Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said, “Australia is well placed to be a global leader in AI, with deep technical talent, strong institutions and a clear ambition to use new technology to lift productivity. Through OpenAI for Australia, we are focused on accelerating the infrastructure, workforce skills and local ecosystem needed to turn that opportunity into long-term economic growth.”

OpenAI today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with NEXTDC to develop a sovereign AI infrastructure partnership under the OpenAI for Australia program.

Through the MoU, OpenAI and NEXTDC will collaborate on the planning, development and operation of a next-generation hyperscale AI campus and large-scale GPU supercluster at NEXTDC’s S7 site in Eastern Creek, Sydney.

OpenAI intends to be an initial offtaker with the option to scale over time under the OpenAI for Countries program. This would provide Australia with the sovereign compute capacity needed to support sensitive and mission-critical workloads across government, enterprise, research and national infrastructure.