Anthropic is eyeing renewable-powered data centers across all of Australia
Anthropic is looking to invest in data centers across Australia, with company officials saying every state is under consideration as the AI firm expands its global infrastructure footprint.
Speaking at the Australian Financial Review’s Energy and Climate Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, Anthropic International Special Envoy Jeff Bleich told the audience that state premiers had already approached the company with several project proposals, according to Bloomberg. "I don't think there's any state that's out of contention," Bleich said. The company would prefer sites away from major population centers, powered by renewable energy, he added.
Anthropic is most interested in regional or brownfield locations, according to Bloomberg. The company signed a lease earlier this year with the Western Downs Digital Park in Queensland, with the facility's developer describing it as a multi-billion dollar commitment.
Anthropic has committed billions of dollars to data center projects globally. These commitments include a $50 billion plan announced last year covering sites in Texas, New York, and other U.S. locations, as well as a $35 billion financing arrangement in which computer chips are leased across five data centers, with Google $GOOGL—an Alphabet subsidiary—providing a guarantee, according to Bloomberg.
Australia has set expectations for new data center operators to help pay for additional power generation and transmission infrastructure, and also bolster water security and local computing capacity, Industry Minister Tim Ayres said earlier this month, according to Bloomberg.
Alexander Smith, Google's head of Asia Pacific infrastructure and energy, told the same conference that Australia's renewable energy resources position the country as a compelling location for data center investment. Google is “increasingly convinced” that co-locating renewable generation and data centers in Australia is feasible, he added, according to Bloomberg.