Anthropic eyeing data centre investment in Australia, envoy says

Anthropic PBC is looking to invest in data centres in Australia as the artificial intelligence company scales up its capacity build-out across the world.

The firm is most interested in facilities in regional areas or brownfield sites, Jeff Bleich, international special envoy at Anthropic, said at the Australian Financial Review’s Energy and Climate summit in Sydney. Several projects have been pitched to the company by state premiers, he added.

“I don’t think there’s any state that’s out of contention,” Bleich said. The company would prefer to base facilities away from major population centres and have them powered by renewable energy, he added.

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Global tech companies including Meta Platforms and Microsoft are aggressively pushing to build out infrastructure to support AI, and Anthropic has already pledged billions of dollars toward facilities globally. That includes a $50 billion plan announced last year for sites in several US locations including Texas and New York. The company also recently secured a $35 billion loan to lease computer chips across five data centres, backed by a guarantee from Alphabet Inc subsidiary Google Llc.

Australia’s abundant renewable energy potential presents a strong opportunity for data centre build-out, Alexander Smith, Google’s head of Asia Pacific infrastructure and energy, said at the conference. The company is “increasingly convinced” that the co-location of renewable generation and data centres in the country was feasible, he added.

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