From Grassroots to Canada’s Research Cloud

myresearchcloud.ca is operated by Computing for Humanity, a Canadian registered charity. What began as a grassroots effort to share donated servers has grown into Canada’s first nonprofit research cloud, providing free and affordable CPUs, GPUs, and storage for researchers, students, and citizen scientists.

Grassroots Beginnings

Our roots are in volunteer computing. With the support of early partners such as Ross Video, Ericsson, the Government of Canada, and Schrödinger, we scaled from a handful of machines to thousands of cores and GPUs. Those resources powered groundbreaking projects at institutions including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Indiana University, McGill University, and Queen’s University. These collaborations proved that grassroots infrastructure, built on generosity and community, could deliver global scientific impact.

Building Sustainability

For years, our work relied on volunteerism and donated hardware. In 2024, we secured our first grant from the Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation, marking the beginning of a more sustainable funding model. This support allowed us to evolve from an ad hoc initiative into a long-term nonprofit platform dedicated to equity in research computing.

Launching myresearchcloud.ca

In 2025, we launched myresearchcloud.ca — the next step in our journey. Our mission is simple: to ensure that no researcher, student, or citizen scientist in Canada is held back by a lack of access to computing. By offering both free and low-cost tiers, we help Canadian innovation in science, AI, and discovery thrive, regardless of budget or institution.