Anthropic has signed its first data centre agreement in Canada. The Claude developer will lease the opening phase of a campus that energy company EverWind plans to build at its Point Tupper industrial site on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, according to Reuters, which cited a company executive, and to a news release Anthropic issued late on Friday, October 16.
EverWind announced the project that morning without naming its tenant, describing only a long-term lease with "a leading frontier AI developer." Anthropic was not at the event in Point Tupper and confirmed its role later in the day. CBC News reported that EverWind will build and own the facility, while Anthropic takes the first phase for a term of at least 20 years. Anthropic said the site will power Claude models and serve demand from customers in Canada and abroad.
The numbers are large for the province. EverWind says it will put more than $10 billion into the plan, roughly $8 billion of it to develop, build, own and finance the campus and about $2 billion for four onshore wind projects in its Nova Scotia portfolio: Bear Lake, Windy Ridge, Kmtnuk and Upper Afton. The first phase is planned at 95 megawatts for late 2027, followed by a 325-megawatt expansion targeted for 2028, for 420 megawatts in total. EverWind attaches commercial, technical and regulatory conditions to that schedule. CBC noted that Nova Scotia's entire generating capacity is close to 3,000 megawatts.
Power is the most sensitive question. EverWind says it will pay all connection and network upgrade costs tied to the development so that existing ratepayers do not carry them, and CBC reported that both EverWind and Anthropic committed to covering required grid upgrades. The campus is meant to include several hundred megawatt-hours of battery storage and to cut its draw from the grid when reliability requires it. At first, though, existing generation on the provincial grid would be the main supply, with EverWind's wind farms coming later. The province's system operator told CBC that it studies every new connection but did not say whether capacity exists for this one.
Water use is the other flashpoint. EverWind plans a closed-loop water and glycol cooling system and estimates about 100,000 litres a day for the first phase and about 500,000 litres a day at full build-out, around 1% of the approved daily withdrawal from nearby Landrie Lake. CBC reported that EverWind and Anthropic have signed Ottawa's non-binding responsible data centre principles, and that a Mi'kmaw consortium led by Membertou First Nation is negotiating a nine per cent equity stake. EverWind projects about 2,000 construction jobs and 215 permanent positions.
For Anthropic, the lease adds capacity in a country where, according to its Canadian public policy head Jacob Glick, Claude use is growing quickly. Reuters noted that the company spent $7.33 billion on computing and infrastructure last year, three times its 2024 level, as it prepares for a possible public listing.
Several pieces remain unsettled. Phase two and its timing depend on approvals and system studies, the grid connection for the expansion will not proceed until those are complete, and the community benefit fund has no announced dollar figure. Local environmental group the Ecology Action Centre told CBC the project raises more questions than it answers and called for full impact assessments before it moves ahead.