Australia to host Asia-Pacific’s biggest data centre
A leading AI data center operator founded by two Australian brothers is to create hundreds of new jobs by building one of the largest such facilities in the Asia-Pacific region.
IREN will build a massive data center in Bundey, South Australia, an uninhabited town 125km northeast of Adelaide and home to the state’s largest electrical transformers.
The facility will be connected directly to this substation and is expected to generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 400,000 to 800,000 homes.
It is planned to open in phases starting in 2028 and will support 500 jobs during construction, in addition to 200 ongoing jobs.
IREN says that when it opens, SA’s grid will be powered entirely by net renewable energy.
“South Australia offers what AI infrastructure at scale requires: abundant clean energy, connectivity to serve the APAC region, and a state government that understands the opportunity and acts on it,” IREN co-founder and co-director Daniel Roberts said on Thursday.
Sydney-headquartered IREN was founded in 2018 by Mr Roberts and his brother Will as a Bitcoin mining operation.
They listed the company on the US’s tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange in 2021 under the name Iris Energy, then rebranded in 2024 as part of a shift to AI and high-performance computing cloud data centres.
IREN has a market capitalization of $US23 billion ($32 billion), backed by a multibillion-dollar AI cloud deal with Microsoft and a partnership with AI chip maker NVIDIA, which has overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable company.
IREN has existing data centers in the US and Europe, and has a flagship facility in West Texas that is the size of the Sydney CBD, Barangaroo and The Rocks combined.
Once completed, Sweetwater Hub will consume approximately two gigawatts of energy; This would consume enough energy to power a medium-sized American city.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said the data center was a significant opportunity for the state.
“South Australia’s leadership in renewable energy, our record investment in higher education, our unabashedly pro-business and pro-business perspective, and the appointment of the country’s first minister dedicated to AI means we are uniquely positioned,” he said in a statement.
IREN said the facility features subsea fiber connectivity to major regional demand centers including Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.
The project strengthens IREN’s ability to secure large-scale, power-intensive sites with suitable transmission characteristics and long duration, investment bank Macquarie said in a research note.
“Overall, Bundey expands IREN’s global development footprint into APAC (Asia Pacific), positioning the company to capture growing hyperscale demand in a high-growth, undersupplied market.”
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