The world needs more artificial intelligence computing capacity. And Kevin O’Leary and the Alberta government want to build it.

‍What’s happening:‍

• Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary has announced a partnership with the Alberta government to build a new data centre for high performance computing near Grande Prairie in Alberta, Canada
  

By the numbers:‍

• The entire project is expected to cost $70B USD to build out to completion and eventually have 7.5 gigawatts of power capacity
  
• The first phase of construction is anticipated to cost $2B USD and deliver 1.4 gigawatts of power
  

Why it matters:‍

• If successful, the new project would become the world’s largest data centre in terms of both power capacity and venture capital investment
  

Going deeper:‍

• The new data centre project is planning to be powered by natural gas and geothermal energy, which is one of the advantages to be located in Alberta where there is an abundance of oil and gas infrastructure
  

The intrigue:‍

• Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has also started to make bets on geothermal energy to power their new data centres, previously striking a partnership with Houston based startup Sage Geosystems

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