OpenAI is interested in securing data-centre capacity in Canada and says it can be a part of the country’s effort to build sovereign artificial-intelligence capabilities, the company’s chief global affairs officer said in an interview Tuesday.

OpenAI’s Chris Lehane said the company has already announced a number of initiatives in countries such as Germany and Norway that involve either building infrastructure for AI or purchasing capacity. OpenAI is exploring a similar approach in Canada.

“It is about being a true, real partner here on the ground in Canada. That could be a full-stack infrastructure. It could be doing some version of committing to buying compute,” he said, using industry jargon for the computer chips that power AI models and applications. “It could be helping to support specific government programs.”

Builders of data centres require commitments from customers and OpenAI could serve as a key tenant, Mr. Lehane said, allowing a facility to come online and service others in Canada that require processing power for AI.

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AI companies have insatiable demand for data centres in order to train more powerful models and support the growing use of AI. The biggest U.S. tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build this infrastructure. OpenAI is already part of a US$500-billion project dubbed Stargate to construct data centres in the United States.

Mr. Lehane, who is in Toronto for the Elevate tech conference, said the company is holding conversations with government officials and public- and private-sector players to determine how it can support the Canadian AI ecosystem. He met with federal AI minister Evan Solomon on Monday.

Mr. Solomon recently created a task force including business leaders and academics and gave members 30 days to report back on how to grow the country’s AI sector.

“We felt it was really important to be here to engage in those conversations, to make clear that we want to be a constructive partner,” Mr. Lehane said, adding that Canada has a large pool of AI talent and access to energy to power data centres.

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The company launched a program called OpenAI for Countries in May, where it partners with nations to help build data-centre capacity and customize ChatGPT to reflect local languages and culture, among other initiatives.

In July, OpenAI announced it would back a large data centre in Norway and later said it is working with SAP to expand capacity in Germany. OpenAI has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the government in the United Kingdom to explore the use of AI in the public and private sectors.

The company’s desire to work with Canada comes at a fraught geopolitical time. There is increasing awareness that Canada is heavily reliant on U.S. tech companies for critical services such as cloud computing and AI, leading to a push for digital sovereignty. Broadly, that means more control over digital infrastructure and services so as not to be subject to the whims of foreign governments.

The federal Liberal government is eager to support homegrown companies through procurement. Ottawa has already signed a non-binding deal with OpenAI rival Cohere Inc., which is based in Toronto, to explore the use of AI in the public service. Prime Minister Mark Carney has also touted a sovereign cloud initiative so that Canada has more control over computing power.

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At an AI conference in Montreal in September, Mr. Solomon called digital sovereignty the “most pressing policy and democratic issue of our time.” He has also said that building sovereignty requires working with international partners, including the U.S.

On that point, Mr. Lehane agrees. “Canada is right to focus on how it can build out its own sovereign AI,” he said. But doing so requires attracting capital, he added, and OpenAI can serve as a “catalyst.”

Dev Saxena, a senior global affairs advisor with OpenAI in Ottawa, said in an interview there is “obviously a need” for companies like OpenAI to stimulate demand for AI infrastructure locally.

“To actually build out some of this sovereign capacity in Canada, under Canadian jurisdiction, you actually do need global players at the table,” he said. “No country can do it end-to-end. It’s just way too complicated of a supply chain, and way too expensive.”

(The Globe and Mail, along with other Canadian media outlets, is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement for allegedly scraping news content to train its AI models. OpenAI has said that its practices are permitted under copyright law. Lawyers for OpenAI also argued in court last month that Ontario does not have jurisdiction over the matter in part because the company does not conduct business in the province.)