Anthropic reportedly takes capacity at Zerra’s Western Downs data centre campus

Reuters reports, citing people familiar with the deal, that Anthropic has signed its first Australian data-centre agreement for capacity at Zerra DC’s proposed Western Downs Digital Park near Dalby, Queensland. The facility is expected to begin coming online in 2027 and is intended for inference rather than model training.

The deal has not been announced by Anthropic or Zerra. Reuters says both companies declined to comment, and the transaction still requires approval from Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board. The story therefore remains Reported.

Reuters and ABC News describe the project at up to 2.16 GW of peak capacity. Separate reporting on the lodged development application describes four 360 MW data-centre buildings, or 1.44 GW of IT capacity, while broader project material allows for staged expansion and different measures of electrical demand.

Zerra’s own project site describes a staged proposal and says final design and staging remain subject to approvals. For the wire, 2.16 GW should therefore be treated as a peak or master-plan figure rather than capacity that is already approved, built or necessarily contracted to Anthropic.

Reuters says the Australian capacity is intended for inference. That points to regional serving capacity for Claude workloads rather than a new frontier-training cluster, which changes both the latency case and the regulatory context.

The Western Downs project is designed around a direct high-voltage connection and primarily air-cooled heat rejection. Zerra says the proposal uses staged electrical infrastructure and an independent water strategy, but the project remains under assessment and its final operating footprint is not yet fixed.

Useful confirmation points are a first-party announcement from Anthropic or Zerra, the final approved electrical scope, how much capacity Anthropic has actually contracted, and the commissioning schedule for each phase. Until those appear, the safest reading is that a very large Australian inference expansion is credibly reported but still conditional.