At a glance
• An independent revaluation lifted CDC Data Centres to an A$18.5bn midpoint on 6 July, up 23.6 per cent, or A$3.5bn, over the June quarter.
• Contracted capacity above 1GW drove the increase, anchored by the 555MW deal CDC signed in May with a US investment-grade customer.
• The disclosed pipeline now runs to 3.9GW of leasable capacity out to FY40, though part of that rise is a change in how the capacity is measured.
• Anthropic’s still-unsigned 300 to 500MW Australian training contract, with CDC the reported front-runner, is the next test of the contracted book.
• Kane Thornton, the Clean Energy Council’s chief executive until 2025, has joined CDC as Head of Strategic Impact, a clean-energy move into data centres as power and community licence tighten.
The re-rating prices contracted capacity
Infratil re-struck the independent valuation of CDC Data Centres on 6 July, lifting the midpoint 23.6 per cent over the June quarter to A$18.5bn, a rise of A$3.5bn. The drivers Infratil named are physical: contracted capacity above 1GW, an accelerated build programme, and a longer disclosed pipeline.
Contracted capacity leads that list: the book crossed 1GW after CDC signed a 555MW, 30-year deal in May with a US investment-grade customer, described at the time as Australia’s largest data centre contract. Moody’s assigned CDC its first public investment-grade rating, Baa2, in April. What the quarter re-priced is capacity already under long-dated contract.
CDC has been pressing this same point in public. Its chief strategy officer, Dr Jack Dan, told the CEDA State of the Nation conference on 25 June that the boom is drawing speculators, as we covered in our analysis of Australia’s data centre gold rush and its ghost town problem. The June valuation puts numbers on the same divide: contracted income gets appraised upward while unfunded applications sit unpriced in the connection queue.
Contracted demand and the phantom queue
Network providers passed roughly 44GW of data centre connection requests to AEMO for its 2025 planning inputs, while Oxford Economics, commissioned by AEMO, found only about 6GW is required under the central Step Change scenario. Around 5.4GW now sits formally in the transmission connection queue. Against that backdrop, an appraiser lifting CDC’s valuation on the strength of a signed 1GW book draws the same line CDC drew at CEDA: capacity that is contracted, funded and rated commands a higher value than capacity that is merely requested.
Demand for that contracted capacity is still building. Anthropic’s process to buy 300 to 500MW of Australian training capacity remains live, with CDC reported as front-runner ahead of AirTrunk, NEXTDC and Firmus, as set out in our coverage of the reported CDC front-runner position. Forsyth Barr senior analyst Ben Crozier, quoted by RNZ, read the pipeline update as evidence demand is outstripping supply, noting CDC is roughly doubling the business every two years. A win of the scale Anthropic is scoping would land on top of the 555MW already contracted.
The pipeline extension comes with a measurement change
CDC’s disclosed pipeline expanded from 2.6GW to 3.9GW, and one qualifier applies. Infratil’s footnote states the figure now reports leasable capacity, where earlier disclosures used built capacity, and extends the disclosure horizon from FY34 to FY40. Part of the 1.3GW increase therefore reflects the wider measurement basis and longer horizon, not only demand won during the quarter.
Crozier, quoted by RNZ, put the incremental 1.3GW at roughly A$20bn of future capex, the scale of build CDC is signalling out to FY40. Funding a decade of construction at that scale is why CDC’s backers are patient institutional investors, led by Infratil and the Future Fund. That build still has to find power and planning approval site by site, which is where the pressure now lands, on the grid and on the communities near these campuses.
CDC Data Centres | June 2026 | Change on March 2026 |
Contracted capacity | Above 1GW | Anchored by the 555MW deal (May) |
Disclosed pipeline | 3.9GW leasable, to FY40 | Up from 2.6GW; basis and horizon changed |
Independent valuation (midpoint) | A$18.5bn | +A$3.5bn (+23.6%) |
Credit rating | Moody’s Baa2, investment grade | First public rating (April) |
Source: Infratil independent valuation, 6 July 2026.
A clean-energy chief moves into data centres
The same week the valuation landed, CDC put a renewables-sector leader inside the company. Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council from 2014 until August 2025, started as CDC’s Head of Strategic Impact in July 2026, a role and start month confirmed on his own professional record. The title points to the community, industry and social-licence work his career has centred on.
Thornton’s record maps onto where CDC’s constraints now sit. He spent about eleven years running Australia’s renewables peak body, and since October 2025 has sat as a non-executive director of VicGrid, the Victorian body planning renewable energy zones and transmission. He pairs advocacy leadership with a seat at the grid-planning table, and both bear on the two problems a 3.9GW pipeline hits first: securing power and holding community licence across more sites. Earlier roles at Hydro Tasmania and Renewable Energy Generators Australia, and campaigns such as Clean Energy Works for Australia, sit in the same register.
By our reading, the appointment signals that CDC treats grid connection and social acceptance as the gating items for the build it has just disclosed, ahead of capital. The move tracks a broader shift we set out in why data centres can sit on the right side of the power-bill debate: operators increasingly act as energy-market participants that fund and contract generation, beyond leasing grid capacity. For readers new to how these facilities draw and shape load, our explainer on what an AI data centre actually is sets out the fundamentals.
What to watch
Three things will test the June re-rating. The first is Anthropic’s 300 to 500MW decision, still unsigned, which would either confirm or stall CDC’s contracted momentum. The second is the September close of the Australian Government’s data centre inquiry and the AEMC’s new large-load connection rules, both of which set the entry bar that separates contracted build from queue-filling. The third is the next quarterly valuation, where the market will see whether the 3.9GW pipeline converts into signed capacity or holds as disclosed headroom.