AWS invests $20B to expand data centre infrastructure in Australia

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will look to expand data centre infrastructure in Australia with a $20 billion investment by 2029.

This will include solar farms in Victoria and Queensland to be built in support of the infrastructure expansion, AWS CEO Matt Garman and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced at a joint press conference in Seattle on 14 June.

The three new solar farms will be delivered and operated by European Energy, a Danish-founded renewable energy company.

Amazon said it was committed to purchasing a combined capacity of more than 170-megawatts (MW) across the three solar farms.

The cloud vendor currently invests in eight solar and wind projects across NSW, Queensland and Victoria. These are used to help power its Australian operations, including Amazon data centres and fulfilment centres.

Once all 11 renewable energy projects are operational, “they are estimated to generate more than 1.4 million megawatt hours of carbon-free energy annually, or enough to power about 290,000 Australian homes each year”, stated Amazon.

“This is the largest investment our country has seen from a global technology provider and is an exciting opportunity for Australia to build AI capability using secure, resilient infrastructure,” said Prime Minister Albanese. “The investment will generate economic opportunity for Australians, including skilled jobs and infrastructure that can support complex AI and supercomputing applications.”

The planned investment follows the launch of AWS AI Spring Australia, a comprehensive set of programs designed to accelerate AI adoption and capability across the nation announced at the 2025 AWS Summit in Sydney on 4 June.

The AI Spring initiative comes on the heels of a planned $13.2 billion investment in existing cloud infrastructure by 2027 in AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region and AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region, said the cloud giant’s Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) vice president and managing director, Rianne Van Veldhuizen, during her keynote speech.

The program offers a range of initiatives to help customers and partners across different sectors and industries build AI capability.

AWS CEO Garman said the planned investment deepens its long-term commitment to supporting the growth and development of Australian organisations of all sizes and helping them harness the enormous opportunity that generative AI offers.

“AI is a once-in-a-generation transformation and Amazon is pleased to be empowering all Australians to innovate at scale through this investment,” he said.

As for channel partners in Australia, AWS Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) director of partnerships Chris Casey said in a previous interview with ARN that one of the most exciting aspects of working in the APJ and A/NZ regions is the incredible diversity of its partner landscape.

“What makes this region unique is the dynamic growth. Many partners have built highly sophisticated and successful businesses around specific technologies that help customers at the start of their cloud journey,” he said.

The growing importance of cloud also brings with it the emerging use of AI, with the cloud vendor embarking on a broad training initiative with partners, including MSPs.

The goal is to ensure they’re fully aware of how AWS AI and AWS services work.

“We’re still at a stage where basic foundational training is essential, especially for employees within an MSP,” said Casey. “Ensuring they understand how this it works, and how to apply it meaningfully within businesses, is attractive to our MSP partners. 

Since 2017, AWS has trained more than 400,000 people across Australia, empowering individuals to accelerate their careers and contribute to the nation’s digital transformation and economy.

Amazon has a deep commitment to upskilling people in Australia through a combination of local and global skills programs.

These include AWS’s Work-Based Learning Program, a 12-month training program for data centre operations, and Amazon’s AI Ready initiative, launched with a goal to provide free AI skills training to two million people globally by 2025. 

While AI brings plenty of opportunities, there is also a need to be cautious and strategic when adopting solutions.