Anthropic signs on as anchor tenant for A$32bn Queensland data centre

Anthropic has signed an agreement to become anchor tenant of a proposed A$32 billion data centre campus on Queensland's Western Downs, Premier David Crisafulli told state parliament on 16 September 2026. Crisafulli said the campus, near Dalby, is the largest data centre proposed in Australia.

Crisafulli said the deal is worth about A$32 billion, or roughly US$22.8 billion, according to ABC News. It marks Anthropic's first data centre agreement in Australia.

The site covers 725 hectares of former cattle feedlot land beside the Braemar power stations, about 250 km west of Brisbane. Developer Zerra DC, the data-centre arm of Singapore's AGP Sustainable Real Assets, owns the site and lodged planning applications with the local council on 17 August, according to The Tech Capital.

Plans call for four single-storey data halls built in stages over about four years, with most reports citing 1.44 GW of total IT capacity across four 360 MW buildings. ABC News said the campus would draw power comparable to that used by 1.5 million Australian homes.

Anthropic told the ABC it intends to use the campus to run Claude for users, known as inference, rather than to train models, and aims to begin using the site in 2027.

The facility will be mostly air-cooled and is expected to use about 16.5 kilolitres of water a day in operation. The government said no new transmission lines would be needed, and Anthropic is expected to pay full grid-connection costs and seek long-term power deals.

The project still requires approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board and from local council planners, and has drawn local opposition. Anthropic's revenue run rate reached $65 billion in July as the company continues to add computing capacity worldwide.