AI giant Anthropic, the developer behind the large language model Claude, has agreed to lease its first Australian datacentre in western Queensland. Premier David Crisafulli announced the decision in parliament on Wednesday.
Deal details and location
The proposed Western Downs Digital Park, to be built by Singapore-based Zerra DC, will be located near Dalby, northwest of Toowoomba, and will connect to the existing Braemar power station. It is planned to open next year and is reported to be worth $31.9bn.
Crisafulli told parliament that he met with Anthropic during a recent trade mission and had outlined “why Queensland was the place to invest with energy security and a streamlined approval process.”
Premier's response
“To have secured Anthropic’s first major investment in Australia is a massive show of confidence in Queensland,” he said. “It’s a major win that will deliver more jobs and put more energy into Queensland’s grid.”
Queensland, along with the Northern Territory, rejected a Commonwealth push in July to make new AI centres use renewable energy. The state government claims to have won a carve-out from a national deal allowing it to use the state’s coal generators to power them.
Political and industry context
Crisafulli said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had made a “commonsense decision” to “allow Queensland to chart its own path for power supply”.
“[Datacentre development] must add energy generation to the grid and drive down power prices for Queenslanders,” he said. “It must protect local water supplies, and it must respect the communities where these centers go … we’ll do it in the right locations, and we’ll do it in the right way. Communities will have a say, just as they now do for projects like wind, solar, and batteries”.
The Albanese government is currently weighing up a proposal to give AI companies access to Australian creatives’ works by default – a deal independent senator David Pocock said would throw creatives “under the bus” in pursuit of datacentre funding. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei on Tuesday reiterated his call for a slowdown of AI development amid rising concern over AI.
