Why Anthropic is building a giant data centre in Queensland, Australia

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has agreed to lease computing capacity at a huge new data centre planned for regional Australia. It is the company's first deal in the country and one of the largest data centre projects ever proposed there.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli told state parliament on 16 September that Anthropic had signed an agreement to use a proposed A$32 billion (about US$22.8 billion) data centre campus on the Western Downs, near Dalby, roughly 250 km west of Brisbane. He described it as the largest data centre proposed in Australia.

The site is a 725-hectare former cattle feedlot next to the Braemar power stations. It will be developed by Zerra DC, the data-centre arm of Singapore's AGP Sustainable Real Assets, which lodged planning applications with the local council on 17 August. Anthropic is the "anchor tenant" — the main company leasing space — rather than the owner. Construction is planned in stages over about four years, with four single-storey data halls. Most reports put the total computing power at 1.44 gigawatts, and ABC News says that is roughly the same electricity draw as 1.5 million Australian homes.

Anthropic told the ABC the centre will be used to run Claude for its users — a process called inference, where a trained AI model answers real requests — rather than to train new models. The company aims to begin using the site in 2027.

The government says the facility will mostly use air cooling, needing about 16.5 kilolitres of water a day, and that no new power transmission lines are required. Anthropic is expected to cover the full cost of connecting to the electricity grid and to arrange its own long-term power supply deals. The project still needs approval from Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board and from local council planners, and it faces opposition from some residents, according to The Tech Capital.

If you use Claude, this project is part of Anthropic's broader push to secure more computing power to serve its growing user base, including in the Asia-Pacific region. Anthropic's revenue run rate reached $65 billion in July, and the company has been racing to add computing capacity worldwide to keep up with demand. A site running inference rather than training suggests its purpose is to make Claude more responsive for users, rather than to build more powerful future models.

The project cannot proceed until it clears foreign investment review and local planning approval in Queensland. Construction, if approved, would happen in stages over about four years, with Anthropic targeting 2027 to start using the capacity.