According to a statement published by NextDC, the partnership will see the Australian data centre operator and the ChatGPT maker collaborate on the planning, construction and operation of a large-scale GPU supercluster at the firm’s S7 site in Eastern Creek, roughly 45km west of central Sydney.

The project is valued at A$7 billion (US$4.6 billion), according to reporting in the Australian Financial Review, and will support OpenAI’s enterprise clients across Australia, including Commonwealth Bank, Wesfarmers, Canva and Virgin Australia.

The news sent NextDC shares up as much as 11 per cent in early Sydney trading, underlining investor confidence in Australia’s growing appeal as an AI and cloud-computing hub.

While the company declined to provide more detailed specifications, the proposed facility is positioned as a cornerstone of a broader sovereign AI infrastructure strategy, aimed at keeping high-end compute capacity within Australia and easing reliance on offshore data centre networks.

The partnership comes amid a global race to secure power, land and chips for AI workloads, with hyperscale operators and model developers increasingly seeking regional clusters to meet exploding compute demand.

For OpenAI, the deal continues its recent pattern of securing local partnerships to expand infrastructure capacity and reduce bottlenecks.

For Australia, the project represents a major step toward establishing domestic capability for training and deploying cutting-edge AI systems, an area national regulators have identified as strategically important as adoption accelerates across the private and public sectors.