US tech titans are racing to build data centers in Australia, and AirTrunk is rolling out the welcome mat

When the world’s biggest tech companies go shopping for places to park their AI ambitions, they apparently want sunshine, political stability, and an English-speaking workforce. Australia checks all three boxes, and AirTrunk, the country’s dominant hyperscale data center operator, is positioning itself as the landlord of choice. AirTrunk CEO Robin Khuda has described the current wave of AI infrastructure buildout as “the biggest gold rush in human history.” His company, valued at roughly A$24 billion after a Blackstone-led consortium acquired it in 2024, is betting that Australia can capture a disproportionate share of that gold. The scale of the buildout AirTrunk’s total operational capacity across its five Australian campuses now exceeds 1.2 GW. The company’s latest project, the MEL2 campus in Melbourne announced in December 2025, will deliver over 354 MW of capacity. The price tag: more than A$5 billion in investment for a single campus. Meanwhile, AirTrunk’s SYD3 project in Sydney is targeting over 400 MW, with A$4.3 billion in loan talks reportedly underway to finance the build. The client roster reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, and O...