Canada is investing heavily in sovereign AI — but Bikram Singh, founder of Wafr Technologies, thinks the country is missing half the equation.

"AI leadership is not only about models," says Singh. "It is about compute, energy, cooling, data security, and deployment capacity."

Wafr is building cooling infrastructure for AI data centres, using a closed-loop system designed to reduce the energy and water demands of high-density compute. The company's argument is straightforward: you can't have sovereign AI without the physical infrastructure to support it, and that infrastructure has to be sustainable enough to actually deploy at scale.

For Singh, B.C. and Alberta represent two distinct but complementary pieces of that puzzle. B.C. offers clean power, climate-tech talent, and proximity to Pacific defence and security networks. Alberta offers land, energy, and industrial execution capacity. "Canada needs both," he says. "Innovation and execution."

The defence angle is central to how Wafr positions itself. Sovereign AI compute, Singh argues, should be treated like critical defence infrastructure — necessary for simulation, intelligence, logistics, autonomous systems, and decision support. "Compute is no longer just IT," he says. "They are strategic infrastructure." Wafr isn't building defence AI models; it's building the physical layer those models depend on.

Singh is heading to CANSEC for the first time later this month, hoping to understand how defence buyers think and where dual-use technologies like Wafr's fit into national security procurement. His read on the Canadian defence tech ecosystem is measured: strong on innovation, but in need of faster commercialization pathways and clearer procurement routes for companies scaling critical infrastructure.

On federal AI leadership, Singh sees progress but impatience. "Canada has strong AI research credibility and the federal government is now clearly recognizing sovereign AI compute as a national priority. The gap is commercialization and scale. We need to move faster from policy announcements to actual infrastructure."

Wafr is one of six ventures in the pilot cohort of UBC Sauder's new Scale Up Program, an initiative from the team behind CDL-Vancouver designed to help companies scale into defence, dual-use, and advanced industrial markets. Singh says the program helped sharpen Wafr's strategy, governance, and investor readiness in ways a generalist accelerator couldn't.

"A general accelerator often gives broad advice. Scale Up gave us direct pressure-testing from experienced people who understand scaling, capital, customers, and execution."

For a company building physical infrastructure rather than software, that specificity mattered.