Australia is at nearly 2GW today, with a target of up to 3GW by 2030
The 3rd Annual Data Centre Leaders Summit opening sessions set a confident but clear-eyed tone. Australia sits at approximately 2 gigawatts of operational data centre capacity today, with consensus across the room pointing to 2 to 3GW as the realistic target by 2030. The Day 1 morning panel, "How do we make Australia the major data centre hub for South-East Asia?", brought together Glenn Uidam from CDC Data Centres, Sumit Mukhija from DCI Data Centres, Daniel Howard from NEXTDC, Tony Gaunt from Vertiv, and Rob Hammond from TBH to address exactly that question.
The panel identified Australia's pre-Y2K market foundations as a depth advantage that newer Southeast Asian markets cannot yet replicate. Access to Tier 1 AI chips was raised as an underappreciated differentiator: Japan and South Korea face constraints in this area that Australia currently does not. Combined with Five Eyes intelligence alignment, Australia's sovereignty and trust credentials are actively attracting AI workloads that require secure, assured infrastructure. These are structural advantages, and the panel's view was that Australia has not yet fully capitalised on them in its positioning to global hyperscalers.
Capital Markets Was Frank About What Is Working and What Is Not
MSCI's Benjamin Martin-Henry delivered one of the most data-rich sessions of the day. APAC recorded USD 14.1 billion in data centre transaction volumes in 2025, the second-best year on record. Australia, Japan, and Korea now account for over 70% of the APAC construction pipeline, a major shift from the years when China, India, and Malaysia dominated.
The capital markets panel featuring Jing Zhou from Nuveen, Fredrik Johansson from Balder Investment, and Kate Mitchell from Centuria was candid. Tax leakage was named explicitly as a major concern, a conversation that landed with particular weight given the week's Google news. FIRB complexity and de-globalisation trends were also raised as active underwriting considerations. The asset class remains compelling: stabilised hyperscale fitted facilities are trading at cap rates of 5% to 6%, broadly comparable to prime office.
Melbourne Is Pulling Ahead of Sydney on Development Speed
Melbourne was consistently cited as offering faster approvals, greater power availability, better connectivity scalability, and faster speed to market. DA complexity in Sydney is persistent, while Melbourne sites with approvals in place and power secured are being treated as premium assets. The caveat: transmission funding in Melbourne is not guaranteed in all corridors, introducing underwriting risk the market is beginning to price. Perth was identified as the next market of consequence after Sydney and Melbourne on the strength of subsea connectivity, followed by Canberra on government and defence workload demand.
The Infrastructure Gap Is Technical, Not Just Financial
MSCI's global stock data showed the Pacific region at 3GW completed, 1GW under construction, and 10GW planned. The room was clear-eyed: not everything planned will get built. NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture is pushing rack densities beyond 100kW per rack, making liquid cooling a baseline requirement rather than an option. Development is skewing rapidly toward capital-intensive, liquid-cooled and AI-ready facilities, compressing the useful life of assets built even five years ago.
Workforce and Sector Profile Are Infrastructure Problems Too
Australia's data centre sector continue to build structured partnerships with universities and TAFEs to develop the technical workforce the buildout requires, which panellists flagged as a structural positive needing acceleration. Several participants noted that sector brands are only just entering mainstream consciousness in Australia. More coordinated promotion infrastructure is needed to attract the workforce, the policy attention, and the investor base the pipeline demands
See you on Day 2!