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Canada's researchers, startups and businesses will be able to train artificial intelligence models on some of the world's most powerful computers under an agreement sealed at the Canada–EU Summit in Montréal this week.
The agreement brings Canada into the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, the EU's supercomputing network. Canada's Prime Minister's Office said on Friday, October 30, that the move gives Canadian researchers, innovators and businesses access to JUPITER, one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, and will speed up collaboration on AI and research.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen previewed the deal on Thursday, October 29, in a speech at Montréal's Mount Royal Club on the first day of the two-day summit, telling the audience: "Tomorrow, we will finalise our agreement to bring Canada into Europe's infrastructure for supercomputing." She said Europe has 12 state-of-the-art supercomputers, and that Canadian industry, startups and researchers would be able to use them to train AI models.
Von der Leyen framed the access as a pairing of European computing power with Canada's established AI industry, saying it would allow the two sides "to develop highly competitive, innovative and safe AI systems." The two sides also plan to cooperate on AI safety, common standards, research and investment, and von der Leyen has cast shared computing as a way to reduce dependence on essential technology controlled by a handful of companies.
The supercomputing agreement is part of the broader Alliance for the Future launched at the summit by Prime Minister Mark Carney, von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa — a partnership built around affordability, opportunity and sovereignty that also points toward Canada becoming the EU's first associate member, a status short of full membership, which geography rules out.
Both sides have pointed to a concrete example of the cooperation the computing access is meant to deepen: the definitive agreement signed in September merging Canada's Cohere with Germany's Aleph Alpha into a transatlantic sovereign AI business, a deal that still awaits regulatory approval.
The network Canada is joining is run by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, an EU public-private vehicle with an €8.2 billion budget. Thirty-eight countries already take part — the 27 EU member states plus countries including Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Israel and Turkey — and Canada, which already takes part in part in the EU's Horizon Europe research programme, will also launch negotiations to join the programme's next phase.
What has not been spelled out publicly is how access will work in practice and what it will cost Canadian firms — the practical terms of the arrangement remain to be detailed.