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Kristin Milchanowski June 16, 2026 Podcasts

As generative AI rapidly finds applications across industries, the data centers that power these models are no longer back-office infrastructure; they are becoming strategic national assets. In tandem, the question of digital sovereignty – not just where data resides but who controls the infrastructure, governance and ecosystems around it – is arising too.

Governments and institutions are increasingly moving toward more localized and secure data environments. But doing so will require enormous capital investment, expanded power generation and the ability to convince communities that hosting this infrastructure delivers meaningful long-term benefits.

Even with hundreds of billions committed to this effort in 2026 alone, there are questions as to whether data center capacity can keep pace with AI demand. That was the focus of the “Digital sovereignty: Scaling data centres for an AI world” panel to close out day two of the Conference of Montreal. The session featured:

Kristin Milchanowski, Chief AI and Quantum Officer, BMO

Chris Crosby, CEO, Compass Datacenters

Simon Ahdoot, CEO, Hypertec

Jean Boivin, Managing Director and Head, BlackRock Investment Institute

Martin Durkin, Partner, Holland & Knight (Moderator)

Listen to the conversation:

Markets Plus is listed on all major channels, including Apple and Spotify 

Start listening to our library of award-winning podcasts. 

Here are the highlights:

AI infrastructure reaches historic scale

Jean Boivin said the pipeline of spending for AI data centers is incomparable to any other private sector industry. Global spending through 2030 is estimated in the range of roughly US$5 trillion to US$8 trillion, with forecasts continuing to trend upward as demand accelerates. “This will make it the fastest and biggest capital-expenditure buildout in the history of humanity,” he said.

While such investment is needed, Kristin Milchanowski noted spending is outpacing AI company usage with compute use among global companies remaining low at about three percent. To ensure infrastructure spending is valuable, companies need to move beyond automation and embed AI into every decision that shapes the business, she explained. “That’s where you’re going to see a direct tie into ROI,” she said.

Chris Crosby described data centers as long-term infrastructure rather than temporary facilities built around a single generation of technology. They sit in the same category as railroads, airports and water treatment plants, he said, built to last rather than to flip or sell. He drew a parallel to electricity, which was initially viewed as having a narrow application before becoming foundational. “This is the greatest enabling technology since electricity,” he said.

Capital backs durable builds

Milchanowski noted that investors and lenders have grown more selective about selecting data center projects, with those attached to more speculative profiles, coming from the crypto world, subject to a higher bar. The challenge right now is that some jurisdictions have unclear or inconsistent policies that could disrupt infrastructure build outs.

In some instances, there have been zoning reversals and shifting energy or infrastructure rules. “Capital craves certainty,” she said. “Capital is going to follow the predictability of things, and I do fear that there’s some unpredictability around the policy trajectory.”

For the largest developers, Crosby said that policy risk is playing a larger role in where projects get built. Compass recently walked away from a large-scale Northern Virginia data center project, part of a broader development valued in the tens of billions after a court overturned its zoning approval on a technicality.”

He said projects that take years to generate a return become harder to justify when approvals can change after money has already been committed. “We just leave; we don’t go to those places,” he said.

Building data capacity

Milchanowski said the data sovereignty issue goes beyond location. A data center can house sensitive information, but institutions still need to govern access, encryption and the decisions made with that data. Data sovereignty must be built into the infrastructure from the start. “Sovereignty isn’t just the data center; it’s the moat around it,” she said.

An important part of that moat is ensuring data centers are protected from cyberattacks. As Simon Ahdoot pointed out, countries need to expand their cyber security capabilities. In his eyes, this type of investment will ultimately help speed the development of AI rather than act as a speed bump. “If you look at the fastest cars, they have the best brakes; they have the best security systems,” he said. “If we want to go as fast as possible, we have to have the right security measures in place.”

Powering these data centers and winning over communities is another challenge to preserving data sovereignty. Crosby said access to power is already narrowing the list of places where AI data centres can be built. The North American power grid has expanded far more slowly than demand over the past few decades, and in many regions, fragmented planning and regulatory barriers make it difficult to invest in large-scale system upgrades.

When asked what could stall the data infrastructure buildout, the panelists said execution. Crosby said developers need to get better at showing communities how projects can help them, especially when local debates focus on bans, water use or power costs. Ahdoot said governments need to start seeing data centers as infrastructure, instead of judging them only by the number of jobs they create. Boivin pointed to the need for permitting reform, especially around energy.

Milchanowski closed on the workforce needed to build it all, arguing that AI infrastructure will depend as much on trades and technical talent as it does on capital and compute. “We’re already short half a million electricians, right this second, let alone with this trajectory we’re on,” she said.

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this special episode of Return on Intelligence on Markets Plus, live from the Conference of Montreal on June 9th. With Kristin Milchanowski and Martin Durkin, innovation partner at Holland and Knight. The two discuss how data centers are rapidly evolving from back office infrastructure into critical strategic assets, and what that means for capital investment, policy, and the future of AI-driven growth.

Kristin Milchanowski:

Welcome to Return on Intelligence on Markets Plus, presented by the BMO Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence and Quantum. I'm Kristin Milchanowski, chief AI and quantum officer at BMO. In this series, I sit down with global technology leaders to explore the future of innovation, data and AI, and what it all means for decision makers in financial services.

Martin Durkin:

Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Martin Durkin. I'm the innovation partner at the law firm of Holland & Knight. As the innovation partner, I work with a group of lawyers who are software engineers, and we actually build workflows to generate legal work product. And in doing so, we basically spend most of our days in generative AI and working in data centers.

I'm excited today to talk about that intersection. Today, data centers are no longer back office infrastructure. Now they're basically strategic national assets. With us today is Kristin Milchanowski, who is the chief AI and quantum officer at BMO Financial Group. That's a title I would love to have someday: Quantum Officer.

Kristin, BMO sits in an interesting spot, really being on both sides of the data center investment. You're a large data center customer, you're also financing a lot of data centers. With respect to those capital markets, where is the institutional capital going?

Kristin Milchanowski:

So, BMO's open for business. We definitely are investing heavily in the data center, but smartly. So we are looking for your top tier tenants, is what we're hoping to see. And that's where we do find very smart builds where they are building a hundred-year infrastructure, and we understand in those data centers that your chips will expire, but you want it to be built in a modular fashion so that you are building a lasting infrastructure for your communities.

The ones where we hesitate, but it's more around just being disciplined with our approach, is perhaps where someone's coming more from a crypto world, or those aren't really the type of investment centers that we're looking for.

But from the build side, getting my hands a bit dirty and trying to scale AI at our institution, but then also studying the Global 200 companies and where they are on their journey, that discrepancy that we're highlighting here is that the data center trajectory is ginormous, but our compute usage is only up to 3%.

And so, when you look at that delta behind what companies are actually achieving with the new technology, we're not able to really tie it to the trillions of dollars or the billionaire, and I want them to. And the potential is there, but it's actually not going to be just in automation and augmentation. It's going to be in taking the intelligence that you learn from the AI, and embedding that into your infrastructure, so that every decision you make is better, smarter, faster.

So all of your financials are tied back to your strategic planning process, to your funding process, to your client decisions, your investment decisions on marketing even. But having that flywheel of intelligence built in with the AI, that's where you're going to see a direct tie-in to ROI at the end of the day. And I haven't seen a company doing that yet that isn't digitally native. Digitally native companies obviously have a head start.

Martin Durkin:

We're looking at the $600 billion this year. Has the investor conversation changed over the last few years in terms of justifying that much capital going in, particularly when you hear about what's happening with compute?

Kristin Milchanowski:

The capital craves the certainty. I do fear a bit in this trajectory being a little disrupted by the policies, whether they're not being made or some of them are being made with blunt force. But I just felt like that was kind of the right moment to remind people that capital is going to follow the predictability of things. And I do fear that there's a little bit of unpredictability.

Martin Durkin:

Data centers are all front end loaded. The cost is all upfront. The revenue comes at the end. There's a significant risk allocation there, given the potential for changing policy.

Kristin Milchanowski:

There's a switch in the AI strategy, and the Canadian AI strategy that came out, and that I really like. So trust is paramount and so that's the very first pillar, but the signal that was sent is that now it's talking about opportunity. And making sure that we have that conversation within our communities, with our small businesses, but how do we have this opportunity for growth, and how do we leverage the technology for the benefit of productivity and for our people and for the workers and creating net new jobs is a big part of the strategy as well. So I like seeing that.

Martin Durkin:

We move off the, can we build it or can we finance it, to can we power it? What about the current grid that we have in place, and the government policies behind expanding and regulating a grid?

Kristin Milchanowski:

The volume of power then enables someone like myself to run really powerful models for very powerful things. So we just patented a methodology to predict earthquakes, and this is something that still scientists need to take the last mile, but that is billions of records of data that we're able to run through gigawatts of power, through a data center, to be able to analyze.

And for a bank, what does that mean to us? It means that we do over a billion transactions a day. And so now there's a new way to do time series, and forecasting, and all of these opportunities are coming to all of us very soon so that we can think about our businesses and serving our clients in new ways. And so, those are the opportunities that I get really excited about.

Martin Durkin:

In terms of all the data running through, it raises an issue for me with respect to data security. What's there? The privacy of that data, and how do we protect it?

Kristin Milchanowski:

To me, that really comes down to sovereignty. And the sovereignty isn't just the data center. In fact, it's the moat around it, and it's the infrastructure and it's all the ecosystem participants around. And so the discipline that we've had as a financial institution taking deposits for over 200 years, that same discipline and rigor is going to be needed in this infrastructure period.

So the encryption, who controls the encryption around the data center? Who controls some of the decisioning authority around the data center? So this is a very large conversation.

So I believe that sovereignty is not about the data center as much as it is about discipline, and bringing the full ecosystem of discipline to the conversation. We set the example. We've done it for a very long time, and we're going to continue to do it and we're going to continue that. Good governance really enables the program.

Martin Durkin:

I like it. Okay. One last thing. You can change one policy, one structural point, one industry norm over the next two or three years, something concrete to push data centers forward, and to really develop data center infrastructure. What would you do?

Kristin Milchanowski:

I want an education. So, I really would love to see more policies around apprenticeships, community colleges. We need more electricians. So, anything that train the educators, just raising up our workforce, we're already half a million short of electricians, just right this second, let alone with this trajectory you're on. So education and talent is probably the ask I would have.

Martin Durkin:

Very good. Well, thank you all.

Kristin Milchanowski:

Thank you.

Martin Durkin:

Appreciate you joining me for the panel. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

The views expressed here are those of the participants, and may not necessarily represent those of BMO Capital Markets, its affiliates or subsidiaries. For BMO disclosures, please visit bmocm.com/podcast/disclaimer.

Power, Policy and Trust Shape Next Phase of AI Buildout

By: Kristin Milchanowski

Podcasts June 16, 2026

Kristin Milchanowski, Chief AI and Quantum Officer, BMO

Chris Crosby, CEO, Compass Datacenters

Simon Ahdoot, CEO, Hypertec

Jean Boivin, Managing Director and Head, BlackRock Investment Institute

Martin Durkin, Partner, Holland & Knight (Moderator)

Listen to the conversation:

Markets Plus is listed on all major channels, including Apple and Spotify 

Start listening to our library of award-winning podcasts. 

Here are the highlights:

AI infrastructure reaches historic scale

Capital backs durable builds

Building data capacity

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Kristin Milchanowski:

Martin Durkin:

Kristin Milchanowski:

Martin Durkin:

Kristin Milchanowski:

Martin Durkin:

Data centers are all front end loaded. The cost is all upfront. The revenue comes at the end. There's a significant risk allocation there, given the potential for changing policy.

Kristin Milchanowski:

Martin Durkin:

We move off the, can we build it or can we finance it, to can we power it? What about the current grid that we have in place, and the government policies behind expanding and regulating a grid?

Kristin Milchanowski:

Martin Durkin:

In terms of all the data running through, it raises an issue for me with respect to data security. What's there? The privacy of that data, and how do we protect it?

Kristin Milchanowski:

So the encryption, who controls the encryption around the data center? Who controls some of the decisioning authority around the data center? So this is a very large conversation.

Martin Durkin:

Kristin Milchanowski:

Martin Durkin:

Very good. Well, thank you all.

Kristin Milchanowski:

Thank you.

Martin Durkin:

Appreciate you joining me for the panel. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Kristin Milchanowski Chief AI and Data Officer, BMO

Kristin Milchanowski is the Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Officer for BMO Financial Group. She leads the AI and Data team and is a member of BMO's…

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