Montreal engineering and nuclear firm bets on AI data centres

The AtkinsRéalis headquarters is seen in this photo in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS /Christinne Muschi

MONTREAL — AtkinsRéalis Group Inc.‘s nuclear business powered a 34 per cent year-over-year jump in profits last quarter, as the engineering company banks on the technology to seize on soaring demand for energy-hungry AI data centres.

The Montreal-based firm’s nuclear division now accounts for a quarter of total revenue versus 15 per cent two years ago, said CEO Ian Edwards. The segment boasted organic revenue growth of nearly 37 per cent to reach a quarterly record high of $737 million.

Preliminary work is now underway at Ontario’s Pickering nuclear power station after AtkinsRealis and Aecon Group Inc. signed a $2.1-billion contract for a life extension on four reactors last year. Money is also rolling in from Romania, where the company secured a deal in 2025 to extend the life of a reactor at the Cernavoda nuclear plant -- after winning a contract the year before to build two new multibillion-dollar reactors there.

Atkins’ ambitions go beyond traditional nuclear plants. In March, it announced it was teaming up with Nvidia to ramp up deployment of nuclear-powered artificial intelligence factories, as the two parties explore how to work the chipmaking giant’s technologies into developing the facilities.

It’s opened the door to meetings with other hyper-scalers,” Edwards told analysts on a conference call Thursday, saying electricity production for the energy-intensive sites needs to increase tenfold.

“The issue is clearly electrical energy for data centres.”

Artificial intelligence factories amount to specialized data centres built for massive AI workloads. Unlike general-purpose data facilities, they develop, train and deploy AI models at an industrial scale, with power and cooling demands far greater than their smaller cousins.

A mid-size reactor built by Candu Energy -- an AtkinsRealis subsidiary that draws on nuclear technology licensed exclusively by the company from the federal government -- takes about seven years to plan and build, Edwards said. That time frame is similar to the length of construction for a combined-cycle gas turbine, increasingly used to power AI data centres on site.

“That’s a big opportunity for us that we are looking to clearly exploit,” he said.

AtkinsRealis’s engineering services segment, which covers sectors ranging from highway and rail infrastructure to defence and water management, saw weaker-than-expected profit margins in the first quarter, particularly in its American and Middle Eastern operations.

“The kind of headwind that we’re talking about there in the Middle East is actually not in connection with the conflict,” Edwards said, referring to the Iran war. Rather, it’s mainly because the company “repositioned” in Saudi Arabia to take on longer-term projects linked to the 2030 World Expo in Riyadh and the World Cup in 2034, he said.

More broadly, Edwards stressed that engineering opportunities abound, as roads and bridges crumble and defence spending increases.

“The market for ourselves remains really, really strong in aging infrastructure -- maintenance, replacement. It remains really strong in defence and energy,” he said.

Edwards pointed to the Liberal government’s $35-billion plan to modernize and expand Canada’s military footprint in the North, with potential contracts from both Ottawa and manufacturers.

“We’re definitely seeing a pipeline of opportunities in the North, in building out barracks and military facilities,” he said, highlighting hangars, dockyards and maintenance sites as possibilities.

Since late April, Atkins announced agreements to acquire Australian defence consultancy Coras Solutions as well as Australia-based Wallbridge Gilbert Aztec and Irish engineering firm Patrick J Tobin & Co. Combined, the three companies add nearly 1,600 employees to the more than 40,200 Atkins counted as of Dec. 31.

Still, the biggest potential for Atkins lies in atom-splitting.

On Wednesday, the firm signed a 20-year agreement with power company First American Nuclear for Atkins to design and oversee construction of its U.S. partner’s small modular reactor projects in North America.

“Nuclear remains the primary growth engine,” said National Bank analyst Maxim Sytchev in a note to investors.

Nuclear energy supplies about 15 per cent of Canada’s electricity and forms the backbone of Ontario’s electrical grid, notes the federal government’s national electricity strategy, unveiled by Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday.

Saskatchewan, Alberta and New Brunswick are also “actively exploring” nuclear power to support future electricity needs, it adds.

The same day, AtkinsRealis reported that net income attributable to shareholders vaulted to $92.8 million in the quarter ended March 31 from $69.1 million in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue totalled $3.00 billion, up 18 per cent from $2.55 billion the year before.

On an adjusted basis, AtkinsRealis earned 80 cents per diluted share versus 63 cents per diluted share in the first quarter of 2025. The result beat analysts’ expectations of 74 cents, according to financial markets firm LSEG Data & Analytics.

The company’s backlog stood at $20.28 billion as of March 31, inching down from $20.41 billion a year ago.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2026.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press