Jul 5, 2026 – 2.52pmThe world’s most valuable artificial intelligence company, Anthropic, wants to buy at least 1.4 gigawatts of capacity from Australian data centres that will cost as much as $US15 billion ($21.6 billion) to build, far exceeding previous estimates of its needs.A tender issued confidentially by Anthropic, and obtained by Street Talk, shows it is aiming to start using at least 1 gigawatt of this capacity by the end of next year, after opening its Australian office earlier this year.Sarah Thompson has co-edited Street Talk since 2009, specialising in private equity, investment banking, M&A and equity capital markets stories. Prior to that, she spent 10 years in London as a markets and M&A reporter at Bloomberg and Dow Jones.Kanika Sood is a journalist based in Sydney who writes for the Street Talk column.Emma Rapaport is a co-editor of the Street Talk column. Prior to that, she was a markets reporter at The Australian Financial Review.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber?
Leaked Anthropic docs reveal plans to buy 1.4GW of Aussie DC capacity
Should it go down this route, Infratil-owned CDC Centre is expected to come out with the lion’s share at about 500MW, sources said.
TL;DRAI
Anthropic tender for 1.4GW Australian data centre capacity (A$21.6B) targets 1GW operational by end-2027. Signals infrastructure competition and energy bottleneck: IT leaders must reassess cloud training strategies and geographic redundancy needs.
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