TechPulse USA

77% of Australia's $70B Data-Centre Bet Has No Power By Daniel Rao · October 24, 2026 Australia wants to be the AI capital of the Asia-Pacific. It has a plan, billions of dollars in announced investment, and the backing of governments desperate to look like winners in the AI race. There is just one small problem: most of its data centres can't plug in. A Bloomberg review of company disclosures, published October 23, found that more than three-quarters of the 40-plus large data centres planned or under construction around Sydney and Melbourne — representing more than A$100 billion (US$70 billion) of projected investment — have not publicly confirmed they have secured electricity supply or grid connections. Just 23% have. In Sydney, seven of 28 active projects have confirmed power. In Melbourne, the figure drops to three of 15. That isn't a pipeline. That's a wish list with a power cable missing. The story gets worse from there. While developers were announcing gigaw...

By Daniel Rao, Melbourne — with reporting by the TechPulse USA newsroom Here is a sentence the artificial intelligence industry was never supposed to need: Australia's biggest data centre company froze trading in its own shares today because the residents of a quiet inner-western suburb refused to let anyone plant concrete power poles on their street. NextDC, the ASX-listed operator behind what its chief executive Craig Scroggie calls "Australia's largest hyperscale AI factory", requested a trading halt on Monday after conceding it cannot say when grid power will reach the M3 data centre in West Footscray — or what the delay will do to its financial guidance for fiscal 2027. The board, the company revealed in its ASX filing, had not even met to consider the problem when the request went in. The company named no cause. Analysts did not wait for one: Citi's Siraj Ahmed told investors the halt "likely related" to electricity distributor Jemena's pau...