Amazon boosts Australian investment to $20 billion to meet AI, data demands
Seattle: Global tech giant Amazon Web Services will increase its spending on data centres in Australia to $20 billion over the next five years, company chief executive Matt Garman says.
In a joint announcement alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the company's 'Amazon Spheres' building in Seattle, Garman said additional spending was needed so the company could meet increasing demand for access to artificial intelligence, cloud-based storage and more for some of Australia's biggest companies.
Those companies include the big four banks, Telstra and Optus and a range of other IT and services companies, including Atlassian and Canva.
The company, which is investing heavily in a range of power technologies including nuclear and renewables across the world to meet the huge electricity demands of artificial intelligence, will also invest in two new solar farms in Victoria and one in Queensland, an increase from the eight it currently invests in and uses.
Amazon already has 37 major data centre 'regions' across the world, including one in each of Melbourne and Sydney, and the expanded investment will see these centres significantly expanded.
The US-based company, best known for its ubiquitous online shopping services, has already spent about $9 billion in Australia and had planned to increase its spend to $13 billion, but surging demand for its web services meant the company's investment would rise to $20 billion by 2029.
'We think that AI has really the ability to change every industry, and we look at a couple of our customers. First, we look at a customer like CommBank. CommBank is launching an AI factory powered by AWS to completely change how they do innovation,' Garman said.
'They expect that AI will allow them to drive innovation up to four times faster than they do today ... We can look at the Australian national swimming team, we used AI to help their swimmers improve, and actually led to improvements in their performance in the pool, helping them win seven gold medals in the Paris Olympics.'
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