Nokia has reportedly curried favor from Canada in its efforts to establish AI gigafactories.

According to a report from the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF), Nokia lobbied Canadian officials in advance of an AI cooperation agreement between Canada and Finland. That memorandum of understanding (MOU), signed during the Finnish president’s visit to Canada earlier in April, saw Export Development Canada (EDC) and Nokia partner in support of Nokia’s efforts to build an AI gigafactory in its homeland of Finland.

The European giant is leading a consortium that has submitted an expression of interest to build an AI gigafactory under the European Commission’s InvestAI program, with explicit backing from the Finnish government. The InvestAI venture comes with $23 billion in funding from the European Commission.

Nokia’s Canadian arm disclosed three lobbying communications with federal officials, with filings showing the European vendor in need of funding to expand its Canadian research and development footprint and talent pool, as well as seeking opportunities to deploy its technology within Canadian networks.

In response to the IJF investigations, Nokia Canada President Jeffrey Maddox said the company is “in ongoing discussions” with the Canadian government “to provide our technology insights and guidance, consultation on 5G/6G spectrum policy,” and help the government “continue to drive the digital economy.”

Maddox added details of the March lobbying meetings “are confidential, but unrelated in this case to the gigafactory topic,” confirming the EDC deal was not about establishing Nokia gigafactories in Canada but supporting “the creation of gigafactory assets,” which would “support the development of AI infrastructure assets being built globally.”

Canada already has various sovereign AI ventures backed by local operators. Telus last year partnered with Nvidia to launch what it called Canada’s first fully sovereign AI factory, where customers can “build, train, scale, and deploy AI in a secure environment” with compliance to Canadian data regulations.

Bell also launched its Bell AI Fabric, which it claimed to be Canada’s largest AI compute project and was recently expanded with a 300-megawatt (MW) data center in Saskatchewan. Bell also partnered with Nokia rival Cohere to deliver full-stack sovereign AI solutions for government and enterprise customers across Canada, while Cohere separately signed an MOU with the Canadian government on sovereign AI.

In a forthcoming supplement, SDxCentral will probe the sovereignty question on a global basis, as telecom operators look to establish a foothold in sovereign AI ventures. As recently claimed by BT Business CTO Colin Bannon, operators argue there is no “better partner to consider” when it comes to sovereignty, with firms potentially freeing up power capacity for any government or national body wanting local, sovereign AI compute through the decommissioning of legacy networks.