At a glance
Anthropic says it will not ask public officials to sign NDAs or accept local tax incentives at future data centre sites, worldwide, owned or leased.
Amazon and Microsoft have made similar NDA commitments, while Google and Meta declined to commit, a US Senate report says.
Large Australian data centre applications go on public exhibition, so the NDA pledge changes little here, and the community money, grid costs and water standard matter more.
Those commitments apply to Anthropic's lease of the first of four buildings at Zerra DC's 1.44GW Western Downs Digital Park near Dalby.
How the tax pledge applies in Asia, where Malaysia, Thailand and India offer national tax holidays to data centres, is yet to be tested.
Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI models, said on 15 October 2026 that it will not ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements as part of their work with the company. It will also turn down local tax incentives at future AI data centre sites, its policy page says.
A non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, is a contract that binds the people who sign it to keep what they are told confidential. In the US, data centre developers have asked local officials to sign them before projects were announced.
Microsoft dropped NDAs with local governments in March, and Amazon said on 2 October that it no longer uses them with government agencies. Anthropic's pledge applies to "every data center site Anthropic owns or leases in the United States and around the world", including its lease at Zerra DC's Western Downs Digital Park in southern Queensland.
In Australia the NDA pledge changes little, because large data centre applications and council planning agreements go on public exhibition. The parts of Anthropic's pledge that matter here are its community money, grid costs and water standard.
Anthropic joins Amazon and Microsoft in dropping NDAs
Amazon Web Services chief executive Matt Garman wrote on 2 October that "We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects." Amazon launched Built Together, more than US$1 billion over five years for communities near its US data centres.
Microsoft ended NDAs with local governments on 18 March. It is ending existing agreements worldwide.
Google and Meta "declined to commit to ending the use of NDAs with local governments", according to a report by US senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen and Richard Blumenthal. TIME first reported its findings on 8 October.
Google has declined tax breaks at individual sites. It said in August that a refurbished building at The Dalles in Oregon would not seek new incentives. On 14 October it dropped a property tax abatement request at Hermantown in Minnesota, Northern News Now reported.
Company | NDAs with officials | Tax incentives |
|---|---|---|
Anthropic | Will not ask public officials (15 Oct 2026) | Declines local incentives at future sites |
Amazon | No longer used with government agencies (2 Oct 2026) | No commitment |
Microsoft | Ended with local governments (18 Mar 2026) | No local property tax cuts at future sites |
Declined to commit | Dropped one request in Minnesota; sought none for an Oregon refurbishment | |
Meta | Declined to commit | No commitment |
Source: Anthropic, Amazon and Microsoft statements; report by senators Warren, Van Hollen and Blumenthal, October 2026; Columbia Community Connection, 7 August 2026; Northern News Now, 14 October 2026.
Australian data centre approvals run through public applications
NSW must exhibit every state significant development application, including large data centres, for at least 28 days. The application and its environmental impact statement are published on the NSW Planning Portal.
NSW councils exhibit planning agreements before signing them. Penrith City Council put its planning agreement with Microsoft for 769 Mamre Road, Kemps Creek, on public exhibition for four weeks in 2023 before signing it.
Australian governments court data centres with faster approvals. NSW offers a 75-day state assessment to projects that meet its data centre guidelines, published on 17 August. Victoria's Development Facilitation Program gives larger projects a faster planning pathway.
The federal government's data centre expectations, published in March, give priority in Commonwealth assessments to projects that align with them. Anthropic's agreement with the federal government, signed on 1 April, committed it to align its Australian operations with those expectations.
Commercial details can stay private here. AWS's Western Sydney build ran under the codename "Project Echidna", iTnews reported in 2023. NEXTDC announced its first Kuala Lumpur customer as a "10MW hyperscale customer". The pledges cover dealings with officials, and confidentiality between companies sits outside them.
Anthropic's community and grid commitments apply at Western Downs
Anthropic will fund community benefit agreements worth "tens of millions of dollars" at each of its data centres. It will pay for the grid upgrades its sites need, and for estimated price rises caused by the extra demand its data centres put on the grid.
Capital Brief describes the Western Downs lease as Anthropic's only signed capacity in Australia. Zerra lodged the Western Downs Digital Park with Western Downs Regional Council on 17 August 2026. The plans show four 360MW buildings on 725.5 hectares at Kogan, about 37km north west of Dalby, 600 metres from the Braemar substation.
Kogan is planned at 1.44GW, close to the 1.6GW of data centre capacity operating across Australia in mid-2026, on DC Byte figures cited by Data Centres Australia and Mandala in August.
Anthropic has the first of the four buildings, the ABC reported on 5 October. The lease is subject to approval by the Foreign Investment Review Board. The ABC understands Anthropic would use the site to run Claude for its users, and it aims to start using the centre in 2027.
Anthropic will "partner with local leaders and residents on how they want to spend this money". Zerra and the council have begun talks on a community benefit agreement for Kogan, Mayor Andrew Smith told the ABC in September.
Queensland said on 2 October that it will move data centre approvals from councils to the state, and developers will need a social impact assessment and a community benefit agreement with the council before they lodge. Other developers have put figures on the table. CDC offered up to A$225 million for its Wagga Wagga campus on 13 October, and AirTrunk has made Cessnock City Council a draft offer of more than A$37 million for Kurri Kurri. Anthropic is in advanced talks to anchor the Kurri Kurri campus, the Australian Financial Review reported in September.
Anthropic gave Parliament a similar power commitment in September. Its submission to the AI committee said it will follow the federal data centre expectations and national standards, "including adding new generation for data centres that we lease".
Anthropic's cooling standard is closed-loop and air-cooled. That means "we don't draw down local water supplies to cool servers", the policy page says. Once a site is running, Anthropic will publish key figures on its impact each year, checked by an independent third party.
Asian governments offer national tax holidays
Anthropic's tax pledge covers local incentives, which it describes in terms of local property tax. The largest data centre incentives in Asia are national.
Malaysia's investment authority, MIDA, offers new data centre companies an investment tax allowance of 100 per cent or 60 per cent of qualifying capital spending, for five or 10 years. Thailand's Board of Investment approved Alphabet subsidiary Quartz Computing for a 32.8 billion baht data centre in Chonburi in November 2024. Thai rules at the time offered qualifying data centres eight years free of corporate income tax.
India's 1 February 2026 Budget announced a tax holiday to 2047 for foreign cloud companies serving global customers from Indian data centres. The Finance Act 2026 made it law. Japan's trade ministry subsidises data centres built outside the Tokyo area, and SoftBank is due to receive 30 billion yen for its Hokkaido site.
Nikkei reported on 13 October that NTT Data is in final talks to build Anthropic a data centre of up to 500MW in Osaka, its first in Japan.
What to watch
The Kogan agreement. Zerra's community benefit agreement with Western Downs Regional Council is the first Australian deal Anthropic's per-site commitment could feed into.
The Kogan decision. Queensland's response to Zerra's request for prescribed project status will settle whether the council or the coordinator-general decides the campus.
Osaka. A signed deal with NTT Data would put Anthropic's pledge into practice in Japan, a market that pays national construction subsidies outside the Tokyo area.
The national standards. National Cabinet's communique of 26 August puts legislation in early 2027. Information Age reported on 29 September that the government plans to introduce the bill by the end of 2026.