Sources: Anthropic has signed its first Australian data center lease for a planned 2.16GW campus located ~150 miles from Brisbane, set to come online in 2027 (Byron Kaye/Reuters)

Anthropic has signed its first Australian data center lease for a planned 2.16GW campus located approximately 150 miles from Brisbane. The facility, known as the Western Downs Digital Park, is expected to be one of the largest data centers in Australia and will draw as much power as about 1.5 million average Australian households.

The lease is subject to approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board. According to ABC News AU, the data center will be built near Dalby by a Singaporean developer and is expected to create thousands of ongoing jobs.

Anthropic aims to start using the center in 2027. The company plans to use the site to power its artificial intelligence program Claude to answer user questions. Reuters reports that the deal makes Anthropic the latest AI heavyweight to secure a foothold in Australia, following an offtake agreement OpenAI struck for a Sydney data centre last year. Anthropic's planned valuation is $2.8 trillion, according to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC News AU, Economic Times Tech — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.