WinDC Brings Australia's First Portable AI Factory Online, Backed by $176m Raise

• Australia curtailed 7.2 terawatt-hours of renewable energy in 2025, a figure forecast to exceed 10 terawatt-hours in 2026. WinDC is deploying modular AI data centres directly at generation sites to convert that stranded power into sovereign compute capacity

• On 15 March 2026, WinDC confirmed its first portable AI factory is operational on Australian soil, backed by a partnership with US-based Armada covering 11 megawatts of capacity across New South Wales and Western Australia

• The company is seeking $176 million in Series A funding, with Trident Debt Capital Advisors and Utiliti Group appointed as advisers, in what would be one of Australia's largest early-stage data centre capital raises

WinDC, founded by ASE Tech founder Andrew Sjoquist, deploys modular, factory-built AI data centres directly at renewable energy generation sites including wind farms, solar parks, and battery installations. Australia wasted 7.2 terawatt-hours of clean electricity in 2025, up from 4.5 terawatt-hours the year before, and that figure is forecast to exceed 10 terawatt-hours in 2026 because the transmission grid cannot move generated power to demand centres fast enough. Rather than extending the grid, WinDC places the compute where the energy is.

On 15 March 2026, WinDC confirmed a partnership with US-based Armada to deploy 11 megawatts of modular data centre capacity across renewable energy sites in New South Wales and Western Australia, with the first unit already on Australian soil. Each module is ISO-conformant, relocatable by truck, deploys in approximately 90 days, requires no water cooling, and runs on 100 percent renewable energy verified to the GPU-hour. That deployment speed is approximately eight times faster than a conventional data centre build.

The Armada announcement followed a January 2026 partnership with Megaport (ASX: MP1) that connects WinDC's behind-the-meter AI factories to Megaport's global Network as a Service platform, giving customers sovereign AI compute with low-latency links to cloud providers and enterprise networks worldwide. The AFR reported on 15 March that WinDC is seeking to raise $176 million in a Series A round, with Trident Debt Capital Advisors and Utiliti Group appointed as advisers, to fund its first full-scale deployment.​

Andrew Sjoquist is speaking this week at the Data Centre Leaders Summit at The Star Sydney, opening 7 March.