Major artificial intelligence company Anthropic has signed a long-term lease at a newly announced data centre project in Nova Scotia that its local developer says could cost $10-billion.

Known for its Claude chatbot, San Francisco-based Anthropic said signing up for capacity at the site, which was unveiled by EverWind Fuels on Friday, will help meet growing demand from Canadian and global customers.

EverWind, headquartered in Halifax, said the data-centre campus in Point Tupper, N.S., could cost $8-billion to fully develop. Another $2-billion would go to developing the company’s wind-energy portfolio in the province.

“Our work with EverWind will help meet growing demand for Claude in Canada while bringing new clean energy onto the grid and protecting existing electricity customers,” Jacob Glick, Anthropic’s head of public policy in Canada, said in a statement.

“The people of Nova Scotia should benefit from what gets built in their community, and we will work together to achieve shared goals and earn our place as a good neighbour.”

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When it announced the data centre project on Friday, EverWind said it had reached a long-term lease deal with a “leading frontier AI developer” for the initial phase of the Point Tupper campus, but did not initially disclose it was Anthropic. The AI company trumpeted its involvement later in the day.

“EverWind is thrilled to be partnering with Anthropic to support its growing computing needs in Canada, and we couldn’t be prouder to be building the infrastructure right here in Nova Scotia,” EverWind chief executive officer Trent Vichie said in a statement.

Anthropic is one of the most advanced AI companies in the world. Its AI-powered coding platform, Claude Code, has become a default tool for software engineers. The popularity of its products pushed Anthropic to a US$965-billion valuation in May. The company is now preparing to go public and could earn a valuation of up to US$1.5-trillion, according to some investor expectations.

Earlier this year, Anthropic posted a job for someone to lead the company’s data-centre strategy in Canada and ultimately bring “gigawatts of compute online” in the country. It has also posted a role for a data centre community engagement manager based in Alberta to make the company “a trusted, visible, and valued neighbour.”

EverWind said its data centre project, to be built in two phases, would represent the largest private investment in Nova Scotia history. It didn’t provide the specifics of its financing plans.

“EverWind’s project is structured to access the deep and active project financing market for long-term data centre developments,” chief financial and strategy officer Matthew Tinari said in an e-mail.

“We have engaged leading investment banks to issue the project debt and each phase will be financed separately.”

The Membertou First Nation and Mi’kmaq Nation communities are EverWind’s partners in the wind projects. EverWind and its Indigenous partners will be responsible for lining up the equity components for the various projects, Mr. Tinari said.

The first phase of the data centre would entail a 95-megawatt stage, with a start-up date of late 2027. A second, 325-MW phase would begin operations in 2028, subject to commercial, technical and regulatory conditions.

The project is expected to support 2,000 construction jobs and 215 permanent operating positions across the site’s data centre campus and wind farms, EverWind said in its news release.

The privately held company has already announced plans to construct wind farms and green hydrogen and ammonia production facilities in Nova Scotia.

Earlier this year, it secured $240-million from Nuveen Energy Infrastructure Credit to advance development of 650 MW of planned onshore wind projects and its green fuels plans.

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EverWind said the data centre would be in operation before the four wind farms – Bear Lake, Windy Ridge, Kmtnuk and Upper Afton – would be completed. In the interim, the centre’s impact on the province’s power grid is being analyzed for system costs, reliability and effects on customers.

EverWind and Anthropic said they will ensure that the developments do not cause electricity-rate hikes to existing customers. They pledged to fund all connection, upgrade and other power-system costs attributed to the development. The project will include battery storage as well as closed-loop water system for its cooling.

Premier Tim Houston said at a news conference in Point Tupper that the data centre project was a major vote of confidence in the rural area about 200 kilometres east of Halifax. He said Canada does not have enough secure data infrastructure to meet the requirements of its businesses, governments and health care institutions.

“This represents the connection between the high-technology possibilities and potential of our province, and the energy generation potential that we have,” said Houston, who is also promoting an ambitious $60-billion offshore wind project called Wind West.

With reports from Joe Castaldo, Reuters and The Canadian Press