Amazon investing $20 billion in local data centre infrastructure

Amazon has announced plans to invest a new total of AU$20 billion from 2025 to 2029 to expand, operate, and maintain its data centre infrastructure in Australia.

The investment will support what Amazon says is the strong growth in customer demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), accelerating AI adoption and capability, and the continued modernisation of Australian organisations of all sizes. 

To support the expanded local cloud infrastructure, Amazon is also investing in three new solar farms in Victoria and Queensland.

European Energy will deliver and operate the new projects, with Amazon committing to purchase a combined capacity of more than 170-megawatts (MW) across the three solar farms. Once all 11 renewable energy projects are operational, they are estimated to generate more than 1.4 million MW hours of carbon-free energy annually.

Amazon already invests in eight solar and wind projects across New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, which are helping power Amazon’s Australian operations, including Amazon data centres and fulfilment centres.

A study commissioned by AWS and conducted by consultancy Accenture last year suggested that migrating compute-heavy workloads, including AI tasks, from on-premises data centres to AWS cloud in Australia can reduce carbon emissions by up to 94 per cent.

Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese said this is the largest investment the country has seen from a global technology provider and is an exciting opportunity for Australia to build AI capability using secure, resilient infrastructure.

"This is exactly the kind of economic investment in our nation that we want to see, and creates opportunities for continued innovation and growth," the PM said.

"The investment will generate economic opportunity for Australians, including skilled jobs and infrastructure that can support complex AI and supercomputing applications.”

AWS CEO Matt Garman said this planned investment deepens the company's long-term commitment to supporting the growth and development of Australian organisations of all sizes and helping them harness the enormous opportunity that generative AI offers.

"We’re proud to be expanding our world-class data centre infrastructure, bringing more renewable energy projects online, and supporting the country’s vision to be a global AI leader," he said.

"AI is a once-in-a-generation transformation, and Amazon is pleased to be empowering all Australians to innovate at scale through this investment.”

AWS’ commitment to Australia began in 2012 with the opening of the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region.

In 2023, AWS launched the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region and the country’s first AWS Local Zones in Perth.

In April 2024, AWS launched Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed generative AI service, in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, and in July 2024, the Australian Government announced a partnership with AWS to provide a "Top Secret" AWS Cloud to deliver cloud innovation in national security and defence, and enhance the nation's defence and intelligence capabilities.