Canada Wants To Build Data Centers That Grow Into Farms

Data centers catch a lot of flak, and for good reason, as there are a host of problems for local residents with data centers in their neighborhoods. And that's to say nothing of the spike in prices for everyday items due to AI data centers. However, one company wants to mitigate these issues and turn data center waste into a farm. In June 2026, tech company SPUR Innovation announced it planned to build an "ecological AI data centre" in Fergus, Ontario that would incorporate a vertical farm on top of the server farm. 

As its name suggests, vertical farms are structures that arrange crops into stacked, vertical layers. Not only does this approach require less land, water, and pesticides than traditional farms, they also can be used to grow crops all year long because they are functionally greenhouses. However, vertical farms need ample energy to maintain ideal growing conditions, which is where the data center comes into play. 

These facilities consume huge quantities of water because of how much heat is generated — heat that goes to waste. By building a vertical farm on top of the data center, SPUR planned to recapture some of that heat (since hot air rises) and use it to maintain temperatures inside the farm. It's the same concept KFC and Cooler Master used for their prototype game console back in 2020, but instead of using heat runoff to keep fried chicken hot, SPUR wanted to use it to grow fruits and vegetables.

On the surface, SPUR Innovation's plan sounds promising. You can find vertical farms in several countries, the largest of which resides in Dubai and uses 95% less water than normal farms. However, SPUR's dreams might have ended before they even began, as all available details on the project were gleaned from content that has since been deleted from the company's website. But according to reporting by Guelph Today, SPUR Innovation planned to turn an old copper tubing facility into a "25-acre industrial campus on the Grand River." 

SPUR does still have plans for an ecological AI data center, but it is a 14-acre campus located in Woolwich, Ontario. Details include an onsite farm-to-table restaurant and dedicating some of the data center's computational power to maintaining the vertical farm. We know that data centers move to rural areas because they're cheaper to operate, but many questions remain unanswered, including whether SPUR Innovation will eventually delete these latest plans as well.