Glossary
What is data residency, and why does "stays in Canada" matter?
Data residency is where your data is physically stored and processed, and which country's laws govern it — often a more important and more durable decision than which AI model you use.
Data residency refers to where your information physically lives and is processed, and therefore which legal jurisdiction controls it. For a business using AI tools, it answers a simple but critical question: when you use the tool, where does your sensitive data — pricing, client information, operational records — actually end up?
It matters more than the model you choose because the model is swappable and the data decision often isn't. Once sensitive data has been sent somewhere it can be retained or used to train another system, you can't pull it back. "Stays in Canada" means your data is stored and processed within Canada, under Canadian law, and isn't shipped off or used to train a model for anyone else.
For operations with regulatory exposure or competitively sensitive information, residency is frequently a requirement rather than a preference — and it's a design decision best made at the start, on purpose.
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