Amazon will invest a new total of AU$20 billion from 2025 to 2029 to expand, operate, and maintain its data center infrastructure in Australia. The company, in a blog, notes that the investment will support the strong growth in customer demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), accelerating AI adoption and capability, and the continued modernization of Australian organizations of all sizes.
The planned investment supports the Australian government’s vision to improve productivity and grow the economy through AI innovation. It puts the latest cloud and AI capabilities into the hands of hundreds of thousands of Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers and partners to drive innovation at scale, while ensuring local data residency and regulatory requirements are met.
According to the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Science and Resources, AI and automation are expected to contribute up to AU$600 billion annually to Australia’s GDP by 2030.
Three new renewable energy projects to support infrastructure expansion
To support the expanded local cloud infrastructure, Amazon is 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. 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 centers and fulfilment centers. Once all 11 renewable energy projects are operational, they are estimated to generate more than 1.4 million megawatt hours of carbon-free energy annually, or enough to power about 290,000 Australian homes each year.
From 2020 to 2022, Amazon invested an estimated AU$467 million in renewable energy projects in Australia. In 2024, Amazon was the third-largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in Australia, and remains the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally.
According to a study by Accenture, Australian organizations migrating compute-heavy AI workloads to AWS can reduce carbon emissions by up to 94% compared with on-premises data centers, due to efficiencies in AWS’s infrastructure hardware, power, and cooling, and carbon-free energy procurement.
The Honourable Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia said, “I am pleased to join Matt Garman to announce AWS’s investment of AU$20 billion over five years to further develop and expand its data centers in Sydney and Melbourne. This is the largest investment our 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 investment will generate economic opportunity for Australians, including skilled jobs and infrastructure that can support complex AI and supercomputing applications.”
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS said, “This planned investment deepens our long-term commitment to supporting the growth and development of Australian organizations of all sizes and helping them harness the enormous opportunity that generative AI offers. We’re proud to be expanding our world-class data center infrastructure, bringing more renewable energy projects online, and supporting the country’s vision to be a global AI leader. AI is a once-in-a-generation transformation, and Amazon is pleased to be empowering all Australians to innovate at scale through this investment.”
