Anthropic has signed its first data center deal in Australia to occupy a planned campus in Queensland with capacity of up to 2.16 gigawatts (GW). The lease documentation for the first phase was confirmed this Wednesday (16) by Dexus, a member of the consortium responsible for the project.
Western Downs Digital Park will be developed by Zerra DC in an area near Dalby, about 250 kilometers from Brisbane, and is expected to begin operating gradually starting in 2027.
According to people familiar with the deal who spoke to Reuters, the infrastructure contracted by Anthropic will be used primarily for AI model inference, the process responsible for running systems such as Claude and generating responses for users. The site is not expected to be used for training the models.
The planned capacity places the project among the largest computing infrastructure ventures announced for artificial intelligence. The campus will be deployed in stages, with power demand increasing as new structures come into operation.
Project still depends on approvals in Australia
The campus will require a dedicated connection to the high-voltage grid. Zerra says the project will finance the infrastructure needed for that connection, without depending directly on the local grid that serves homes and businesses in the region.
Construction still depends on local and state approvals. The deal involving Anthropic is also subject to review by the Foreign Investment Review Board, responsible for reviewing certain foreign investments in the country.
