Anthropic's 'massive' AI data centre plans revealed in emails
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.
US AI firm Anthropic expressed interest in building up to 5 gigawatts of data centre capacity in New South Wales (NSW), a figure that would exceed three times the current capacity of all Australia's data centres. This ambition was revealed through internal NSW government emails, which also indicated that Anthropic was one of several major tech companies being consulted about their future computing demands by the NSW government's Infrastructure NSW agency.
The scale of this proposal has sparked both excitement and concern, as it would require substantial investment and the construction of numerous new data centres. As the Albanese government works with states to establish new rules for large-scale data centres, the rapid expansion of this technology has led to growing apprehension among local communities over the environmental and social impacts of these physical installations.
Written by urgent.news from ABC News AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
