Anthropic leases its first Canadian data centre at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia

What Anthropic signed

Anthropic has signed a long-term lease for the first phase of a planned data centre campus at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, its first data centre agreement in Canada, a company executive told Reuters on 16 October 2026. The developer, EverWind, will build, own and finance the facility. Anthropic said in a news release, quoted by CBC News, that the data centre “will power Claude models and serve growing demand from Canadian and global customers.”

The first phase is planned at 95 megawatts and is due to come online in late 2027. CBC reported that Anthropic’s lease runs for at least 20 years, and The Logic described a 20-year term. Neither company disclosed the value of the lease.

Jacob Glick, Anthropic’s head of public policy in Canada, said in a statement reported by the Globe and Mail that the deal “will help meet growing demand for Claude in Canada while bringing new clean energy onto the grid and protecting existing electricity customers.” In a LinkedIn statement quoted by Bloomberg, he said Canadians use Claude at some of the highest rates in the world and that the site brings Anthropic’s infrastructure closer to them.

What EverWind plans to build at Point Tupper

EverWind’s 16 October announcement described more than $10 billion of private investment, which Bloomberg reports in Canadian dollars: more than $8 billion to develop, build, own and finance the data centre campus and $2 billion for four onshore wind projects named Bear Lake, Windy Ridge, Kmtnuk and Upper Afton. The company called it the largest privately funded investment in Nova Scotia’s history. Its morning release named only “a leading frontier AI developer” as tenant; Anthropic confirmed its role later that day.

The campus is planned in two steps: the 95-megawatt first phase in late 2027, then a 325-megawatt expansion targeted for 2028, for 420 megawatts in total, subject to commercial, technical and regulatory conditions. Anthropic’s lease, as reported, covers the first phase; nothing published so far says it has committed to the expansion. For scale, CBC noted that Nova Scotia’s whole electricity generating capacity is close to 3,000 megawatts.

Point Tupper is an industrial park just outside Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton Island, about 200 kilometres east of Halifax according to the Globe. CBC reported that land clearing is under way and that officials hope to pour foundations before winter. The data centre shares the site with EverWind’s long-planned green hydrogen and ammonia project, which the company says remains on track.

Who pays for power and water

Electricity is the most sensitive part of the plan. EverWind says it will fully fund all connection, network-upgrade and other power-system costs attributable to the campus so they are not passed on to Nova Scotia ratepayers, and The Logic reported that Anthropic made the same promise to pay for required grid upgrades and protect existing customers from related price increases. The campus will include several hundred megawatt-hours of battery storage and is designed to cut or stop its grid draw when needed to protect reliability.

The wind farms will not be ready when the data centre opens, so the first phase will rely mainly on the existing provincial grid. Nova Scotia’s Independent Energy System Operator told CBC that it studies all new projects before allowing them to connect, but it did not say specifically whether there is capacity for this campus; EverWind officials said they have been assured there is room at least for phase one. EverWind’s release says the expansion will not be connected until the required system studies and approvals are complete.

On water, EverWind plans a closed-loop water-glycol cooling system that mainly uses air and adds water only in the hottest weather. It estimates about 100,000 litres a day for the first phase and about 500,000 litres a day at full build-out, roughly 1 percent of the 34 million litres a day that Landrie Lake can safely supply.

Why Anthropic is leasing directly

The Logic noted that Anthropic typically buys compute from large cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google. At Point Tupper it is leasing space and power directly from the data centre owner, a more hands-on model that ties it to a specific site and grid for decades. Reuters reported that Anthropic spent $7.33 billion on computing and infrastructure last year, three times its 2024 level, and the company recently told investors its third-quarter revenue reached $16.8 billion as it prepares for a public listing.

The lease also fits a pattern of Anthropic building a physical and political presence outside the United States. The Logic reported in August that Anthropic was hiring in Canada for roles that included a compute country lead tasked with bringing “gigawatts of compute online” there; earlier this month it opened an office in Singapore and signed an AI safety agreement with the city-state. A 95-megawatt phase is far from gigawatts, but it gives Anthropic its first dedicated capacity on Canadian soil.

Local support and open questions

Politicians at every level backed the announcement. Premier Tim Houston called it a vote of confidence in the province and urged EverWind to keep going, and federal energy minister Tim Hodgson described it as Canada’s energy opportunity in action. EverWind and Anthropic have both signed Ottawa’s Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, a set of non-binding federal guidelines released last month.

Not everyone is convinced. Provincial NDP leader Claudia Chender questioned how the government would enforce the companies’ assurances on rates and criticised it for backing the project without public consultation, The Logic reported. Thomas Arnason McNeil of the Ecology Action Centre told CBC the project raises more questions than it answers and that its effect on ratepayers and the environment still needs to be quantified.

Indigenous ownership is part of the plan. EverWind says it is negotiating with a First Nations consortium led by Membertou Development Corporation for a stake in the campus, which CBC put at 9 percent. The company also promises a community benefit fund worth tens of millions of dollars for the first phase, to be shaped with local communities and with Anthropic. How much a project like this actually draws from the grid over time is hard to forecast, which is why we treat AI data centre electricity projections as scenarios rather than forecasts.

What is still unconfirmed

Key details are missing. The lease value has not been disclosed. EverWind has not published its financing; its chief financial and strategy officer told the Globe that the company has engaged investment banks to issue project debt and that each phase will be financed separately. The 325-megawatt expansion has no named tenant in the public record and depends on grid studies that have not been completed. The economic figures in EverWind’s release, including about 2,000 construction jobs and 215 permanent roles, come from projections the company commissioned. And financing risk is real in this market: Gartner warned last week that trillions of dollars of AI infrastructure spending could be impaired by 2030.

Watch for the provincial system operator’s findings on grid capacity, a finalised Membertou ownership agreement, any sign that Anthropic takes the second phase, and whether foundations are poured before winter as EverWind hopes.