Anthropic picks Queensland for first Australian data centre deal

Artificial intelligence heavyweight Anthropic has chosen Queensland for its first Australian data centre deal, signing lease documentation for the first stage of a proposed $31.9 billion hyperscale campus near Dalby. The Claude developer will become a major customer of the planned Western Downs Digital Park. This project could become Australia’s largest data centre and dramatically expand the computing infrastructure available to the country's growing AI industry. Singapore-based Zerra DC is leading development of the campus alongside a consortium that includes Macquarie Capital and Australian Data Centres, which is 85%-owned by ASX-listed property group Dexus Ltd (ASX). Dexus confirmed it had entered into lease documentation with an Australian Anthropic subsidiary for the project's first stage, subject to customary approvals. Anthropic is expected to use the Queensland computing capacity primarily to run Claude inference, processing users' questions and generating responses, rather than training its underlying AI models. The company is targeting operations from 2027, although the project remains subject to planning and regulatory approvals, including consideration by the Foreign Investment Review Board. At full development, the Western Downs Digital Park would have peak electricity capacity of about 2.16 gigawatts, comparable with the average power needs of around 1.5 million Australian households. That scale underlines one of the biggest challenges facing the global AI industry: securing enough electricity and computing infrastructure to support rapidly growing use of generative AI. The proposed 725-hectare development could take four to six years to complete.