Maincode, an Australian AI firm, is planning to launch a data center in Melbourne.

According to local press, including AFR, the new facility will be housed in a Telstra-owned data center. The company reportedly aims to invest AU$30 million in the project, known as MC-2, which is set to launch in January 2026. Full details regarding the scope of the deployment weren’t shared.

“Chatbot LLMs are incredible writers, but purpose-built models are the ones that reason, decide, and deliver,” Dave Lemphers, Maincode co-founder and CEO, said on LinkedIn. “That’s what we’re building with our new $30 million MC-2 Model Factory, Australian-made AI engineered for real-world intelligence.”

Maincode launched its flagship platform Matilda, billed as Australia's first "sovereign large language model, trained on Australian data," earlier this year.

The company relies on AMD hardware, rather than Nvidia. The new deployment will reportedly feature AMD Instinct MI355 accelerators, AMD EPYC 9575F server CPUs, and AMD ROCm software.

Details on the company’s MC-1 data center deployment, which produced Matilda, haven’t been shared.

The startup is majority-owned by Australian billionaire Ed Craven, co-founder of online casino Stake.

“MC-2 is more than an expansion, it’s a statement of belief,” Lemphers told press. “We’re not chasing size for its own sake. We’re building advanced, focused models that actually work, models built with the precision, efficiency, and practicality that define Australian Engineering.”

Peter Chambers, senior director, OEM sales, APJ and country manager, Australia, AMD, added: “With our latest generations of GPUs, CPUs, and software stacks, MC-2 is designed to deliver frontier AI performance with exceptional energy efficiency. We’re proud to support Maincode in driving locally led innovation with global reach and to help advance Australia’s AI Ecosystem.”

Telstra operates a data center campus in the Clayton area of Melbourne, totaling some 12MW of capacity.

Across Australia, Telstra offers colocation out of facilities across Wellington, Western Australia; Waymouth, South Australia; Exhibition and Clayton, Victoria; Deakin, Australian Capital Territory; St Leonard's, New South Wales; and Woolloongabba, Queensland.

As well as owning and managing data centers, the company has partnered with Digital Realty, Equinix, and NextDC to offer services across Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.