QScale, an operator of high-performance server centers serving the artificial intelligence and self-driving car industry, has entered into a strategic partnership with the American Aligned Data Centers, which provides funding for the first campus, located in Lévis. .
“This is great news for us,” rejoices Martin Bouchard, co-founder of QScale, over the phone, about Aligned, from Virginia. “Our partner is a strategic investor. He comes with not just money, but with equipment and expertise. »
“Our projects are capital intensive,” he continues. In Lévis, with inflation, the construction site, which had been announced at 867 million in 2021, has come closer to one billion. This funding from Aligned allows us to complete the Lévis site and launch other campuses. »
Aligned is majority owned by funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management, a global financial firm founded in Australia.
QScale wants to set up four or five such campuses in the next few years elsewhere in Quebec, if possible.
Worth 1 billion, the Lévis campus will contain eight phases. The company obtained from Hydro-Quebec a block of 142 megawatts of electricity.
Aligned’s money allows it to begin construction on Phases 2 and 3, which should be ready within a year.
Phase 1 completely sold
“Phase 1 [environ 2800 mètres carrés sur trois étages] is completely sold. We are at full capacity. We sold the last available spaces on Friday, April 28. We are already planning the construction of phases 2 and 3. We have incredible demand. Artificial intelligence is phenomenal growth. As we can see, the global demand for treatment [de données], this is completely crazy. We are witnessing a global digital arms race,” says Mr. Bouchard, enthusiastic.
Four customers will occupy phase 1, which represents a power of 17.75 MW. It corresponds to an investment of 160 million for QScale, including infrastructure such as pylons and electrical substations that will serve the entire campus.
PHOTO PATRICE LAROCHE, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVES
Martin Bouchard, co-founder and CEO of QScale
Supercomputers and other state-of-the-art equipment represent a cost of 300 to 500 million per phase, underlines Mr. Bouchard, who hastens to add that it is not his company that inherits the bill.
A first Phase 1 customer will be announced soon, likely ahead of the ISC High Performance show in Hamburg, Germany, May 21-25.
Next steps
“Construction is complete,” he said. We are in final tests. We simulate all possible power failures, battery failures, water leaks to be ready to welcome our first customers in the coming weeks. Once the tests are finished, the equipment will arrive. Customers are expected to begin operations at the end of June. »
Investissement Québec (90 million) and Desjardins Capital (60 million) had participated in the previous round of 172 million. Private investors, all from Quebec, injected 45 million. Martin Bouchard’s partners include businessmen Vincent Thibault and Dany Perron.
Of the 1.3 billion raised including the last round with Aligned, about 450 million is in the form of equity and the rest in the form of debt, according to our information.
Mr. Bouchard did not want to confirm the figures, but he points out that the control of the company remains in Quebec.
At the Lévis campus, QScale will recover the heat given off by the servers to heat vegetable greenhouses. An agreement with Énergir was recently concluded. A first berry production project should be announced shortly.
The date of May 12 circled
With his busy schedule, Martin Bouchard hardly has time to run to the cinemas. He will make an exception on May 12. The date is well circled in his diary for the release of the film BlackBerry, which recounts the success and then the disappointment of the inventors of the first smartphone. “I was a complete fan,” he says. I had bought the first BlackBerry. I showed this to everyone. It was a megasuccess, but today, it ends differently. Mr. Bouchard, co-founder of the Copernic search engine in 1996, which he sold to mamma.com nine years later, sees similarities with his own background.
“With Copernicus, we too, it was going very, very well, he continues. Then, at some point came Google. Let’s say it was a good headwind for us. We had to sell the business. We would have dreamed of becoming Google and going public. One of the mistakes we made: we were underfunded at Copernic. We raised millions. Meanwhile, the others were raising hundreds of millions. »
“Often, we develop very good technologies in Quebec and Canada, and we have trouble pushing them further. It is important to give ourselves the means of our ambitions. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of capital,” says the man who, after Copernicus, co-founded Coveo, the 4 Degrees data centers that he sold to Videotron in 2015, and who today is building QScale.