Nvidia Powers $660M 'AI Factory' in Melbourne

The Melbourne "AI Factory" is part of Firmus' broader "Project Southgate," a multi-site initiative across Australia. This initial Melbourne phase is valued at A$4.5 billion and will feature approximately 18,500 of Nvidia's GB300 Grace Blackwell Superchips, slated to be operational in 2026. A larger campus is also under construction in Tasmania, which is expected to house around 36,800 GB300 GPUs and is being positioned as a benchmark for energy-efficient AI infrastructure. The facility's core, Nvidia's Blackwell platform, represents a significant architectural leap for AI and robotics. Unlike previous generations, Blackwell is designed as a comprehensive platform for building and operating "AI factories" that can handle trillion-parameter models. For robotics, the integration of the Blackwell architecture into the Jetson AGX Thor platform aligns Nvidia's robotics hardware with its most advanced AI compute engines for the first time, enabling more complex "physical AI" applications. This project signals a push for sovereign AI capability in Australia, a move supported by government initiatives to bolster domestic high-performance computing. The Australian government has committed over $460 million to AI-related initiatives and up to $1 billion for critical technologies like AI through the National Reconstruction Fund. This investment aims to reduce reliance on offshore technology and capture a larger share of the global AI economy. The partnership with CDC Data Centres is crucial, as they specialize in highly secure, sovereign facilities for government and defense clients. CDC's new Brooklyn campus in Melbourne, part of a multi-billion dollar investment, will provide over 800 MW of digital capacity, catering to the increasing demand from AI and high-performance computing. This aligns with the Australian Department of Defence's focus on leveraging Robotics, Autonomous Systems, and AI (RAS-AI) to modernize its forces. The development of "agentic AI," capable of autonomous planning and execution of complex tasks, is a key driver for this level of computational power. In defense, agentic AI is being explored for autonomous warfare systems, predictive intelligence, and optimizing logistics. In industrial automation, it can be applied to predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization, where AI agents can manage workflows across multiple systems with minimal human intervention. The Australian venture capital landscape is increasingly focused on AI, with AI-powered solutions receiving $1 billion in funding in 2025. Firms like Main Sequence Ventures and Kosmos Ventures are actively investing in deep tech, robotics, and AI startups. This growing ecosystem, combined with substantial infrastructure projects like the "AI Factory," points to a strategic effort to establish Australia as a significant player in the global AI and robotics landscape.