Anthropic is racing to expand its AI computing capacity in the Asia-Pacific region, as the company struggles to keep up with growing demand for its products.
The US-based AI lab is currently hiring for 13 roles in its computing department – which focuses on developing and managing AI data centers – eight of which are based in Australia or Japan.
In Japan, the company is hiring for two roles: sourcing data center deals and data center electrical engineer. The six Australian-based open roles are all focused on data center engineers and operators. In April, Anthropic was also hiring for a role in sourcing data center deals in the country.
Anthropic, the world’s largest private equity firm, announced a slew of US data center deals in the spring, and was hiring for an IT consulting role in Europe in April.
It is increasingly looking to expand overseas as the use of its business and consumer products has gained momentum in recent months.
“Growing at this pace places an unavoidable strain on our infrastructure; our unprecedented customer growth, in particular, has impacted reliability and performance,” the company said in an April blog post.
‘More power’
Anthropic has continued its steady growth pace despite ongoing tensions with US regulators over the use of their AI models.
The AI lab raised $65 billion in May at a $965 billion valuation. Estimated revenue exceeded $47 billion that month, several times higher than the “nearly $9 billion” Anthropic said it will see by the end of 2025.
As part of the race to build computing capacity, the data center power role list in Australia specifically mentions “the rapid growth of AI computing companies across the region” and talks of leading “multi-hundred megawatt procurement efforts.”
Australia has abundant land, abundant renewable energy and a stable political and regulatory environment, said David Wroe, head of the AI and Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank.
The country is also “away from military threats, which have shown the vulnerability of the Gulf states,” he told CNBC. Conflicts in the Middle East have tested the region’s credentials as a safe haven for building AI infrastructure, which has two dimensions. Amazon data centers targeted at the start of the war.
Australia’s involvement in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership with the US also means the country is seen as a safe place to calculate, as models become more powerful and sensitive as a national security asset, Wroe added.
But the “biggest barrier” to building large-scale AI infrastructure in Australia is copyright laws that “put an AI company at risk of being sued by copyright holders,” Wroe said. Some politicians in Australia are campaigning against copyright restrictions on AI companies that want to use the content to train commercial products.
Power hunting
Anthropic pointed CNBC to comments it made in May, when the company said it would increase capacity globally.
“We are very serious about where we will add capacity—partnering with democracies that have legal and regulatory frameworks that support investments of this scale, and where the supply chain on which our computing depends—hardware, networks, and resources—will be secured,” Anthropic said in a blog post.
While the roles in Australia and Japan do not include salary caps, the London-based data center for Europe, which the company hired in April, offered a salary between £225,000 and £270,000 ($296,854-$355,253).
Engineering and technical roles in data centers are in high demand due to labor shortages, and salaries for these roles are increasing.
Japan has a dynamic grid infrastructure and strong government interest in domestic AI infrastructure, according to Anthropic’s job ad. The US AI lab is not the only company showing interest in investing in the region.
In April Microsoft announced a $10 billion investment in Japan, which will include developing AI infrastructure, and GMI Cloud announced a $12 billion independent AI project in March.
“Japan is the most attractive investment destination in Asia because of its political stability, reliable power grid, advanced internet and subsea cable infrastructure and skilled workforce,” it said. Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
“In many ways it reflects the factors driving data center investment in the United States.”
The creation of AI infrastructure in Japan still faces significant challenges when it comes to reaching capacity, just like projects around the world.
For many data center developers across the Asia-Pacific, “securing energy is more challenging than acquiring land, financing or permits,” said Xiaonan Feng, principal analyst for APAC energy and renewables at Wood Mackenzie. “Grid availability is emerging as a defining barrier to data center growth.”
