TELUS and L-SPARK Unlock Sovereign AI for Canadian Innovators
L-SPARK — Canada’s leading corporate accelerator partner • l-spark.com
TELUS and L-SPARK have announced a new strategic partnership to provide Canadian startups and small businesses with access to TELUS’ Sovereign AI Factory — Canada’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer — helping address one of the most critical barriers facing Canadian innovators today: access to high-performance AI compute infrastructure without relying on foreign platforms or relocating operations outside the country.
Through this collaboration, startups will gain access to the same enterprise-grade computing infrastructure used by large organizations, enabling them to build, train and deploy advanced AI models on Canadian-controlled systems. By democratizing access to sovereign AI compute, TELUS and L-SPARK are creating a new pathway for Canadian companies to scale domestically while competing globally, all while keeping sensitive data, intellectual property and innovation under Canadian jurisdiction.
As Canada’s leading corporate accelerator partner, L-SPARK has supported more than 130 Canadian companies over the past decade, helping them raise over $200 million in follow-on funding. This partnership builds on that foundation by empowering even more founders and researchers to leverage TELUS’ Sovereign AI Factory, powered by latest-generation NVIDIA H200 GPUs and NVIDIA Quantum 2 InfiniBand networking. Startups will be able to access the high-performance infrastructure needed to fine-tune models, accelerate development timelines and bring AI solutions to market faster and more securely.
“Canada has world-class AI talent, founders and research institutions; however, a structural shortage of sovereign domestic compute has limited startups from innovating without sending their sensitive data abroad,” said Hesham Fahmy, Chief Information Officer, TELUS. “By teaming up with L-SPARK, we are leveling the playing field and opening the doors of our Sovereign AI Factory to the country’s founders and innovators who can now build breakthrough AI companies on infrastructure they control — keeping their innovations, intellectual property and competitive advantages in Canada. That’s how we build our country’s next generation of AI leaders — kickstarting a new wave of innovation that will fuel economic growth and unlock billions in potential for Canada.”
The collaboration will focus particularly on organizations operating in regulated and mission-critical sectors where data residency, auditability and Canadian legal jurisdiction are essential, including public sector services, healthcare, finance, critical infrastructure and utilities. These sectors often face additional compliance barriers that make foreign cloud platforms impractical or risky.
Canadian startups, scaleups and research teams with defined AI workloads and significant GPU requirements can apply through L-SPARK to access reserved TELUS AI Factory capacity at: l-spark.com/telus-sovereign-ai-factory.
