Former aviation firm Jet.AI has secured a 26 percent stake in StratGrid, a Canadian developer of behind-the-meter, natural gas-powered data center infrastructure.

Jet.AI made the investment via its majority-controlled investment vehicle SG Canada InvestCo. According to the company, SG Canada paid approximately $1.75 million for the stake.

StratGrid is developing two large-scale data center campuses in Southern Alberta that are powered behind-the-meter via on-site natural gas generation.

The first project, Project Wheatland in Wheatland County, is designed for approximately 200MW of generation capacity, with expansion potential of more than 1GW. The company also has a second planned site in Alberta, dubbed Project Mountain View, which is designed to scale to more than 2GW.

"StratGrid's behind-the-meter power model is meant to address one of the biggest bottlenecks in new data center development today: getting reliable, competitively priced power online fast enough to meet AI-driven demand," said Mike Winston, founder and executive chairman of Jet.AI.

"This investment reflects growing confidence in our behind-the-meter model as a faster path to power for our two AI data campus infrastructures, Project Wheatland and Project Mountain View," said David Sealock, CEO of StratGrid. "This investment strengthens our capital position as we advance our development program across engineering, regulatory, and land workstreams."

Jet.AI pivoted into the data center sector last year, following the divestment from its aviation business. The company has several planned facilities, including a 50MW development in Las Vegas, an up to 500MW facility in Winnipeg, Canada, and a 50MW data center in Clark County, Nevada.

Alberta is emerging as one of the fastest-growing hubs for data center development in North America. Several major developments are underway in the Canadian province, including a up to 1GW Meta data center in Sturgeon County, northeast of Edmonton, which it broke ground on last month.