AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program (SCIP)

AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program

Administers Canada's AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program to build domestic public supercomputing capacity for researchers and innovators.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program (SCIP) is a Canadian federal initiative funded through Budget 2024 and Budget 2025 to build a large-scale sovereign public AI supercomputer for use by Canadian researchers and innovators. Administered by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the program allocates approximately CAD 890 million to the Infrastructure Build Layer over seven fiscal years beginning in FY2026-27 (April 2026). This is a single-call, closed competition: the application period ran to 1 June 2026 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time, with no subsequent cycle announced. The program's central policy objective is to ensure that Canada retains domestic control over high-performance AI compute capacity rather than relying exclusively on commercial cloud providers.

Eligibility is restricted to not-for-profit organizations incorporated in Canada, Canadian post-secondary institutions, and Canadian research organizations, as well as consortia led by one of these entity types. For-profit companies cannot apply as the lead applicant. Applications were submitted using a Word document application form requested by email from ISED at aiscip-picsia@ised-isde.gc.ca. Funding will cover the design, construction, and operation of the sovereign compute infrastructure over the seven-year performance period, with disbursement structured as annual tranches.

The program is explicitly positioned at the national infrastructure scale — it is not a program for individual AI application development or company-level AI research grants. Organizations that applied were expected to demonstrate technical capacity to design, construct, and operate large-scale AI supercomputing systems, as well as a credible plan for providing broad researcher and innovator access to the resulting compute resource. Given the single-call structure and June 2026 deadline, future applicants should monitor ISED program announcements for any successor instrument under the ongoing Canadian AI strategy framework.