Anthropic signed its first Australian data-centre lease for a planned ~2.16 gigawatt inference campus near Brisbane developed by Zerra DC, with capacity planned to come online from 2027, subject to FIRB approval, people familiar told Reuters.
Anthropic signed its first data-centre lease agreement in Australia, two people familiar with the deal told Reuters from Sydney. The lease covers a planned campus with about 2.16 gigawatts of capacity on farmland roughly 250 km (150 miles) from Brisbane, one of the people said. The facility is planned to start coming online in 2027. Anthropic and Singapore-based developer Zerra DC declined to comment.
The campus would be used for inference (running models for predictions), not training, one of the people said. Zerra DC would source renewable power purchase agreements and bear grid connection costs without shifting costs onto existing customers, the people said. The site would also use a closed-loop, air-cooled system that reduces the need for clean water to remove heat from servers. The deal is subject to Foreign Investment Review Board approval.
Reuters framed the move as Anthropic joining other AI firms seeking power and land in Australia, after OpenAI struck an offtake agreement for a Sydney data centre last year. It lands as Australian officials promise tighter limits from 2027 on data-centre resource use while still courting a large investment wave. The report also noted the lease arrives amid industry debate over pacing frontier model advances, including comments from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last week.
This brief covers the attributed lease details as reported by Reuters. It does not treat FIRB approval or the 2027 start as finished outcomes.