AWS to expand data centres in Sydney and Melbourne

Amazon will spend $20 billion between now and 2029 on data centres and related support infrastructure, such as renewable energy.

AWS CEO Matt Garman and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

The investment announcement was made by AWS CEO Matt Garman and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a visit to Seattle over the weekend.

It was linked, at least from a policy perspective, to government policy ambitions for industry to harness AI and automation technology to realise growth and efficiency.

It wasn’t immediately clear if any of the spending was on new data centre campuses, regions or local zones.

The cloud provider mentioned only existing locations, including its $2 billion top-secret cloud for the federal government.

Albanese is also quoted as saying the investment is “to further develop and expand [AWS’] data centres in Sydney and Melbourne.”

AWS did suggest some of the funding would go into “three new solar farms in Victoria and Queensland [to] support the infrastructure expansion.”