Disruptors

Own The Stack: Canada's Data Sovereignty Test

Episode Summary

There are roughly 11,000 data centres in the world. Canada has about 300. The United States has 5,000 and that number is growing fast. Canada is putting real money behind sovereign AI compute. But what does data sovereignty look like on the ground? In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse visits Global Relay’s data centre in North Vancouver to see the physical side of the cloud: cooling systems, backup power, biometric access, data halls, and AI racks. Global Relay Chief Product Officer Sahar Kayhani explains how the company manages communications data for highly regulated industries and why the infrastructure behind that data is becoming as important as the data itself. Warren Roy, Global Relay’s founder and CEO, joins the conversation to discuss why the company chose to build its own cloud, and share his thoughts on what Canada needs to do to develop more technology companies rooted here.

Episode Notes

There are roughly 11,000 data centres in the world. Canada has about 300. The United States has 5,000 and that number is growing fast.

Canada is putting real money behind sovereign AI compute. But what does data sovereignty look like on the ground

In this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse visits Global Relay’s data centre in North Vancouver to see the physical side of the cloud: cooling systems, backup power, biometric access, data halls, and AI racks.

Global Relay Chief Product Officer Sahar Kayhani explains how the company manages communications data for highly regulated industries and why the infrastructure behind that data is becoming as important as the data itself.

Warren Roy, Global Relay’s founder and CEO, joins the conversation to discuss why the company chose to build its own cloud, and share his thoughts on what Canada needs to do to develop more technology companies rooted here.

For more RBC Thought Leadership on AI, healthcare, productivity and Canada’s innovation economy, visit rbc.com/thoughtleadership.