The Bridge 2025: Building a New Nexus Between Energy and AI
The Bridge is a one-of-a-kind summit that brings together energy industry leaders, AI entrepreneurs, infrastructure experts and investors for an intensive week of facility tours and dealmaking. Hosted September 17-21 in Calgary and Banff, The Bridge 2025 was a handpicked conference that connects the energy and AI sectors in ways that spark breakthroughs. As Co-founder of Ventures Edge and an analyst at Augur VC, I was honored to join the curated group of about 50 leaders and entrepreneurs from Calgary, Silicon Valley and beyond. Over five days, we toured Alberta’s energy infrastructure. We kicked things off with the “Energy Safari” and then converged at the Banff Centre for the Mountain Summit. By week’s end, relationships had formed, deals were sourced, and we left with a fresh perspective on how AI’s future will depend on energy, and vice versa.
The mission of The Bridge is to “originate deals across Energy and AI” and they achieved that by putting unconventional partners in one room (or control room!) together. More than $1 billion in projects and transactions have already been catalyzed by past Bridge events. As one participant put it, “putting these people in one room is going to be disruptive for the industry.” Indeed, hearing a power-plant technician chat with a generative-AI start-up founder about GPU power density was truly eye-opening.
Energy Safari: Alberta’s Energy Infrastructure
The Safari began with a tour of Calgary’s Shepard Energy Centre, an 860 MW combined-cycle natural-gas plant that uses waste heat recovery to boost efficiency and cut CO₂ emissions. We then visited the Blackspring Ridge wind farm, 166 turbines across 45,000 acres generating 300 MW for 140,000 homes, and climbed inside a V100 tower to experience its scale. Next came the Travers Solar Farm, Canada’s largest, with 1.3 million panels producing 465 MW (with overbuild to ~750 MW). Seeing gas, wind, and solar back-to-back underscored Alberta’s diverse energy mix.
Day two focused on heat and control. At Cenovus’s Christina Lake SAGD site, we explored steam-assisted bitumen recovery. In Calgary, ENMAX’s District Energy Centre demonstrated 55 MW of thermal capacity piped underground to heat downtown buildings, cutting carbon versus rooftop boilers. The Safari concluded at the AESO Control Centre, where operators balanced demand and supply in real-time, demonstrating how energy infrastructure and AI are increasingly intertwined.
Banff Mountain Summit: Data Meets Deals in the Mountains
After lightning tours of energy sites, we shifted to the Banff Mountain Summit, a relaxed, “unconference” of panels and networking in the Rockies. Over two days at Banff Centre, we debated big questions: “Data Centers, Cheap Power, and the Grid: Are they Incompatible?” and “Next-Gen Industrial AI Applications”, among others. Leading AI hardware players and regulators shared war stories. It’s no longer “if” AI will need the grid it’s when. At breakouts, hyper-scale data center builders met senior power executives. In the rugged beauty of Banff, provincial energy veterans and Silicon Valley VCs mixed casually over mountain scenery.
Our final two days were a dealmaking retreat in Banff. Sessions ranged from panels to peer-led breakouts, all building bridges between the energy and AI communities.
One key takeaway: “Time to power.” AI compute is accelerating so fast that every forecast shows demand exploding. Deloitte points out that 50,000-acre data-center campuses in planning could each need ~5 GW – more power than any single existing nuclear or gas plant. In other words, we are on the cusp of an infrastructure boom: new substations, transmission lines and generation must come online. Bringing Bay Area cloud architects face-to-face with Alberta grid planners sparked lots of synergy. Nobody thinks these power plants will materialize overnight, but the event made clear that in a few years, petabytes of AI will have to ride on terawatts of generation.
Another theme was capital formation. Building AI infrastructure is hugely expensive and largely financed by equity today. Yet to expand the grid and data centers at scale, we need massive project financing. Even in the US, greenfield data-center financings leaped from ~$200 M/year pre-2020 to over $30 billion today. Debt markets are just waking up to AI. Last year, debt funding for hyperscale facilities doubled, as banks and bond investors chased reliable leasing cash flows. But for those sub-hyperscale providers, the pool of institutional debt providers (for AI infra) remains thin. Without long-term project finance, even high-ROI energy+AI projects will have underwhelming SPV returns. In Banff we agreed: capital formation is a must. We need more infrastructure bonds, development banks, or pension allocations to “watt-bit” energy projects if the deals we envision are to hit the ground.
People, Connections and Disruption. Perhaps most importantly, The Bridge was about people. Everyone there was an influential decision-maker – from Dan Chapman (Augur partner, energy veteran) to startup founders, regulators and Silicon Valley VCs, all wandering the same paddock or hiking trail together. Over social dinners (including an unforgettable banquet at Banff Park Lodge), we all learned from perspectives outside our silos. The open, informal format – “unconferencing” on one day and a barbecue social the next – lets deals and partnerships emerge organically. As one attendee said, “Founders meet. Companies form. Products meet customers. Deals are made.” The environment was charged: everyone knew that combining AI’s insatiable compute needs with Alberta’s energy abundance could flip industries on their head.
Key Takeaways from The Bridge 2025:
Time to Power. AI is no longer a future load, it’s an imminent one. McKinsey projects global “AI-ready” data center capacity demand will grow ~19-22% annually from 2023-2030 (with an upside scenario near ~27%), resulting in demand of ~171-219 GW by 2030 (and up to ~298 GW in aggressive adoption cases). We saw firsthand that powering the next generation of GPUs requires doubling down on generation and grid upgrades. Alberta has wind, solar and gas capacity now; the conversation was about how quickly we build more.
Capital Formation. There’s an equity wave funding computation, but we also need debt and large-scale financing. Even in the US, data-center greenfield financing jumped from $200 M to $30+ B within a few years. In Canada, developing AI and energy infrastructure together will demand similar financial creativity. Without project finance (green bonds, development banks, etc.), project returns stay low. We agreed that folks in the industry need to champion new funding sources for “watt-bit” infrastructure.
In short, The Bridge 2025 was nothing short of a home run of learning, networking, and inspiration. The summit reinforced that AI and energy are converging and that Alberta can be at the center of that convergence. I left Calgary and Banff convinced of two things: first, that solving “time-to-power” is urgent (“when, not if”); and second, that mobilizing capital (equity and debt) is the next great challenge. Huge thanks to Augur VC and all the organizers (and to leaders like Dan Chapman and Graeme Harrison for co-creating this vision). I’m already excited for the deals and innovations that will come out of the connections we made.
- Michael Brown, Co-Founder Ventures Edge