Toronto-listed SATO Technologies Corporation is in talks with potential lenders as well as investors to tie up both equity and debt for a 100 MW data centre project in Bhutan, a senior official told Infralogic.

Director and Co-founder Mathieu Nouzareth did not provide a cost estimate for the project, citing confidentiality. A rough industry benchmark may be around USD 35m to USD 40m per MW for the infrastructure as well as a service fee model for the graphics processing unit (GPU), he said.

SATO is self-advised and is in talks directly with lenders and investors, he said, adding that the funding will be a mix of euro and US dollars.

The company will be one of the largest shareholders in the special project vehicle, Hemisphere, he said, without divulging details. The project will be funded with 70% debt and 30% equity.

SATO today announced the data centre project in an exchange filing.

The initial phase will be for 5 MW and the aim is to build the remaining 95 MW by the end of 2027, Nouzareth told Infralogic. The next phases will be planned later, going all the way up to 500 MW, he added.

SATO, a Bitcoin mining and high-power computing company, added that this will use NVIDIA’s Rubin architecture, a next-generation AI super-computing platform designed to run massive, complex artificial intelligence models faster and more efficiently​.

Hemisphere has signed a memorandum of understanding with Gelephu Mindfulness City Authority (GMCA), a carbon-negative special administration region spanning 2,500 sqkm in southern Bhutan where the project is located.

GMCA has allocated 100 MW of power to the Hemisphere project, said Nouzareth. Bhutan’s electricity generation is almost entirely hydro-based.

Hemisphere aims to serve western hyperscalers that are doing business in India, but are looking for easier and simpler ways to set up operations.

“The clients will be western hyperscalers who want to work in India but would like to take advantage of the single-window clearances and the administrative ease of doing business in Bhutan,” said Nouzareth.

“What we’re saying is here’s 100 MW that is quick, easy, clean, not complicated to do, and with access to the Indian market. It may not meet all your requirements, but it is one part of your requirement without the accompanying challenges of dealing with multiple administrative layers,” Nouzareth said.

Bhutan falls under the tier two category as classified by the US for AI export rules. Tier two countries face a base limit of roughly 50,000 GPUs. Bhutan has not utilised any of its GPUs so far.