{"id":893866,"date":"2026-09-16T08:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T08:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893866\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T08:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T08:24:14","slug":"anthropic-lands-deal-in-31bn-datacentre-in-western-queensland-david-crisafulli-says-datacentres-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/893866\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic lands deal in $31bn datacentre in western Queensland, David Crisafulli says | Datacentres – Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthropic, the AI company behind the large language model Claude<\/a>, has done a deal to lease the site of its first Australian datacentre in western Queensland.<\/p>\n

The $31.9bn datacentre will be the largest of its kind in Australia, according to planning documents.<\/p>\n

The state premier, David Crisafulli<\/a>, announced that Anthropic would buy into the first stage of the project in parliament on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Crisafulli told parliament that he had met Anthropic during a trade mission and had outlined \u201cwhy Queensland<\/a> was the place to invest, with energy security and a streamlined approval process\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have secured Anthropic\u2019s first major investment in Australia is a massive show of confidence in Queensland,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a major win that will deliver more jobs and put more energy into Queensland\u2019s grid.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The proposed Western Downs digital park is to be built by Singapore-based Zerra DC near Dalby, north-west of Toowoomba, and will connect to the Braemar power station. Its first stage is planned to open next year.<\/p>\n

The project is expected to be built in four stages, according to documents filed with the Western Downs regional council last month. It has yet to be approved by the local council.<\/p>\n

The Anthropic section of the project will sit on about 725.5 hectares of land, now occupied in part by a feedlot.<\/p>\n

Western Downs mayor, Andrew Smith, said the council would undertake a \u201cthorough and comprehensive assessment process\u201d of the proposed centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe length of the process will depend on a range of factors, including referral requirements, any requests for further information and community participation during public notification,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Queensland, along with the Northern Territory, rejected a commonwealth push in July to make new AI centres use renewable energy<\/a>. The state government claims to have won a carve-out from a national deal, allowing it to use the state\u2019s coal generators to power them.<\/p>\n

Crisafulli said Anthony Albanese had made a \u201ccommonsense decision\u201d to \u201callow Queensland to chart its own path for power supply\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Datacentre development] must add energy generation to the grid and drive down power prices for Queenslanders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must protect local water supplies, and it must respect the communities where these centres go \u2026 we\u2019ll do it in the right locations, and we\u2019ll do it in the right way. Communities will have a say, just as they now do for projects like wind, solar, and batteries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Queensland centre will be used to power \u201cinference\u201d \u2013 answering questions \u2013 rather than training Anthropic\u2019s AI model.<\/p>\n

Anthropic signed a Memorandum of Understanding<\/a> with the commonwealth government in April.<\/p>\n

The Albanese government is weighing up a proposal to give AI companies access to Australian creatives\u2019 works by default<\/a> \u2013 a deal independent senator David Pocock said would throw creatives \u201cunder the bus\u201d in pursuit of datacentre funding.<\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s chief executive, Dario Amodei, on Tuesday reiterated his call for a slowdown of AI development<\/a> amid rising concern about artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthropic, the AI company behind the large language model Claude, has done a deal to lease the site…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-893866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}