Anthropic is negotiating to become the tenant of a planned hyperscale data centre campus in Sturgeon County, northeast of Edmonton, The Globe and Mail reported on 30 October, citing two sources who were not authorised to speak publicly. The developer is Calgary-based Beacon Data Centers. Both Anthropic and Beacon declined to comment, the Globe said, and no agreement has been announced. A Reuters brief carried the Globe’s report.
A possible Anthropic Alberta data centre would be the company’s second large Canadian site in a matter of weeks, after it was named as the anchor tenant of EverWind’s Point Tupper campus in Nova Scotia. Unlike the tenant talks, the site itself is on the public record. Its power plant cleared Alberta’s utilities regulator on 23 October.
In brief
- Anthropic is in talks to lease Beacon Data Centers’ planned campus in Sturgeon County, Alberta, according to the Globe and Mail’s sources. Neither company has commented.
- The site’s 920 MW gas-fired power plant won Alberta Utilities Commission approval on 23 October, with construction planned from late 2026.
- No lease has been announced, and the data halls still need municipal approval from Sturgeon County.
What Alberta’s regulator approved in Sturgeon County
On 23 October the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) approved, with conditions, a 920-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant called the Beacon AI Centers – Heartland Project. The applicant is Heartland Power Generation LP, acting through its general partner Northbridge Power GPC Inc. The decision says Beacon Data Centers Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the same parent company and is the intended landowner.
According to the decision, the plant will sit in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, about seven kilometres east of Gibbons, on a footprint of roughly 13 hectares. It will use 200 gas engines of about 4.6 MW each, grouped in 40 modules, and is “intended to supply power to a co-located data centre for artificial-intelligence and high-performing-computing facilities”. Heartland’s application letter, filed on 19 December 2025, names the engines as INNIO Jenbacher J624 units and says the power will feed “co-located, on-site data halls”. The Globe, citing documents Beacon filed with the AUC on 17 July, said the campus will include four data halls.
Heartland expects to start building the plant in the fourth quarter of 2026 and to bring it into service in the fourth quarter of 2027, the decision says. The formal approval requires construction to be finished by 31 July 2029. Before construction starts, the operator must file a final project update, a noise assessment covering the plant and the data centre together, an emergency-response plan reviewed with Sturgeon County’s emergency services, and a plan for reclamation security. The plant is meant to connect to Alberta’s grid eventually, but that link has not yet been designed.
The data halls still need local approval
The AUC’s approval covers only the power plant. “The Commission does not regulate or approve data centres themselves,” the decision says, and Heartland will need municipal development permits from Sturgeon County for the wider development. The Samson Cree Nation stayed in the proceeding to the end and asked the AUC to reject the plant, raising concerns about environmental harm and Aboriginal and Treaty rights. Four other Indigenous groups withdrew their objections. The AUC found that the plant’s benefits outweighed its adverse effects.
The Globe also compared the two Canadian projects. It said the Beacon campus would have about double the power capacity of the EverWind site. According to the Globe, EverWind said on 16 October that Anthropic had signed a 20-year lease for the first phase there, drawing 95 MW from late 2027, with a second, 325 MW phase from 2028 taking the total to 420 MW.
Why an Anthropic Alberta data centre would fit the pattern
If the talks become a lease, they would point in the same direction as Anthropic’s recent deals: securing compute capacity years ahead, and leaving others to own the buildings and the power. In Canada it has so far appeared as a tenant, not an owner: EverWind is the developer at Point Tupper, and the $63bn financing for Broadcom chips leased to Anthropic also keeps the hardware on someone else’s balance sheet. Anthropic’s public IPO filing shows why investors will watch every new commitment of this kind.
The Alberta site also shows one answer to the power question. The Sturgeon County plan brings its own gas generation, with no grid connection designed yet. That matches the AUC’s note that the project fits Alberta’s “Bring Your Own Generation” policy, which encourages data centres to supply their own electricity. It also echoes a wider US debate over whether big data centres should make their own power, and deals such as Neuberger’s financing of gas generators for AI sites.
On-site gas power is faster to arrange than a new grid connection, but it brings its own risks. The plant’s emissions, noise and reclamation costs fall under the AUC’s conditions. The data halls themselves still depend on Sturgeon County.
For now, the regulatory steps are the dates to watch. The first is the final project update Heartland must file at least 90 days before construction. If building is to start before the end of 2026 as planned, that filing should appear on the AUC record soon, with or without a tenant named.
Sources
- Alberta Utilities Commission: Decision 30518-D01-2026, Heartland Power Generation LP and Northbridge Power GPC Inc., Beacon AI Centers – Heartland Project Thermal Power Plant, 23 October 2026
- Alberta Utilities Commission: Power Plant Approval 30518-D02-2026, 23 October 2026
- Alberta Utilities Commission: Beacon AI Centers – Heartland Project Thermal Power Plant Application (project page)
- Heartland Power Generation LP: application letter to the AUC, Beacon AI Centers – Heartland Project Thermal Power Plant, 19 December 2025
- The Globe and Mail: Anthropic in talks to lease massive data centre campus outside Edmonton, sources say, 30 October 2026
- Reuters (via TradingView): Anthropic in talks to lease large, hyperscale data centre campus near Edmonton – Globe and Mail
Related stories
- Anthropic Named as Tenant for EverWind’s Point Tupper AI Campus
- Anthropic Files to List on Nasdaq as ANT, With $16.3bn H1 Revenue
- Banks, Blackstone Line Up $63bn for Broadcom Chips Leased to Anthropic
- Crusoe Gets $700M From Neuberger to Buy AI-Factory Gas Generators
Image: Benedikt Schneider / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, modified by TSN; this image is also CC BY-SA 3.0
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