At a glance
Data centre builders hold two of the five places on the Australian Financial Review's 2026 technology power list, published on 22 September 2026.
AirTrunk founder Robin Khuda is ranked third, and Firmus co-chief executives Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield share fifth.
The AFR wrote that NEXTDC's Craig Scroggie and CDC's Greg Boorer could equally have made the list.
The 2023 and 2025 lists had no data centre names, and the 2024 list had Khuda alone, ranked second after the A$24 billion sale of AirTrunk to Blackstone.
Firmus is scheduled to list on the ASX on 22 October 2026, and AirTrunk is preparing a Singapore trust to recycle capital from completed campuses into new builds.
The Australian Financial Review's magazine published its 2026 technology power list on 22 September 2026, and data centre builders hold two of its five places. Three of the six people named on it build data centres. Robin Khuda of AirTrunk is ranked third. Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield, co-chief executives of Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus, share fifth. Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes, Canva's Melanie Perkins and Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar hold the other three places.
The list, compiled by technology editor Paul Smith, says Craig Scroggie of NEXTDC and Greg Boorer of CDC could equally have been ranked alongside Khuda. Two of the 2026 names, Khuda and Curtis, also appear on the AFR Rich List 2026, published in May.
Across four AFR tech lists, data centre names went from none to three
Read with the three lists before it, the 2026 ranking shows two shifts. Data centre names went from none in 2023 to three in 2026. The investors ranked in 2023 ran Australian funds, and the builders ranked in 2026 are backed by global ones.
Year | Data centre names | Rest of the list |
|---|---|---|
2023 | None | Ed Husic, Melanie Perkins, Sam Sicilia, Rick Baker, Clare O'Neil |
2024 | Robin Khuda, No. 2 | Melanie Perkins, Sam Sicilia, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Ed Husic |
2025 | None | Melanie Perkins, Scott Farquhar, Robyn Denholm, Tim Ayres, Mike Cannon-Brookes |
2026 | Robin Khuda, No. 3; Oliver Curtis and Tim Rosenfield, joint No. 5 | Mike Cannon-Brookes, Melanie Perkins, Scott Farquhar |
Source: AFR Magazine technology power lists, 26 September 2023, 24 September 2024, 23 September 2025 and 22 September 2026
In 2023 the AFR described the powerful in Australian technology as including "the people paying for it to exist". It ranked Sam Sicilia, chief investment officer of superannuation fund Hostplus, and Rick Baker, co-founder of venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures, alongside two cabinet ministers and Perkins. By contrast, Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board own AirTrunk, and Blackstone was the largest new investor in Firmus's August 2026 round.
Khuda's 2024 entry followed the sale of AirTrunk to Blackstone, which the AFR called the year's biggest corporate transaction. The AFR wrote then that his influence would grow if he stayed on as chief executive and built AirTrunk into a "$100 billion giant". He was off the 2025 list, whose introduction said Australia did not have an AI company "of globally significant proportions".
The AFR left politicians off the 2026 list, with a mention for assistant minister Andrew Charlton's work on data centre and AI laws. Ministers had held places in each of the three earlier years.
Two of the software names on the 2026 list have ties to data centres. SunCable, the Northern Territory solar project majority owned by Cannon-Brookes, was reported in June 2026 to be in advanced talks with Anthropic on power for Australian compute. Farquhar used his National Press Club address on 30 July 2025, as chair of the Tech Council of Australia, to pitch data centres as an export industry.
Khuda returns at No. 3 after AirTrunk's US$30bn India plan and second Melbourne campus
Khuda is back on the list two years after the AFR tied his influence to staying on as chief executive and growing AirTrunk. He stayed on, and AirTrunk has since announced a US$30 billion plan for India. In December 2025 it secured a second Melbourne campus adding more than 354MW, which took its Melbourne capacity past 630MW. In March 2026 it signed a ¥191.6 billion (US$1.24 billion) green loan for its Tokyo campus. The India plan followed on 5 June 2026, when Khuda met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and targets more than 5GW by 2030.
AirTrunk is preparing a Singapore real estate investment trust, a listed vehicle that owns completed campuses and pays out their rent, in a float of about US$1.5 billion. Reuters reported in July 2026 that it was aimed at a September or October launch. On 7 September 2026 AirTrunk named Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft as prospects for its Australian capacity.
As a measure of Khuda's standing, the AFR pointed to his presence at Anthony Albanese's AI address at the University of Sydney on 15 July 2026. The university's account records that Khuda met the Prime Minister after the speech.
Curtis and Rosenfield rank fifth as Firmus heads to a A$7bn ASX float
Firmus is raising about A$7 billion in an ASX float scheduled to list on 22 October 2026, according to a term sheet Reuters reported on 20 September. Institutions are due to bid for shares on 6 and 7 October, and the prospectus is due on 8 October. The AFR puts Firmus's fundraising in the 12 months to September 2026 at more than US$3 billion. The largest round, US$2 billion on 7 August 2026, brought in Blackstone Tactical Opportunities alongside Coatue, NVIDIA and Jane Street, and valued Firmus at more than US$10.5 billion.
Firmus builds AI factories, data centres designed to run large clusters of NVIDIA chips, and sells computing time on them as one of the neocloud providers in Australia. On 8 September it reported more than 900MW of contracted capacity across seven sites in four countries. OpenAI is anchor customer for two of the Malaysian sites. NVIDIA holds shares in Firmus, supplies its chips and is anchor customer of Project Southgate, the Australian build Firmus runs with CDC.
Scroggie and Boorer each run more than 700MW of signed capacity
Scroggie and Boorer, the two data centre leaders the AFR named alongside Khuda, each run a company with more than 700MW of capacity that customers have signed for. NEXTDC's FY26 results on 27 August 2026 showed 740.1MW contracted. CDC signed a 555MW, 30-year contract with a US customer on 6 May 2026. That contract took CDC's contracted capacity above 1GW.
Newcastle-born Josh Payne's Nscale filed for a New York listing on 18 September
Australian founders also run two AI compute companies listed or listing in New York. Nscale, a London AI cloud company founded by Josh Payne, filed to list on the New York Stock Exchange on 18 September 2026. Payne was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, and worked in coal mines before co-founding the bitcoin miner Arkon Energy, which Nscale was spun out of in 2024.
Nscale's listing prospectus says it owns or controls sites that can draw more than 10GW of power. It puts the value of its active and contracted customer agreements at US$103.4 billion. Reuters reported a target valuation of about US$30 billion, against the US$14.6 billion Nscale was valued at in March 2026.
IREN, which trades on Nasdaq, was founded in Sydney by brothers Daniel and William Roberts. The brothers debuted on the AFR Rich List in May 2026 alongside Curtis. IREN signed a US$9.7 billion contract with Microsoft on 3 November 2025. In Australia it holds a grid connection agreement for 800MW at Bundey in South Australia.
Who makes the 2027 list?
Firmus is scheduled to list on 22 October 2026, and AirTrunk's Singapore trust was reported for launch in September or October. Both would put a data centre company's value on a public exchange well before the 2027 list is compiled, and both are raising money for builds that run through 2027. The AFR has already named Scroggie and Boorer as leaders who could have been ranked in 2026.
We expect people who lead data centre or AI compute companies to hold at least two of the five places on the AFR's September 2027 technology power list, and at least one of them to be someone not ranked in 2026. The two floats will keep the sector's capital raising and customer contracts in the financial press through the year the list covers.
What to watch
Firmus's prospectus. It is due on 8 October 2026 under the reported term sheet, and will show the capacity and customers the float is priced on.
AirTrunk's Singapore trust. Reuters reported a September or October 2026 launch. The trust's opening portfolio sets how much of AirTrunk's Asian and Australian capacity moves into the listed vehicle.
Nscale's pricing in New York. A listing near the reported US$30 billion would give Nscale a public market value alongside IREN's, and a comparison point for the Firmus float and other listed data centres in Australia.