CoreWeave Cambridge Ontario data center, Cambridge, Ontario

CoreWeave runs an AI data center in north Cambridge, Ontario, in the Region of Waterloo, where the Canadian AI company Cohere is a customer. The building, on Vondrau Drive, belonged to BlackBerry until 2017, and French company OVHcloud is also a tenant.

Real estate records link the property to TowerBrook Capital Partners, a private equity firm with offices in New York and London, which has partnered with the American developer Related Digital. A zoning application to the City of Cambridge in July 2024 showed the owner planned to turn the warehouse part of the building into a new data center. In August 2025 CPP Investments committed $225 million to the construction loan for a 54 megawatt expansion by Related Digital, TowerBrook and Ascent, with Deutsche Bank as lead lender and the space pre-leased long term to a GPU-focused AI cloud provider.

Cohere's use of the site is tied to federal money: Ottawa announced in December 2024 it would give the company up to $240 million for computing. Cohere chief executive Aidan Gomez said putting the computing power on Canadian soil would help more Canadian researchers, startups and companies compete globally.

On July 19, 2026, the province was called about an "odorous, milky white substance" in the stormwater pond across from the data center, on property co-owned by Ascent and Related Digital. The province said the substance had reached West Creek and the Speed River, which flows into the Grand River, and Brantford took precautions to protect its drinking water. Related Digital blamed a "bacterial bloom" from stagnant water and heat, and preliminary samples showed "no evidence of contaminants of concern," but the Region of Waterloo said the investigation into the source was continuing.

Local government is now catching up. In August 2026 regional councillors unanimously asked staff for an overview of data centers' effects on water, power, the economy and the environment, due in early 2027. Cambridge council unanimously directed its own staff to identify appropriate locations and policies for any future data centers, with a report expected in early 2027. On August 25, 2026 it also asked Ontario to speed up a provincial framework for judging data center proposals. "So many municipalities in North America and around the world are getting caught because we don't have guidelines in place," Mayor Jan Liggett said. "There's nothing out there to protect the residents."