Amazon announced last Thursday plans to invest a new total of AU$20 billion ($13.04 billion) from 2025 to 2029 to expand, operate, and maintain its data center infrastructure in Australia.
The country’s largest publicly-announced global technology 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, Amazon said in a statement.
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 ($391 billion) annually to Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030.
“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,” said Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia.
“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,” he added.
Meanwhile, Matt Garman, Chief Executive Officer of AWS, said this planned investment deepens the firm’s 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,” he added.
The planned investment follows the launch of AWS AI Spring Australia, a comprehensive set of programs designed to accelerate AI adoption and capability across the nation.
This flagship initiative will provide targeted support across different sectors and industries.
Initial programs include the AWS Generative AI Accelerator, a program designed to grow early-stage generative AI startups, and AWS AI Launchpad, a program to help Australian enterprises begin and accelerate their generative AI journey.
Through AI Spring Australia, AWS will leverage its world-class infrastructure, deep AI expertise, and security with guardrails to help boost local productivity while unlocking new product and service innovation.
AWS’s 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 defense, and enhance the nation’s defense and intelligence capabilities.
From 2020 to 2022, Amazon invested an estimated AU$467 million ($305 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 percent compared with on-premises data centers, due to efficiencies in AWS’s infrastructure hardware, power, and cooling, and carbon-free energy procurement.
Since 2017, AWS has trained more than 400,000 people across Australia, empowering individuals to accelerate their careers and contribute to the nation’s digital transformation and economy.
Amazon has a deep commitment to upskilling people in Australia through a combination of local and global skills programs.
These include AWS’s Work-Based Learning Program, a 12-month training program for data center operations, and Amazon’s AI Ready initiative, launched with a goal to provide free AI skills training to two million people globally by 2025.
AWS said it will continue to collaborate with educational institutions, industry partners, and the government to further develop comprehensive training programs that prepare Australians for the jobs of the future.
Together with the government, private sector, and academia, AWS said it is committed to unlocking Australia’s AI capability and nurturing future generations of technology and AI innovators.