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Anthropic to lease site for $31.9bn western Queensland data centre, premier says

Anthropic has agreed to lease the site of its first Australian data centre in western Queensland, Premier David Crisafulli told parliament. The $31.9bn Western Downs digital park is to be built by Zerra DC near Dalby and is planned to open next year.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-16 15:50

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. The project is planned to open next year at a reported cost of $31.9bn.

Crisafulli said he had met Anthropic during a trade mission and had set out why Queensland was the place to invest, citing energy security and a streamlined approval process. “To have secured Anthropic’s first major investment in Australia is a massive show of confidence in Queensland,” he told parliament. “It’s a major win that will deliver more jobs and put more energy into Queensland’s grid.”

The announcement places the data centre at the centre of a dispute over how Australia powers new AI infrastructure. Queensland and the Northern Territory rejected a commonwealth push in July to require new AI centres to use renewable energy, according to The Guardian. The state government claims it has won a carve-out from a national deal that allows it to use the state’s coal generators to power the centres.

Crisafulli said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had made a “commonsense decision” to “allow Queensland to chart its own path for power supply.” He added that data centre development “must add energy generation to the grid and drive down power prices for Queenslanders.” It “must protect local water supplies, and it must respect the communities where these centres go,” he said. “We’ll do it in the right locations, and we’ll do it in the right way. Communities will have a say, just as they now do for projects like wind, solar, and batteries.”

The Albanese government is weighing a proposal to give AI companies access to Australian creatives’ works by default. Independent senator David Pocock said the proposal would throw creatives “under the bus” in pursuit of data centre funding.

The announcement came after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei on Tuesday reiterated his call for a slowdown of AI development amid rising concern about artificial intelligence.