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Anthropic proposes $31bn datacentre in rural Queensland to power Claude
Anthropic plans a $31 billion datacentre in Queensland drawing 2.16GW-roughly a quarter of the state's power-while over 21,500 residents have signed a petition opposing it.
Anthropic plans to build a $31 billion datacentre on a 725-hectare feedlot site near Kogan, Queensland, to power its Claude large language model. The proposed facility would require a peak power capacity of 2.16GW - roughly a quarter of Queensland's total state energy demand - making it one of the most energy-intensive single projects ever proposed in the region.
The project comes via Singapore-based developer Zerra DC. Over 21,500 people have signed a local petition opposing the development, with residents pointing to the strain on regional infrastructure and the disconnect between the facility's scale and the rural community's resources.
The scale of the proposal
The 725-hectare site was previously used as a feedlot. Converting it to a hyperscale datacentre would transform both the physical landscape and the local power grid. At 2.16GW peak demand, the facility would draw more electricity than many Australian cities consume on a summer day.
Local opposition has coalesced around concerns about water usage, noise, and whether the regional grid can absorb the load without compromising supply to existing residents and businesses. The petition count - exceeding 21,500 signatures - reflects the intensity of that pushback in a sparsely populated area.
Political and regulatory hurdles
The project has drawn attention from the Environmental Defenders Office, signalling potential legal challenges over land use and environmental impact. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli's government will face pressure from both sides: economic development advocates who see the investment as a jobs and infrastructure win, and rural constituents who view the project as ill-suited to the region.
Andrew Messenger reported for The Guardian AI that residents like Denver Kanowski and Mordechai Winters have voiced strong objections. The article described local sentiment as viewing the datacentre as "a whole new level of 'stupidity'" compared to previous gas projects that have cycled through the area.
Anthropic's broader trajectory
The Queensland plan fits a pattern of aggressive infrastructure spending by Anthropic. The company recently filed for an IPO targeting a valuation near $2 trillion, while reporting a $42 billion net loss and outlining a $518 billion AI spending plan in its filing. It has also committed $100 million to train 10,000 engineers by the end of 2027.
These figures suggest a company betting that controlling its own compute infrastructure - rather than renting cloud capacity - will be essential to competing in frontier model development. The Queensland site would join a growing portfolio of Anthropic-leased datacentre capacity in Western Australia.
Why this matters for executives and operations leaders
For anyone managing infrastructure, real estate, or energy-intensive operations, the Queensland proposal is a stress test of what happens when AI compute demand collides with physical constraints. A single facility demanding a quarter of a state's power output raises questions about grid reliability, permitting timelines, and community relations that will repeat across every market where hyperscale datacentres are proposed. The opposition numbers in Kogan - more than 21,500 people in a rural region - signal that local resistance can scale faster than construction timelines.