Anthropic, the AI giant behind the large language model Claude, has done a deal to lease the site of its first Australian datacentre in western Queensland. The state premier, David Crisafulli, announced the decision in parliament on Wednesday. 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.
It is planned to open next year at a reported cost of $31.9bn. Crisafulli told parliament that he had met with Anthropic during a trade mission and had outlined “why Queensland was the place to invest, with energy security and a streamlined approval process”. 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”. Communities will have a say, just as they now do for projects like wind, solar, and batteries.” The Albanese government is weighing up a proposal to give AI companies access to Australian creatives’ works by default – a deal the 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.
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