Anthropic signs a long-term lease at a planned Nova Scotia data center campus

On 16 October 2026 EverWind, a Nova Scotia energy developer, announced a planned data center campus at Point Tupper on Cape Breton Island. It said a leading frontier AI developer had signed a long-term lease for the first phase. Later that day, The Globe and Mail, CBC News and Bloomberg Law reported a statement in which Anthropic, an AI company, confirmed it is that tenant. CBC News reports the lease runs for at least 20 years.

A data center is a big building full of computers that run AI. EverWind says the first phase is 95 megawatts, planned for late 2027, with a 325 megawatt expansion targeted for 2028, for 420 megawatts in total (a megawatt measures how much electricity can flow at once). EverWind says the whole project, campus plus wind farms, is more than $10 billion, and that is the project's cost, not what Anthropic will pay. Bloomberg Law reports that figure in Canadian dollars.

Anthropic's head of Canada public policy, Jacob Glick, said in a statement that the work with EverWind will help meet growing demand for its AI in Canada while bringing new clean energy onto the grid and protecting existing electricity customers. EverWind says it will pay the grid costs the project causes.

Why we file it. Anthropic, a company on our map, has confirmed a new computing lease, and EverWind has given a site, a size and a start date.

How we read it. Anthropic stays yellow on the map, because earlier risk signals are still in our 90-day window. This is a plan, not new computing power yet.

Why it matters to you: when you use an AI chatbot, the answer comes from buildings like this one, and where they go shapes local jobs, power grids and water use.

What would change this: the expansion stalling, grid studies blocking the connection, or Anthropic disclosing how much of its computing it will run there.