{"id":"camfeed-71","numeric_id":71,"title":"Internal emails expose scale of Anthropic's Australian AI plans","canonical_url":"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532","published_at":"2026-08-25T19:26:52+00:00","source":"ABC News","source_type":"abc","type":"news article","content_role":"primary","author":"Cameron Wilson","summary":"The US tech giant behind popular AI chatbot Claude wanted to meet with the NSW government earlier this year about locating up to five gigawatts of data centres in the state, the ABC can reveal.","text":"The US tech giant behind popular AI chatbot Claude wanted to meet with the NSW government earlier this year about locating up to five gigawatts of data centres in the state, the ABC can reveal.","has_full_text":true,"mcp_visible":true,"mcp_full_text_allowed":true,"full_text_word_count":1260,"full_text_status":"ok","full_text_source_url":"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532","full_text_fetched_at":"2026-08-25T22:15:14+00:00","has_transcript":false,"transcript_status":"","transcript_kind":"","transcript_char_count":0,"topics":["AI","technology policy"],"quoted_author":"","quoted_url":"","quoted_text":"","citation":"Cameron Wilson, \"Internal emails expose scale of Anthropic's Australian AI plans\", ABC News, 2026-08-26, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532","citation_markdown":"Cameron Wilson, [Internal emails expose scale of Anthropic's Australian AI plans](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532) — ABC News — 2026-08-26","attribution":"Originally published at ABC News. Link to the canonical ABC URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532","full_text":"Internal NSW government emails reveal AI giant Anthropic was interested in building up to 5 gigawatts of AI data centre capacity in NSW alone, a capacity that would be three times the size of Australia's entire data centre infrastructure.\n\nThis grand ambition from the US company behind Claude would require tens of billions of dollars in investment and a significant expansion in the number of data centres across the country, to meet just one company's demand in a single state.\n\n\"That is a massive amount,\" Olivia Shen, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said.\n\nIt comes as the Albanese government negotiates new rules for large-scale data centres with the states, which are vying with each other to attract investment from Silicon Valley.\n\nKnow more about this story? Email Cam Wilson on wilson.cameron@abc.net.au or his secure email cmwlsn@protonmail.com\n\nThe speed and scale of the AI data centre boom has prompted a growing backlash from local communities concerned about the impacts of building this physical infrastructure in their local communities.\n\nTraining and running generative AI needs an enormous amount of computing capacity, which requires expensive computing hardware and tremendous amounts of power. They can also be hot and noisy.\n\nWith Silicon Valley rushing out new AI models at a breakneck pace, there has been a race to build the physical infrastructure required to serve the billions of people using popular AI services launched since late 2022.\n\nEmails reveal plans to meet Anthropic CEO\n\nDocuments released by NSW parliament earlier this year reveal how a senior public servant shared information about Anthropic's interest in building out its AI computing capacity in NSW.\n\nDena Jacobs, executive director of independent state government agency Infrastructure NSW, wrote to two senior public servants at the Department of Premier's Investment NSW in March about a conversation with Anthropic adviser John Garnaut.\n\nMs Jacobs told the staff she wanted to organise a meeting between Investment NSW staff and Mr Garnaut ahead of a \"a more senior level meeting\".\n\n\"The context is that the CEO of Anthropic is visiting Sydney and would like to speak to NSW government about the opportunities to locate up to 5GW of AI training capacity in NSW. i.e. there's an opportunity to locate this outside Sydney,\" she wrote on March 18.\n\nMs Jacobs's email did not specify Anthropic's intended time frame for this computing goal.\n\nThe ABC understands the 5 gigawatt goal only reflected initial interest from Anthropic, which was one of a handful of major tech companies that Infrastructure NSW had spoken with about their future computing demands.\n\nBoth Anthropic and NSW Investment declined to comment.\n\nMr Garnaut told the ABC that he \"work[s] with AI firms\" but said he \"did not put in this particular request\".\n\nTwo weeks later, Anthropic's senior executive, including CEO Dario Amodei, visited Australia.\n\nMr Amodei met the prime minister and treasurer when they signed a memorandum of understanding between the company and the government, which included, among other things, a promise to \"expand [Anthropic]'s presence in Australia\".\n\nThe AI company has not publicly stated how much computing capacity it would like to obtain in Australia.\n\nThe ABC reported in June that Anthropic wanted 5 gigawatts of new Australian computing capacity by 2030, with a longer-term goal of 20 gigawatts.\n\nThe Australian Financial Review reported in July about a confidential tender sent by the AI company to Australian data centre builders asking for 1.4 gigawatts of capacity, valued at more than $20 billion.\n\nAustralia an attractive destination for centres\n\nAnthropic's interest in up to 5 gigawatts for a single state would dwarf the projections for the total amount of computing capacity expected to be built by the end of the decade.\n\nNew data released in a report from lobby group Data Centre Australia today calculated that Australia currently has 1.6 gigawatts of computing capacity in total.\n\nThe report projects that Australia's data centre capacity will grow to 3.9 gigawatts by 2030.\n\nThese figures are a marked increase from data released by the same group earlier this year.\n\nIn April, Data Centres Australia said there were 1.5 gigawatts of current capacity and 3.2 gigawatts projected by 2030, suggesting demand for computing capacity, and the ability to satisfy that demand, is growing even faster than anticipated.\n\nAnalysts estimate global data centre capacity was somewhere around 55 and 82 gigawatts in 2025.\n\nMs Shen said Australia had emerged as an attractive destination for US AI companies for several reasons.\n\n\"One is just that we have lots of land. Another is that we have huge amounts of renewable capacity, particularly solar energy, and the third is that we are a stable democracy,\" she said.\n\nWhile Australians are among the most distrustful populations in the world of AI, they are also some of the fastest adopters of the technology.\n\nAnthropic released data in June claiming that Australia ranks first in the world for use of its Claude project, when adjusted for the working-age population.\n\nMs Shen said Anthropic, out of all of the global tech companies, was particularly incentivised to move some of its operations abroad.\n\nAnthropic remains locked in a high-stakes legal battle with the US government over export controls placed on its cutting-edge models.\n\nThe company is also reportedly looking at going public at a US$2 trillion ($2.8 trillion) valuation as soon as late this year.\n\n\"In the face of this uncertainty about the regulatory landscape in the US, including a lot of local opposition to data centres, it makes sense for Anthropic to want to diversify its compute and its business outside of the United States,\" Ms Shen said.\n\nGovernments looking to attract business\n\nAustralian governments, too, have indicated their interest in attracting US tech companies to establish themselves here.\n\nOther internal NSW government emails released by parliamentary order show that the office of NSW Innovation, Science and Technology Minister Anoulack Chanthivong set up a meeting with one US Anthropic executive during their trip.\n\nThe ABC understands that meeting did not go ahead.\n\nMr Chanthivong told the ABC his government did not comment on private discussions but would regularly discuss investment opportunities with the companies.\n\n\"The Minns Labor government continues to welcome investment from leading technology companies,\" he said.\n\nLast week, NSW announced a set of new energy, water, environmental and community requirements would receive a commitment to have their development applications assessed within 75 days.\n\nThe state said qualifying projects must fund additional water and energy supply and impose no net cost on consumers and communities.\n\nThese rules come on top of Anthony Albanese's recent announcement that the federal government would create a set of \"Australian standards\" that he hoped would attract investment from top tech companies while avoiding a US-style community backlash.\n\nThis comes as polling from multiple outlets shows that a plurality of Australians would oppose data centres being built in their local community.\n\nThe Albanese government is pursuing new requirements around the use of energy and water, copyright protections, workers' rights and computing capacity for Australian businesses and researchers.\n\nMr Albanese is set for a showdown over these standards at national cabinet later today, as both Queensland and the Northern Territory have signalled that they will not accept a requirement to guarantee that all data centres bring enough new renewable energy to account for their added demand.\n\nThe rest of the new data centre rules will be developed as the Albanese government seeks to legislate the standards in early 2027.","full_text_attribution":"Full text extracted from the ABC News article at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-26/claude-maker-anthropics-massive-data-centre-plans-nsw/107075532. 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