.4 billion in assets—increased its holdings in the firms The Logic reviewed by 10 per cent from the first quarter of 2024 to the same period in 2025, the last quarter for which data is available. CPP’s investment in Digital Realty, a Texas-based real estate firm that operates data centres around the world, accounted for most of that growth. The pension added more than 2.7 million shares in the firm worth over US$246 million, bringing its total holdings in the company to over US$1 billion. 

CPP spokesperson Frank Switzer wouldn’t comment on specific stocks. While the fund’s investments in data centres and AI infrastructure have increased about 176 per cent in value since late 2022, Switzer said CPP began backing the sector well before that. “We have been investing in data centres since 2017 and see long-term growth opportunities in this space, thanks to the strong demand for digital infrastructure and the increasing adoption of AI,” he said.

The Logic’s analysis looked specifically at public equities, many of the country’s pension funds are also pouring money into private firms, and into public companies through private deals. 

In October 2024, CPP Investments agreed to form a joint venture with data-centre giant Equinix and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, in a deal to raise US$15 billion to build more data centres in the U.S. CPP will own 37.5 per cent of the venture. A month earlier, the firm announced it acquired a 12 per cent stake in Airtruk, an Asia-Pacific data centre operator. 

In May 2024, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec announced a $444-million investment in Colorado-based Vantage Data Centers, and pledged another $103 million in July 2024 to help Vantage build its Quebec City Data Centre Campus. 

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund had the least invested in the public AI data centre and infrastructure companies The Logic reviewed, with 50,989 shares worth less than US$1.2 million. That’s well below the nearly US$8 million it held in Q3 2022. 

That doesn’t mean the fund isn’t deeply invested in the sector, said spokesperson Dan Madge. “We are looking at investment opportunities across the artificial intelligence value chain,” Madge told The Logic. Many of those investments, Madge said, have been in AI companies directly, through its venture capital arm, Teachers’ Venture Growth. The firm has also invested about $5 billion in digital infrastructure in the past 10 years, he added. 

While the U.S. has dominated the global data-centre market to date, investment opportunities in Canada could be on the rise, according to a recent report from Torys LLP. “Constraints on the availability of sufficient electricity and land to accommodate data centre projects has investors looking to new geographies,” the authors wrote. “Canada is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for data centres,” they added, citing relatively low energy prices, access to renewable and clean energy, a cool climate, and governments willing to support the sector.

Ottawa has pledged billions of dollars in recent months to help build data centres and support AI compute, the processing power needed to train and run machine learning models, and it’s looking to pension funds to get involved. In December, the federal government announced a $45-billion incentive plan for pension funds to take stakes in and make loans to data centre operators in the country. The government would contribute $15 billion, and the private sector would make up the rest.

It’s not clear if the new government will honour that pledge. “In its next budget, the government has committed to spending less and investing more to catalyze private capital, unleash investment, and build the strongest economy in the G7,” said Ben Mayrand, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, adding that further details will be presented in the fall budget.

Update: A statement from the Department of Finance has been added.