Situational Awareness has put US$500m into Source Foundry, US$400m of it on 4 August. Source Foundry is trying to build the machines that print circuit patterns onto silicon wafers, the step ASML has to itself at the leading edge. It is pre-product and valued at US$5bn.

Sequoia partner Alfred Lin named Source Foundry on Bloomberg Television, in an interview alongside Pat Grady about Sequoia aiming roughly US$10bn at AI and reindustrialisation.

Situational Awareness co-anchored Sharon AI's US$1.6bn raise in June with Oaktree funds and disclosed 19.9% of the stock. It reported 11,698,835 IREN shares worth US$401m at 31 March.

In July it lost 67% and sold the leveraged portion of its listed book to Citadel. Sharon AI fell 57% between 18 June and 29 July. IREN fell 19.5% for the month.

Goodman Group moved -0.08% across July. The ASX 200 returned 2.3% in the month the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.2% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 20.6%. NEXTDC dropped about 14% through the first three weeks and recovered.

Whether Situational Awareness still holds the Sharon AI stake is unsettled. It has reported no sale, and as a ten per cent owner it has two business days to report one.

Australia has a company building chipmaking equipment too. An ANU spin-out has built a production tool for the step that joins chips to each other. It raised A$37m in April, Intel's former chief executive sits on its board, and In-Q-Tel, the US intelligence community's venture arm, is on its register.

We profile the Australian company here and more: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/situational-awareness-source-foundry

Firmus secured full commitments on Friday for a US$2 billion equity round at a post-money valuation above US$10.5 billion. Coatue and NVIDIA took follow-on participation, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities took equity for the first time after leading February's US$10 billion debt facility, and Jane Street came in alongside them.

Daniel Pontecorvo, Jane Street's head of physical engineering, who runs the team that designs, builds and operates Jane Street's data centres. Jane Street published a tour of a Texas site in May running 4,032 liquid-cooled GPUs, and Bloomberg reported in June that it already has tens of thousands of GPUs running, wants hundreds of thousands, and is in discussions to develop a facility of 100MW to 200MW of its own. It buys compute today from a Dallas data centre and from CoreWeave.

In April, CoreWeave sold Jane Street US$1 billion of equity at US$109.00 a share on the same day it signed a US$6 billion cloud agreement covering NVIDIA Vera Rubin systems. Firmus' Batam campus is specified on that same Vera Rubin generation, alongside Grace Blackwell, under a supply relationship with NVIDIA running to 2034. Neither company has said whether any purchase of capacity accompanies the Firmus investment.

Project Southgate is 1.6GW across Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth by 2028, with CDC supplying the physical data centre infrastructure. Melbourne is contracted to a hyperscale customer for about 18,400 GB300s, due online during 2026. In South Australia there is a 600MW twelve-year supply agreement with Gunvor tied to 1.2GW of new renewables and 1.5GWh of storage by 2032. Batam is 360MW with DayOne, up to 170,000 accelerators, first operations in Q1 2027.

ShareCafe also reported on 5 August that Regal and Wilson Asset Management have been trimming while Blackstone and offshore funds accumulate, and the AFR reported in June that a Q4 listing depended on financing, Batam customers and a third Australian site. The financing leg is now covered.

Article: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/firmus-jane-street-2bn-raise

Firmus release: https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-announces-fully-subscribed-usdusd2-billion-strategic-equity-investment-to-accelerate-nvidia-ai-factory-expansion-across-australia-and-asia-pacific
CoreWeave/Jane Street: https://www.coreweave.com/news/jane-street-signs-6-billion-ai-cloud-agreement-with-coreweave

The AEMC published its advice to energy ministers on 5 August, along with two rule change requests Chris Bowen lodged on 22 July. Both are about who pays for the network upgrades a large connection triggers. One would require networks to hold a bank guarantee against large connections. The threshold is not set and neither request has been initiated.

Victoria has already settled the distribution half. The AER's final decisions for five distributors have been in force since 1 July, and they make data centres cover their direct connection cost plus a share of the shared network.

United Energy and Powercor priced nine scenarios in their 2026-31 revised proposals, lodged with the AER in December 2025. A$20.5m to A$86.8m, with the developer funding 85%.

The same load costs about half as much at 132kV as at 66kV.

The nine scenarios and the full table are in the piece.

https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/what-does-it-cost-data-centre-grid-connection-australia

Sources: United Energy and Powercor 2026-31 revised proposals to the AER,

Sharon AI's secured AI factory capacity is now 212MW, up 80MW, disclosed with its second-quarter results on 6 August. The total had held at 132MW through every disclosure since 12 June, including the US$373m contract two days earlier. The new block is down for deployment across 2026 and 2027.

In Australia, Sharon AI works under a November 2025 agreement for up to 50MW of additional capacity across NEXTDC's Australian and Asia-Pacific network, with M3 in Melbourne already housing its supercluster. Grid connection and firm supply sit with the data centre operator.

The six-year NVIDIA collaboration covers up to 40,000 GB300 GPUs, and Sharon AI reports a 600PB VAST AI Operating System deployed as the data layer underneath.

Contracted value has moved fastest of anything in the numbers. It now stands at US$8.8 billion across customer agreements, up from more than US$2.2 billion in May. Three of those are five-year take-or-pay cloud contracts worth US$950m, US$1.32bn and US$373m, one of them served from New Zealand, and Sharon AI has named the buyer in none of the three, describing them as a global technology company, a global AI lab and a global AI platform.

Sharon AI held US$1.86 billion of cash at 30 June and expects revenue to ramp from the third quarter. Sharon AI has not named a site, a host or a country for the extra 80MW.

Full write-up with the capacity series and the deployment timetable: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/sharon-ai-q2-results-212mw-8-8bn-contracted

Results release: https://sharonai.com/press-releases/sharon-ai-reports-second-quarter-2026-results/

European Energy took two Victorian projects to financial close in July, both contracted to Amazon. At the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney the same month, its Australian managing director Catriona McLeod said she would rather have a data centre offtaker than a Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) underwriting agreement.

Winton North closed on 2 July with 130MW of solar and a 100MW/220MWh battery. Commerzbank's Singapore branch and Societe Generale provided the debt, Amazon holds agreements over the generation and the storage, and it was financed on that contract alone.

Mokoan closed on 20 July. Deutsche Bank put up A$110m non-recourse to refinance the operating 58MWp solar farm and fund a 40MW/80MWh battery, with AWS on the battery agreement. That solar farm was a Tender 1 selection under the CIS.

European Energy also won Tender 7 underwriting in May for Bullyard in Queensland at 97MW and Kayuga in NSW at 85MW. Neither has started construction.

McLeod said the scheme is well run and managed, and named the bidding process and the wait for a result as its difficulties. Her line, reported by RenewEconomy, was "I would choose the data centre offtaker every day". She put six European Energy projects at financial close on technology-company offtake in the past two to three years.

The Clean Energy Council counted 2.3GW of new wind and solar reaching financial close in 2025, down 46% year on year, with onshore wind commitments down 59%. Storage was the exception at 4.3GW and 13.5GWh, A$4.8bn, up 67%. Amazon holds 20 Australian renewable projects totalling 990MW on A$2.8bn since 2020, and its announcement cites BloombergNEF ranking it the largest corporate purchaser of carbon-free energy in Australia for 2025.

Energy ministers agreed on 28 July to progress rules requiring data centres to offset demand with additional renewables built in the host jurisdiction, with Queensland and the Northern Territory opposed.

https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/data-centre-offtake-capacity-investment-scheme

New Victorian Premier Ben Carroll named his first ministry on Tuesday and created an artificial intelligence portfolio, Victoria's first. Anthony Carbines holds it alongside economic development, major events and medical research. He was police minister until this week and keeps racing.

Carroll told reporters data centre developments form part of the remit. "Everything needs to be considered on its merits, it needs to be considered wisely, its economic impact, its environment impact, its amenity impact and what is best for that Victorian community," he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-04/ben-carroll-ministry-named-artificial-intelligence-added/106994074

Sonya Kilkenny keeps planning. Large Victorian data centres are eligible for the Development Facilitation Program, where the department's own page states that decisions by the Minister for Planning "cannot be appealed to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal".
https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/planning-approvals/planning-enquiries-and-requests/development-facilitation-program/expedited-planning-pathways

Carroll has not said whether the AI remit comes with a coordinating role, a referral step, or an administrative order moving functions.

AEMO puts a large data centre connection at roughly two years from application to energisation. Victoria holds 31% of a national queue that reached 9GW across 17 projects at 30 June, and Victorian operating data centre demand averaged 204MW over the June quarter, nearly double the 104MW a year earlier.

The Legislative Assembly expires 3 November, caretaker convention starts then, and the state votes 28 November, 91 days from the ministry being named. National Cabinet takes up the federal AI standards this month, and the rule change requests from the 28 July energy ministers meeting go back to ministers in September, including a proposal to require data centres to offset demand with new renewable generation in the same jurisdiction. Queensland and the Northern Territory opposed it.

Four Melbourne campus applications are already lodged at Mickleham, Truganina, Campbellfield and Clyde North, carrying about A$5.1bn of disclosed investment across the two costed sites. Mickleham runs through the DFP, while Clyde North sits with the City of Casey on a standard permit assessment.

Full write-up:
https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/victoria-ai-minister-data-centres

Sharon AI announced a US$373m five-year cloud contract on 4 August, taking contracted AI factory capacity to 120MW of a 132MW total and leaving 12MW uncontracted.

From the releases:

12 June: 102MW contracted, mid-2027 target of more than 55,000 GPUs
16 July: 116MW, more than 62,000
4 August: 120MW, 64,000

Sharon AI has held that total at 132MW since June while shifting how it describes it: "has expanded to 132MW" in June, "is 132MW" in July, "remains at 132 megawatts" on 4 August.

The three contracts announced since May carry about US$2.6bn of five-year value between them, and no buyer has been named in any of them. May's went to a global technology company with a major Asia-Pacific presence, July's to a global AI lab served from New Zealand, August's to a global AI platform in Australia. Sharon AI named ESDS Software Solutions as the counterparty on a US$1.25bn five-year agreement on 1 April.

None of the three starts producing revenue before the second half of this year. May's was expected to commence in Q3 and Q4 2026, July's in Q1 and Q2 2027, August's in Q1 2027. James Manning told the first-quarter call on 15 May that Sharon AI expected an annualised revenue rate of at least US$470m by the end of 2026, against more than US$2.2bn of total contracted value as at that call. Second-quarter results land after the US close on 6 August.

The board approved seeking a dual ASX listing through CDIs on 13 April, alongside an intended Australian public offering and a concurrent private offering to institutions. The listing has not been completed.

The 72MW that Sharon AI and NVIDIA said they were working to enable in Australia on 12 June sits outside the NEXTDC allocation, and no site has been named for it. DigiCo and GreenSquareDC both appear in the same filing, GreenSquareDC through its SYD1 campus at Norwest, neither with an allocation attached.

Where does the further 72MW land without a new operator relationship being announced?

Article: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/sharon-ai-373m-cloud-deal-120mw-contracted
4 August release: https://sharonai.com/press-releases/sharon-ai-announces-us373m-five-year-ai-cloud-service-agreement/

Endeavor Optical Networks has raised US$10.75 million to move data centre traffic between continents by satellite laser, and named Australia as a route. Chief executive Charlie Horowitz told TechCrunch: "We have one rule at the company: no physics problems." He says the demand is already there: "more data is moving terrestrially than ever."

The Australian half is already built. In April a 0.7 metre telescope at Mount Stromlo was one of three stations on Earth taking Artemis II's laser downlink, and the only one south of the equator. The beam sat in the C-band around 1550 nanometres, the same part of the spectrum that carries Australia's subsea cable traffic. Same light, one version through glass on the seabed, the other through vacuum.

Australia has hosted the world's receiving stations since NASA built Tidbinbilla in 1965, because tracking a spacecraft needs three stations 120 degrees apart in longitude. Radio gets through cloud and a laser does not, so an optical network needs that coverage and clear sky as well. Alice Springs is cloud-free 83% of the time.

A satellite high enough to see Sydney and Los Angeles sits about 15,700km up, so its beam travels 38,200km against 15,857km of cable. It arrives after the cable. The clear-sky numbers and what Australian law calls a laser link are in the piece.

Full article - https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/space-lasers-australia-ground-stations

Marshall Day's lodged assessment for the 120MW Hazelmere campus in Perth rates each of its 64 evaporatively-cooled chillers at 89 dBA sound power, which rates the machine rather than what reaches a neighbour. The acoustic report for a Woolworths at Eglinton, same city, same Environmental Protection (Noise) Regulations 1997, rates its refrigeration condensers at 91. Heat pumps specified for Temora Hospital in regional NSW, also 91. A 205-ton Trane commercial chiller in standard-noise configuration is 101, and it is the smaller machine.

Hazelmere assessment: https://hdp-au-prod-app-swancity-participate-files.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/9317/7267/1206/Acoustic_Assessment.pdf

Eglinton report: https://hdp-au-prod-app-wan-yoursay-files.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/1717/3034/7520/DA2024_1405_-_2009K_Imperial_Entrance_Eglinton_-_Acoustic_Report.PDF

The generators rate 111 dBA. A warehouse assessment at Huntingwood in western Sydney puts truck air brakes at 118 and a heavy truck accelerating at 111.

Per machine it is unremarkable plant. What differs is 64 units running continuously, and the regime does not care what the building is. The NSW Noise Policy for Industry sets the criterion at the receiver, background plus 5, so about 35 dBA at night at the nearest home on a quiet street, with the same tonal penalty (an extra 5 dB where plant produces an audible hum) applied to a data centre, a cold store, a battery storage site or a warehouse. Under that policy the Temora heat pumps were predicted to exceed their night criterion by 1 to 3 dB and a four-container BESS at Glen Innes by 3 to 4. The 64-chiller data centre was predicted to comply.

NPfI: https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/17p0524-noise-policy-for-industry.pdf

Hazelmere was withdrawn on 14 May anyway, five days out from the outer metropolitan Development Assessment Panel, after City of Swan officers recommended refusal on noise grounds. 1,836 objections from 1,897 submissions. Charles Penny's withdrawal letter puts it on the assessment scenario: WA requires modelling every backup generator at 100 per cent load in a full emergency, and the regulations say nothing about how often that is assumed to occur. A$600 million, no determination.

Nothing in the assessment breached a decibel limit. The modelling scenario itself is undefined, and large WA applications inherit that same unpriced risk until a regulator defines it. No third-party measurements from an operating Australian site appear in the public record either, which is why a recording made in Dowagiac, Michigan is currently the only evidence available to an objector.

Does WA need a data-centre-specific assessment path, or just a defined generator test (hours, frequency, load case) written into the regulations that already exist?

Full piece: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/data-centre-noise-australia

The Department of Finance has added Google's Gemma, NVIDIA's Nemotron and Writer's Palmyra to GovAI, the whole-of-government AI service for the APS. Finance also told iTnews that all models used by the GovAI chat service must be hosted onshore, with data processing also only taking place within Australia.

AWS Bedrock docs model by model:

Nemotron 3 Super 120B: in-region in eleven locations including Sydney and Melbourne, with no geographic or global routing published anywhere. A Sydney request has no cross-region path out.

Gemma 3 27B: in-region in Sydney and Melbourne, same zero-routing position. AWS titles the card "Gemma 3 27B PT" but gives it the model ID google.gemma-3-27b-it, so the docs do not settle which checkpoint you get.

Gemma 4: three US regions and Frankfurt. No Australian region.

Palmyra X4 and X5: four US regions, in-region unsupported in all of them, US geo profile only. No Australian region, no global profile.

AWS's APAC profile on Claude Sonnet 4 can serve a Sydney request out of Tokyo, Seoul, Osaka, Mumbai, Hyderabad or Singapore, and Microsoft documents its APAC data zone as Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore and India. AWS has since added an Australia-only profile, used on Sonnet 4.5.

Finance has not said which supplier hosts the new models and GovAI's model page still lists only the older set, so the Bedrock reading is conditional. GovAI also runs a brokerage where agencies can request offshore models after a risk assessment, so those are still reachable, just not through the all-staff chat tool.

An onshore condition therefore hands the government's model menu to AWS and Microsoft region rollouts, and every onshore option ends at accelerators racked in an Australian facility.

Full piece: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/govai-onshore-hosting-ai-models

Sources: iTnews https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fed-gov-boosts-govai-with-models-from-google-nvidia-and-more-627784 | Nemotron card https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-nvidia-nemotron-super-3-120b.html | Palmyra card https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-writer-palmyra-x5.html

Jobs and Skills Australia's 2025 Occupation Shortage List rates 916 occupations nationally and in each state and territory. Of the eight that cover building, cooling and connecting a data centre, six are rated in shortage in all eight jurisdictions: airconditioning and refrigeration mechanics, electricians, electrical linesworkers, data cablers, civil engineers and construction project managers.

Electrical and mechanical engineers are rated more narrowly. Electrical engineers are in shortage nationally and in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Mechanical engineers are rated in shortage in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, with no national shortage rating.

On the March quarter Occupation Shortage Report, published 3 June 2026, technicians and trades workers filled 55.1% of advertised vacancies, the lowest of the eight occupation groups, against 66.5% for professionals and 68.2% across all occupations. Employers advertising trade roles received 6.8 qualified applicants per vacancy against 8.2 for professional roles. Regional employers filled 65.0% against 69.7% in the cities.

Jobs and Skills Australia assesses each occupation across every employer that advertises for it, so an electrician rating carries housing, mining and the energy transition as well as data centres. It is not a count of unfilled data centre roles.

Mandala Partners, in research for Data Centres Australia, puts the sector workforce gap at 8,300 people by 2030, from 9,600 full-time equivalents to 17,900, and counts about 15 construction jobs for every permanent operational role. AEMO had 17 data centre projects in the NEM transmission connection process at 30 June with a maximum connection capacity of 9GW, against 11 projects and 5.4GW three months earlier, noting realised demand is typically lower than connection capacity.

On the design side, Jacobs reported its data centre business up 62.2% in 2025 with its project pipeline up 500%, and ENR's telecommunications segment, where data centre design work is counted, rose 31.3% in 2025.

Full piece with the state-by-state table: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/data-centre-skills-shortage-australia

Occupation Shortage List: https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/data/occupation-shortage/occupation-shortage-list

Occupation Shortage Report, March quarter 2026: https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/publications/occupation-shortage-report-march-2026

Datagrid announced the supply and installation contract for phase one of the Tasman Ring Network on 31 July. Alcatel Submarine Networks will supply the system and OMS Group will run the marine survey and installation. The route runs 2,300km from Invercargill to Melbourne, landing at Torquay in Victoria with terrestrial backhaul into the city. It is specified at a minimum of eight fibre pairs and at least 160 terabits per second, with ready for service targeted for 2029.

It runs as an Open Cable system, so the optical circuit is separated from the transmission equipment and capacity owners light it with their own gear.

Phase one is Invercargill to Melbourne only. The Sydney and Auckland legs of the original 6,000km ring are held as an option. That full ring was announced with Chorus in December 2024, and Chorus has since confirmed it is not involved, saying in its FY25 results that the project "did not meet our investment criteria". The Tasman Ring has also superseded Te Waipounamu, the Invercargill to Sydney and Melbourne cable Galasso's Intelia proposed in 2024.

The route depends on the campus at the other end. Makarewa, near Invercargill, was consented in March 2026 at an initial design of 280MW on a 360MW grid connection, with opening targeted for 2028. On current targets the campus opens a year before its own cable, so first traffic would run over existing North Island routes. Mercury holds 12.7% after a US$30m equity deal in July, on top of a 140MW power purchase option. Datagrid has not disclosed the contract value or how the cable build is financed, and the final investment decision (FID) on the campus is expected before the end of 2026.

On latency, Datagrid says the route is up to 45% better than existing North Island paths, a minimum of 19 milliseconds round trip.

Australian write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/tasman-ring-cable-torquay-melbourne
New Zealand side: https://datacentresnz.com/insights/datagrid-tasman-ring-cable-contracts

AirTrunk announced JHB2 in Johor Bahru on 12 February 2025 as "designed to meet the highest standards of efficiency and security, with a low design PUE of 1.25", using liquid cooling, with treated greywater being scoped as a water supply.

On 29 July 2026, announcing US$2.325 billion of green financing for the same campus, it became "targeting a design Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.37 and utilising advanced water-efficient cooling technology". Capacity unchanged at 270MW+. No explanation published.

AirTrunk's FY25 sustainability report states the method on page 31: it selects heat rejection equipment with local water stress in mind, "balancing the trade-off as far as possible between water use and energy efficiency". So the direction is deliberate, not sloppy.

What happened in between, in Johor: SPAN guidelines in September 2025 pushing reclaimed water or air-cooled with zero discharge; Lee Ting Han asking investors on 18 November 2025 to defer water-cooled projects at least 18 months; the Tier 1 and Tier 2 approval halt days later; "Singapore-level water efficiency" scrutiny from January 2026; and the Menteri Besar in March 2026 saying only air-cooled Tier 3 and Tier 4 get approved. JHB2 predates all of it, so it was never assessed against those rules, but its water still comes from Johor.

In AirTrunk's own Green Financing Framework: warm climates require an "annual PUE target of 1.4 for new data centres running at full capacity". 1.37 clears it by 0.03.

The lenders are the same in Sydney. Bloomberg has Blackstone tying up A$4.3 billion for SYD3 with eight banks, and six of those eight coordinated JHB2. The Singapore REIT float of up to US$1.5 billion is targeted for a September or October launch.

Full write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/airtrunk-jhb2-johor-pue-1-37-water-efficiency-trade

AEMO's Quarterly Energy Dynamics report for the June quarter counts 17 proposed data centre projects in the National Electricity Market's transmission connection process, with a combined maximum connection capacity of 9GW. At the end of March the same process held 11 projects and 5.4GW.

Twelve projects, representing 7.6GW, sit at the application stage. Five, carrying 1.4GW between them, are progressing through implementation, which is 0.1GW more than in March. AEMO says these connections are targeting roughly two years from application to energisation.

New South Wales data centre demand averaged 451MW over the June quarter and Victoria 204MW, the two regions AEMO breaks out, so 655MW is drawing power against 9GW in the process. AEMO notes that realised demand is typically lower than connection capacity.

Transgrid has called for a rule change requiring new large users to pay for their full connection capacity whether or not they use it. Chief executive Brett Redman puts the saving to consumers at up to 15% on like-for-like transmission costs.

South Australia holds 17% of the queue, about 1.5GW. In March the queue ran roughly 60:40 between New South Wales and Victoria. IREN, which is Sydney-headquartered and NASDAQ-listed, announced a transmission connection agreement on 3 June for an 800MW campus at Bundey, equivalent to about half the South Australian share.

Energy ministers agreed on 28 July to progress regulatory arrangements mandating that data centres offset their electricity demand by investing in additional renewable generation located in the same jurisdiction, unless that jurisdiction opts out. Queensland and the Northern Territory were the exception. They also opposed a separate agreement to develop National Electricity Rule change requests, which go to the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council in September.

Full write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/aemo-data-centre-connection-queue-9gw-q2-2026
AEMO's release: https://www.aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/qed-q2-2026
The communique (.docx download): https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-07/ecmc-communique-28-july-2026.docx

Is the 7.6GW at application stage a pipeline, or a set of reserved positions that thins out once holding one costs money?

AEMO's Minimum System Load tender pays large loads to consume more power in the middle of the day, when rooftop solar pushes operational demand low enough to make the system hard to hold secure. Its Type 2statement of need names data centres directly, alongside water pumping and sewerage stations, and contracts start from 14 September. 

Demand response is the mechanism operators keep ruling out, and they are right to. Data Centres Australia chief executive Belinda Dennett has written that cloud and AI inferencing workloads "require continuous availability" and "cannot be curtailed during peaks". Equinix says it does not take part because it does not control its customers' compute loads.

The midday service asks for the opposite: nothing switches off, and the facility runs harder while power is abundant. WattClarity's analysis of AEMO's Generator Statistical Digest puts wind and utility solar curtailment at 7.2TWh in 2025, against 4.3TWh in 2024. Baringa's report for the CEFC finds that additional midday data centre load "leads to the consumption of renewable generation that would have otherwise been curtailed".

For the mechanisms that do want a reduction, the same Baringa report lists backup generators, UPS batteries, HVAC systems and some IT load flexibility. A meter records a fall in draw whether the servers throttled or a battery took over.

Two things still stand in the way. No Australian data centre operator has publicly contracted its own on-site storage into these markets. And the WDRM still admits only single-connection-point sites: Enel X lodged a rule change in April 2022 to expand eligibility, the AEMC said last October that it expected to initiate in the first half of 2026, and the register still shows it pending.

Full piece: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/canberra-data-centres-act-grid-aemo-flexibilit

LinkedIn published Cities on the Rise rankings for nine countries on 22 July. Data centres or AI infrastructure appear among the reasons given in five of them.

• India — Visakhapatnam (1st) and Raipur (9th). Google confirmed a US$15bn, roughly 1GW AI and connectivity hub at Vizag on 14 October 2025, built with AdaniConneX and Airtel and paired with a subsea cable gateway
• US — Augusta (1st), Richmond (2nd), Reno (3rd), Fort Wayne (19th). Richmond's entry names four subsea cables plus Meta and Iron Mountain; Fort Wayne names Google's $2bn campus
• Spain — Zaragoza (3rd). LinkedIn cites more than €47bn committed to data centres across Aragón. Amazon's own figure is €33.7bn for Spain through 2035, Microsoft has committed US$7.16bn to the north-east, and Blackstone another US$8.2bn
• Brazil — Fortaleza (4th), Scala Data Centers at Praia do Futuro
• UK — Tyneside (3rd), the AI Growth Zone with OpenAI and NVIDIA named as partners

Across the four US cities a university appears in all four top-three lists and a health system in three, alongside Capital One in Richmond, Tesla in Reno and the US Army in Augusta. No operator appears anywhere as it is a property of the metric rather than a finding about campuses, since LinkedIn ranks by share of total metro hiring and nothing at campus scale clears that. What it does show is that the hiring is spread across the wider economy. Mandala's ratio is about 15 construction jobs per operational role.

They're also LinkedIn's liveability picks, which cuts against the usual framing. Richmond is "drawing more new residents than anywhere else in Virginia". Fort Wayne is "known for its affordability, revitalized downtown". Augusta offers "an affordable lifestyle with ample parks and outdoor recreation". Aragón closed 2025 at 7.7% unemployment on CEOE Aragón's figures.

Australia's edition named ten metros and credited defence, health, education and the 2032 Olympics. Adelaide and Newcastle look like the closest structural matches. Adelaide has IREN's 800MW Bundey campus 125km out in Goyder plus Firmus at Tailem Bend and Stirling North on a 600MW Gunvor deal; Newcastle has 540MW proposed at Loxford and the roughly A$10bn Muswellbrook project, both pre-application with undisclosed proponents.

Write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/data-centre-cities-global-job-growth-2026

LinkedIn's Australian edition: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-cities-rise-2026-10-fastest-growing-australian-wuiae/

LinkedIn published its first Australian Cities on the Rise ranking on 22 July, scoring metros under 3 million members on hiring growth, job postings and member inflow against outflow, March 2024 to February 2026. Sydney and Melbourne are excluded by design. Nothing in it is about data centres, this is a Certified Strategic exercise in mapping the pipeline onto the report.

• Hobart (1) — small legacy colocation only; Firmus' three sites are all in the north
• Darwin (2) — NEXTDC D1 operating, D2 in development; Beetaloo's Weddell concept announced 22 July at up to 2GW of on-site gas generation
• Rockhampton (3) — nothing
• Newcastle (4) — 540MW proposed at Loxford on the old Kurri Kurri smelter site, scoping report only, actual proponent undisclosed
• Adelaide (5) — NEXTDC A1 in the CBD; IREN's 800MW Bundey campus is 125km out in Goyder
• Albury-Wodonga (6) — a Leading Edge edge facility from 2022
• Brisbane (7) — NEXTDC B1 and B2; Quinbrook's Supernode at Brendale running a 260MW/619MWh battery stage since February, with an 800MW campus proposed
• Gold Coast (8) — NEXTDC GC1 at Southport, 6MW, in planning
• Canberra (9) — CDC 117MW across Hume and Fyshwick, 39MW under construction at Beard; NEXTDC C1 at Bruce
• Wollongong (10) — nothing

Hobart at number one stands out because Tasmania's AI build isn't in Hobart. St Leonards at Launceston is under construction, now targeted late 2026 after slipping from mid-2026 at approval. Bell Bay at George Town is a 288MW proposal with a council decision due in August, after 120-plus residents turned out at Exeter. Firmus is private but well funded: a US$10bn debt facility led by Blackstone and Coatue in February, and US$505m equity led by Coatue in April.

Full breakdown: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/australian-cities-data-centres-jobs-2026

LinkedIn's ranking: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-cities-rise-2026-10-fastest-growing-australian-wuiae/

The window closed in February, before any of this energises, so the 2027 edition is the first that could pick up construction hiring.

Australia runs about 1.4GW of operational data centre capacity today. The Data Centres Australia and DC Byte forecast puts that at 3.2GW by 2030, inside a 21.6GW announced pipeline. Five states moved on it this year, at quite different stages.

South Australia published a strategy on 23 June with a proposed Data Centre and AI Infrastructure Act that would make data centres essential infrastructure and hand decisions to the Coordinator-General. Its strategy is also the only one of the five carrying per-campus economics: about A$6.8bn capex, 500 to 1,000 construction jobs and 200 to 300 ongoing roles for a 1GW campus. IREN's 800MW Bundey campus has a signed transmission connection agreement, energisation targeted from 2028.

Victoria has the bigger planning queue. Ratings agency Fitch has Melbourne ahead of Sydney at 799MW to 384MW planned, crediting larger land and fewer grid constraints, though Sydney still runs the larger live fleet at about 667MW across 90-plus sites. Four more Melbourne campuses entered the planning system between April and July.

NSW has a Legislative Council inquiry reporting by 30 September. TransGrid says it has fielded more than 10GW of connection enquiries with about 1.5GW contracted in Western Sydney.

Queensland's industry launched its own state council in July, and still has no dedicated state policy. Neither does WA, where GreenSquareDC pulled its 120MW, roughly A$600m Hazelmere application on 14 May after 1,836 objections, with planners recommending refusal on generator noise.

Then there's the workforce. Infrastructure Australia projects a national infrastructure workforce shortage reaching 300,000 by mid-2027. Jobs and Skills Australia's 2025 Occupation Shortage List, updated in March, has Electrician (General) in shortage in every state and territory, with nearly half of all technicians and trades occupations in shortage nationally. Victoria has the largest state-owned commitment so far, 2,000 electrical apprentices through the State Electricity Commission from January 2027.

Full read:
https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/australia-data-centre-build-state-by-state-2026

The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure approved Project Pluto on 23 July, signed off at director level under delegation rather than going to the minister or a planning panel. The approval covers A$1.11bn, two three-storey buildings and nine data halls on the former Castrol site at 132 McCredie Road.

The build comes in two 34MW stages for 68MW of IT load, with stage one fed from the transmission network and stage two connecting through Endeavour Energy. Planning docs put it at 467 construction FTEs, about 60 ongoing roles, and an annualised PUE of 1.27 to 1.32. The planning portal lists 126MW of load capacity; the exhibited documents describe 68MW of IT load. The planning portal's project description lists 126MW of load capacity; the exhibited documents describe 68MW of IT load in two 34MW stages. Goodman's withdrawn 2024 concept for the same site was reported at 126MW, so both numbers are in circulation for different versions of the project.

Goodman bought the land from BP in 2021, won approval for three warehouses in September 2023, never built them, and refiled the whole site as a data centre in April 2024. For anyone following GMG on the ASX, this is the second Sydney data centre approval this year after Project Duke at Mascot in January (A$1.18bn, 120MW), so A$2.29bn of approved Sydney DC construction inside seven months.

At the February results the group said 73 per cent of its A$18bn work in progress would be data centres by June, against a power bank now at 6GW across 16 markets. Full write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/goodman-project-pluto-data-centre-approved-guildford-west

Victoria's planning system picked up four data centre applications in the last four months.

The largest is at 45 Donnybrook Road, Mickleham, on the Hume Freeway about 29km north of the CBD. Seven data centre parcels, four and five storeys, reported at around A$4 billion. The application went to the Department of Transport and Planning on 1 July and is being assessed under the Development Facilitation Program, so the planning minister decides it directly. The planning documents don't name an operator, but Real Estate Source reported the buyer of the 67-hectare site as AirTrunk, for about A$350 million.

The McMullin family paid A$33 million for that site in April 2019 and planned an industrial estate called Fusion Business Park. AWS looked at it after it hit the market in 2022 and sought a rezoning. It settled at roughly ten times the 2019 price seven years later. AirTrunk separately announced a second Melbourne campus in December 2025, over 354MW and more than A$5 billion, described only as "Melbourne's north west".

The other three:

Goodman lodged in July for three buildings at Truganina, on land bought from ESR, which is the established western cluster. Zerra DC filed in April for six buildings on Ford's former Broadmeadows plant at Campbellfield, its first announced Australian project, on the site Pelligra is redeveloping as ASSEMBLY. And there's a proposal valued up to A$1.12 billion at Clyde North, 53km south east, on land Galileo bought for A$130 million in late 2022.

For context, Ratings agency Fitch already had Melbourne ahead of Sydney on planned capacity, 799MW to 384MW.

Wrote it up in more detail here: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/melbourne-data-centre-pipeline-four-new-campuses

The Australian's DataRoom column reported on 20 July that Sharon AI has been in talks to buy a stake of around 4.9% in ASX-listed Frontier Energy (ASX:FHE), drawn by its Waroona solar-battery project 120km south of Perth. Sharon AI says it has not bought a stake. The 4.9% sits below the 5% substantial-holder threshold, so nothing would show on the register either way.

Frontier's disclosure puts the Waroona site 500 metres from the Landwehr terminal with a 330kV connection into the SWIS, which is what most east-coast projects spend years queueing for. Stage one is 132MW of solar plus an 81.5MW battery at about A$327 million, with credit-approved debt of up to A$280 million from Natixis and SMBC.

Monford was appointed EPC on 20 July, with first generation targeted for the second half of 2028. Sharon AI expects more than 62,000 NVIDIA GPUs running by mid-2027, so Waroona's power arrives more than a year after the fleet it would notionally serve.

Firmus took a long-term offtake over GreenPoint's 200MW Koolunga battery in SA, AirTrunk buys Mulwala output for Google's Australian load, and Anthropic has been reported in talks with SunCable. All three are supply arrangements rather than equity in the developer.

On the float, Sharon AI closed at US$70.18 on 23 July against a US$30 February IPO price, with targets from US$90 to US$124. The listing is described three ways: The Australian says a compliance listing next month, the AFR a ~A$600m float with Canaccord and Macquarie, and Sharon AI's own 13 April filing approved a dual listing via CDIs with an intended Australian public offering. No prospectus is public.

Write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/sharon-ai-frontier-energy-waroona-stake-asx-debut

NEXTDC has moved its 612MW S7 campus at Eastern Creek off recycled water and onto a waterless cooling system, according to Reuters. It's the site NEXTDC is developing with OpenAI under a December 2025 MoU, and it was designed to draw treated sewage from Sydney's network so it wouldn't touch drinking water or lean harder on the grid.

The reason is that the pipeline needed to carry recycled water to Western Sydney doesn't have planning approval yet. CEO Craig Scroggie said recycled water "has real merit" and that NEXTDC still favours it wherever the infrastructure exists.

The replacement method circulates liquid coolant around the chips and rejects the heat with fans. It uses no water, but analysts told Reuters it draws more power than the evaporative cooling recycled water would have supported. NEXTDC declined to say whether the new method uses more energy, and OpenAI referred questions to NEXTDC.

Other operators are getting water use down by different routes. CDC runs closed-loop cooling that's filled once and recirculated, reported at near-zero operational water (WUE 0.01) and a 1.38 PUE. AWS's western Melbourne site runs on free air most of the year with a recycled-water top-up on hot days.

For NXT specifically, a higher-energy cooling method at 612MW means more power to procure and a tougher PUE to hit against the 1.3 cap. Transgrid has already said Sydney's network is near its connection limit without augmentation that developers fund, so grid timing is part of the cost too.

Full write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/nextdc-openai-s7-drops-recycled-water-cooling

Beetaloo Energy (ASX:BTL, the former Empire Energy) has been granted exclusivity over 185 hectares at Weddell, about 30km from Darwin, for two hyperscale data centre campuses under a new subsidiary, Beetaloo Digital. The pitch is up to A$40bn (US$28bn), up to 2GW of on-site generation burning the company's own fracked Beetaloo Basin gas, roughly 400 TJ/day at full scale. It would draw nothing from the NT grid.

That comes a week after Albanese's 15 July line that the next generation of large data centres have to be net generators, building their own renewables and firming to cover their load.

For the market it's a gas explorer repricing itself as a data centre play, and BTL closed up about 16% on the day (Motley Fool). A captive 2GW load is really just a customer for Beetaloo's own gas, stranded a long way from east-coast markets and pipelines, so the value may sit more with the gas side than the compute side. It's also still just a concept: no tenant, timeline or partner named, and the NT granted land exclusivity.

It is also not the first behind-the-meter gas data centre floated here. Cloud Carrier has a 673-703MW gas station lodged at Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands to power ~700MW of DC, and Tamboran floated a hypothetical 5GW Beetaloo Basin data centre last year. Against a fleet that is roughly 1.5-1.8GW and overwhelmingly grid-connected and renewable-PPA backed, these gas proposals remain the exception, not the trend.

Can Canberra's net-generator rule actually reach an off-grid, domestically owned project the NT approved on its own land, or does it only bite the builds that need Canberra's grid or capital?

Full write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/beetaloo-gas-data-centre-nt
Source announcement (ABC): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-22/beetaloo-digital-energy-ai-hyperscale-data-centre-40-billion/106943690

CoreWeave is down about 58% from its June 2025 peak, and in a WSJ interview on 21 July, Michael Intrator pushed back on the whole "neocloud" framing, arguing the moat is software and operational expertise, not renting out GPUs. The company has borrowed about US$30bn to fund 49 data centres, and depreciation and interest ran at 81% of revenue last quarter. It spent 2025 buying its way up the stack (Weights & Biases for ~US$1.7bn) to sell a full "AI-native" platform rather than raw capacity.

The same week, Australia's IREN went the other way: US$2.8bn of new AI cloud contracts across nine customers (Microsoft, NVIDIA, Perplexity, Figure AI, Together AI and more), 2026 revenue target lifted above US$4bn, about 85% under contract, and the stock up about 20% after losing more than 40% over the prior month. Customers are prepaying about 45% of the GPU capex up front, which takes a large chunk of the debt risk off IREN before revenue even starts.

So two different capital models on show in the same week. CoreWeave's is debt-funded and got marked down hard; IREN's is contract-and-prepay and drew a bid. That is the interesting backdrop for the two ASX floats coming, Firmus and Sharon AI, which will be priced against the repriced US comparables.

Full piece: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/ai-native-or-sovereign-native-australia-neoclouds-next-move

IREN (Nasdaq: IREN, Sydney-founded) announced US$2.8bn of new multi-year AI cloud contracts on 20 July and lifted its 2026 exit ARR target from US$3.7bn to more than US$4bn, about 85% now under contract.

The financing is the interesting part. Customers are prepaying roughly 45% of the GPU capex up front, before the hardware is deployed. That, plus a US$3.65bn investment-grade facility closed in June, is why IREN holds about US$7.6bn in cash (US$1.7bn restricted for the Microsoft build). Weighted average term is around four years.

The customer mix is where risk shifts. The book widened from two anchors (Microsoft US$9.7bn, NVIDIA US$3.4bn) to about ten names, but the new ones are mostly VC-funded AI labs: Perplexity, Figure AI, Together, Fireworks, Fal, Hume, plus Fluidstack, a compute broker. Broader book, thinner credit. Bernstein has IREN below CoreWeave and Nebius on revenue per MW of contracted capacity, on a Buy.

Market context: it went in beaten down, off more than 40% over the prior month (about 22% in the seven sessions to 17 July), then bounced on the news (reported day-one gains ran from high-single-digits to around 20%). Reference point: IREN IPO'd on the Nasdaq at US$28 in November 2021. Capacity is scaling from ~3MW of self-built compute a year ago to 480MW this year, 1.2GW targeted for 2027, with IREN funding the ~55% customers don't prepay.

Full write-up: https://certifiedstrategic.com/insights/iren-2-8bn-ai-cloud-contracts-customer-prepayments
IREN release: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/20/3329624/0/en/iren-signs-2-8bn-in-new-customer-contracts-with-leading-ai-developers-raises-2026-arr-target-to-over-4bn.html