Anthropic has signed on as the anchor tenant for Zerra DC's A$32 billion Western Downs Digital Park near Dalby in Queensland — the company's first major Australian investment and one of the largest hyperscale build-outs the country has committed to. The agreement was announced by the Queensland government on September 16, 2026.
The campus
The Western Downs Digital Park spans roughly 725 hectares and will have power capacity comparable to 1.5 million average Australian households when built out. Zerra, a Singapore-based hyperscale developer, will construct the campus in phases over four to six years, with the first blocks expected online in 2027. Roughly 1,000 permanent jobs are attached to the ongoing operation.
What Anthropic is buying
Anthropic's deal is a lease for inference capacity — running Claude for users — rather than for model training. The company already operates on hyperscaler clouds; the Zerra facility gives it a locally hosted footprint that will matter as Australian and Asia-Pacific enterprise and public-sector customers push for data residency. Premier David Crisafulli framed the deal as "a major win that will deliver more jobs, put more energy into Queensland's grid and drive down power prices for Queenslanders."
The Anthropic buildout in context
The Queensland site adds to a growing global Anthropic infrastructure footprint. Earlier in 2026 the company announced a $50 billion U.S. build plan; the Australia lease is part of a similar strategy to place inference physically close to enterprise customers. It also fits a broader pattern of AI companies signing multi-decade DC contracts — NVIDIA's DSX AI Factory deployments and Delos Data's agentic-networking buildout are recent examples.
Why it matters
Queensland's campus locks in Anthropic as a decade-scale infrastructure partner for an Asia-Pacific hyperscale project, with the political and regulatory backing of the state and federal governments. The deal still needs Foreign Investment Review Board approval and local planning approval — the practical version of the "AI sovereignty" story that Australia's federal government has been trying to write.
Reporting based on coverage from ABC News, Capital Brief, Brisbane Development and SupplyChainBrain.