Anthropic lands deal in $31bn datacentre in western Queensland, David Crisafulli says

Anthropic’s plan to build a datacentre in Queensland was announced by premier David Crisafulli on Wednesday. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters View image in fullscreen Anthropic’s plan to build a datacentre in Queensland was announced by premier David Crisafulli on Wednesday. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters Anthropic lands deal in $31bn datacentre in western Queensland, David Crisafulli says Premier describes deal as ‘major win’ that will deliver more jobs for the state and put more energy into its grid Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Anthropic, the AI company behind the large language model Claude, has done a deal to lease the site of its first Australian datacentre in western Queensland. The $31.9bn datacentre will be the largest of its kind in Australia, according to planning documents. The state premier, David Crisafulli, announced that Anthropic would buy into the first stage of the project in parliament on Wednesday. Crisafulli told parliament that he had met Anthropic during a trade mission and had outlined “why Queensland was the place to invest, with energy security and a streamlined approval process”. “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.” 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. 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. The Anthropic section of the project will sit on about 725.5 hectares of land, now occupied in part by a feedlot. Western Downs mayor, Andrew Smith, said the council would undertake a “thorough and comprehensive assessment process” of the proposed centre. “The 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,” he said. 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. Crisafulli said 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 centres 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 Queensland centre will be used to power “inference” – answering questions – rather than training Anthropic’s AI model. Anthropic signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the commonwealth government in April. The Albanese government is 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 chief executive, Dario Amodei, on Tuesday reiterated his call for a slowdown of AI development amid rising concern about Artificial Intelligence. Explore more on these topics Datacentres - Australia Anthropic Queensland AI (Artificial Intelligence) Queensland politics David Crisafulli Energy news Share Reuse this content