The deal is notable less for its size than its structure: Anthropic is leasing directly from a regional developer rather than running on capacity supplied by AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure, adding to a small but growing list of AI labs and neoclouds buying infrastructure on their own terms rather than renting it from the traditional hyperscalers.
The deal
The lease covers part of the Western Downs Digital Park, developed by Singapore-based Zerra DC through project company WDDP Pty Ltd. Once complete, the campus will comprise four 360MW data centre buildings on a 725.5-hectare site 37km north-west of Dalby and roughly 250km north-west of Brisbane, giving it 1.44GW of IT capacity and a peak power draw of 2.16GW, enough to make it Australia’s largest data centre and almost five times greater than the infrastructure budget for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
Anthropic is targeting a 2027 start, even though Zerra DC only lodged its development application with Western Downs Regional Council last month. The lease remains subject to Foreign Investment Review Board approval. According to reporting from the ABC, Anthropic intends to use the site for inference, serving Claude to users, rather than for model training.
Why the structure matters more than the number
Anthropic’s decision to lease directly from a developer, rather than consuming capacity through a hyperscaler cloud contract, fits a pattern Capacity has tracked elsewhere in the neocloud space: operators including Iren and Firmus have already moved AI workloads away from established hubs like Sydney and Melbourne and directly to sites near power generation.
It also echoes a broader shift among the largest AI infrastructure buyers toward direct ownership and control of critical capacity, rather than leasing it wholesale from a single provider, the same logic that has pushed hyperscalers to fund and control their own subsea cable systems instead of relying solely on consortium builds. For developers and investors, it signals that AI labs with enough scale and capital are increasingly willing to become infrastructure tenants in their own right rather than customers of a cloud platform, opening a new category of anchor tenant beyond the traditional hyperscaler roster.
The energy policy fight behind the site choice
Why Queensland won this investment is itself a live regulatory story. The federal government’s National AI Plan had pushed for new data centres to be anchored by renewable energy. Queensland’s state government successfully argued for a different approach, allowing developers to draw on a wider mix of sources, including coal and gas, and the Western Downs site sits in the state’s coal seam gas country near existing gas-fired power stations. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has presented the deal as vindication of the state’s approach, and the state government says the project will not require new transmission infrastructure.
Anthropic’s involvement follows a memorandum of understanding it signed with the Australian federal government earlier this year, the first formal partnership struck under the National AI Plan, in which Anthropic committed to align any future Australian operations with the government’s published expectations for data centre and AI infrastructure developers.
Local response
The scale of the power draw has already drawn scrutiny ahead of this lease. Western Downs Digital Park could add up to 25% to Queensland’s average daily electricity consumption once fully built, according to ABC reporting, and academics have warned that getting the grid integration wrong could affect stability and consumer costs.
Western Downs Regional Council mayor Andrew Smith has cast the development as the start of a new era for the region, while acknowledging that a lot of questions remain to be answered.
Local group Save Our Darling Downs has pressed for clarity on the long-term benefit to the community weighed against the resources the site will draw on, a concern that echoes opposition Capacity has tracked at similarly large sites, including a ministerial planning override needed for a UK data centre at Brick Lane and litigation over Google’s Andhra Pradesh site in India.
What to watch
- Whether Foreign Investment Review Board approval for Anthropic’s lease proceeds without conditions
- Whether other AI labs follow Anthropic’s approach of leasing directly from regional developers rather than through hyperscaler cloud platforms
- How the federal-state tension over energy sourcing for data centres develops as more projects seek approval outside the renewable-anchored model the National AI Plan envisaged
- Progress of Zerra DC’s development application through Western Downs Regional Council, and any conditions attached to water and grid connection
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