• NEXTDC added more contracted capacity in the six months to December 2025 than in the previous three financial years combined

  • CDC contracted approximately 100MW in a single week in September 2025, with 95% of forecast revenues now locked in

  • AirTrunk committed A$5 billion to a brand-new 354MW Melbourne campus in December 2025

  • Macquarie's existing Macquarie Park campus reached near sell-out by FY25, with its next AI facility pre-selling ahead of a planned September 2026 delivery.

The public record from the second half of 2025 tells a consistent story. ASX utilisation updates, investor releases and capital commitment announcements from July to December 2025 show contracted capacity across Australia's certified strategic data centre sector growing at a pace with no precedent in the prior three years.

Australia's certified strategic data centres before mid-2025: steady, incremental growth

For the four financial years from FY22 to FY25, NEXTDC grew contracted utilisation by 7.5MW, then 39MW, then 50.5MW, then 72MW, roughly 170MW in total. Government departments, cloud providers and enterprise tenants were migrating workloads and adding capacity gradually.

CDC's pattern was similar when it posted a record 200MW of new contracted capacity across the full FY24 year. AirTrunk was expanding across Sydney and Melbourne campuses. Macquarie was filling its Macquarie Park facility phase by phase, building a roster of federal government clients.

This was a market growing fast by Australian standards. But contracts arrived in manageable volumes, and the build pipeline moved at construction pace.

From mid-2025: the numbers stop being comparable

In the six months from July to December 2025, the same operators reported results that bear little resemblance to the years before them.

NEXTDC filed two ASX utilisation updates in rapid succession. On 1 December 2025 it reported 71MW of new contracted utilisation since 30 June — more than the entire FY22 and FY23 results combined. Three weeks later, on 22 December, it reported another 96MW on top. Six months, 167MW total. Its 1H26 results confirmed a 240.5MW increase in contracted utilisation across the twelve months to December 2025, a 137% rise, with a forward order book of 296.8MW yet to convert to billing.

The same demand showed up at CDC. In September 2025, Infratil announced that CDC had contracted approximately 100MW of new capacity in a single week, a volume that would previously have taken the better part of a year to accumulate, with approximately 95% of CDC's forecast lease revenues now under contract and the company on track to double FY25 earnings by FY27.

AirTrunk, private since Blackstone's A$24 billion acquisition in 2024, signals demand through capital rather than contracted MW disclosures. In December 2025 it committed A$5 billion to MEL2, a brand new 354MW campus in Melbourne's north-west, lifting its total Australian footprint to over 1.2GW across five campuses.

Macquarie tells the most pointed version of this story. Its existing Macquarie Park campus reached approximately 95% sold-out by FY25. In December 2025 it completed the structural phase of IC3 Super West, a new 47MW AI-focused facility, and in February 2026 lifted its revolving loan to A$500 million to accelerate fit-out. The next 200MW of sovereign AI capacity is being pre-sold before it is built.

What drove the shift

The single biggest factor is AI inference at production scale. The first wave of AI demand, roughly 2023 to early 2025, was dominated by episodic model training. What arrived in mid-2025 was sustained inference: running AI models for millions of users, every hour, every day. Inference demand does not spike and relax. It grows continuously, consumes far more power density than traditional workloads, and requires permanent, high-availability capacity.

Australia's National AI Plan, released in late 2025, gave this demand a policy shape. With the Federal Government formally targeting AI hub status and the Hosting Certification Framework designating certified strategic facilities as the required tier for sensitive and sovereign workloads, enterprise and government buyers moved from watching to committing. Once scarcity became apparent, buyers who had been deferring decisions accelerated.

The scale of this shift is no longer just an industry talking point; it is showing up in macroeconomic data. In the December quarter 2025 National Accounts, released by the Treasurer in March 2026, the Federal Government explicitly singled out 'building and structure investment, particularly in data centre projects' as a key driver of Australia's 4.4% annual growth in new business investment.

Key Sources and Disclosures

The following primary sources underpin the contracted capacity data and market figures cited in this analysis:

  • NEXTDC, ASX Contracted Utilisation Updates (December 2025): two utilisation disclosures filed 1 and 22 December 2025 reporting 71MW and 96MW of new contracted capacity respectively, and a forward order book of 301MW.

  • NEXTDC, 1H26 Results Announcement (February 2026): confirmed 240.5MW increase in contracted utilisation across the twelve months to 31 December 2025, a 137% rise year on year, with a forward order book of 296.8MW.

  • Infratil, CDC Contracted Capacity Announcement (September 2025 and March 2026): disclosed approximately 100MW of new CDC contracted capacity in a single week in September 2025, with approximately 95% of forecast lease revenues under contract; a further ~100MW confirmed in March 2026.

  • AirTrunk, MEL2 Campus Announcement (December 2025): commitment of A$5 billion to a new 354MW hyperscale campus in Melbourne, lifting AirTrunk's Australian platform to over 1.2GW across five campuses.

  • Macquarie Technology Group, IC3 Super West Update and February 2026 Loan Facility Announcement: confirmed near sell-out of the existing Macquarie Park campus, structural completion of the 47MW IC3 Super West AI facility, and a A$500 million revolving loan facility to accelerate fit-out.

Analysis written by CertifiedStrategic Editorial Team

CertifiedStrategic.com  - Australia's independent data centre index tracking capacity, certification and market news across the country's critical infrastructure providers.