Anthropic's Australian subsidiary has signed a lease agreement with Australian Data Centres (ADC).

The deal with ADC, which is majority-owned by Australian real assets manager and owner Dexus, is not yet definitive.

In its September quarterly update to the Australian Stock Exchange, Dexus said: "A consortium including Australia Data Centres (in which Dexus holds an 85 percent interest) entered into lease documentation with an Australian subsidiary of Anthropic for delivery of the first stage of the proposed development of a hyperscale data center campus in the Western Downs region of Queensland, subject to customary approvals including Dexus Board approval.

Speaking during the company's general meeting, Dexus CEO Ross Du Vernet told investors that ADC has "launched a fundraising process to introduce additional capital to the business, of which Dexus is yet to determine the extent to which it will participate."

He added: "Further details will be provided at financial close of the Anthropic project.

Ross also described ADC as a "small Australian data center business." According to ADC's website, the company has two data centers in Canberra that are operational, located in Mitchell and Fyshwick. Locations in Melbourne, Sydney, and Darwin are "in development," and Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane are "in planning." The Canberra site was acquired in December 2025.

Details about the deal with Anthropic were not provided, but reports in September suggested that the consortium also includes Zerra DC, and will be for four data centers on 720 hectares of land in Dalby, northwest of Queensland. The data centers are expected to offer 2.16GW of capacity and be the first to go online in 2027.

Zerra DC filed for a data center campus in Western Downs in August 2026. At the time, the company said that Phase I of the campus will include the first data center, known as 1A and offering 36,000 sqm (387,500 sq ft) of data center floor space, an on-site battery-backed power conditioning system, a 540MVA substation, and supporting infrastructure. Buildings 1B, 2A, and 2B will also each total 36,000 sqm.

That Anthropic has been seeking data center capacity in Australia has been known since April 2026, when it signed an MoU to “cooperate on AI safety research and support the goals of Australia’s National AI Plan.”

As per that MoU, Anthropic could invest in “data center infrastructure and energy throughout the country” in line with the country’s expectations of projects proposed by data center and AI infrastructure developers.