By Kimberley Kao 


  Amazon plans to invest about $13 billion to expand its Australian data center infrastructure, as it seeks to meet the boom in global demand for artificial-intelligence computing. 



  The investment of 20 billion Australian dollars, the equivalent of $12.97 billion, through 2029 will strengthen the country's cloud computing and AI capabilities to support strong demand from customers, the Seattle-based tech giant said Saturday. 



  Amazon is also investing in three new solar farms to support the data centre infrastructure expansion. 



  The spending plan is Australia's largest publicly-announced investment from a global technology provider, it said. 



  The investment "will set us up for the future, boosting our economy and productivity. This is a huge vote of confidence in the Australian economy," Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a social media post on X. 



  AWS, Amazon's cloud-computing arm, has trained over 400,000 people in Australia since 2017 to develop digital skills, and will continue to support generative AI programs, it said. 



  The investment comes as companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to invest heavily in expanding their data centers amid growing competition for AI computing. 



  Over the past few weeks, Amazon has announced plans to spend at least $20 billion in Pennsylvania and $10 billion in North Carolina to expand its AI infrastructure, as well as a $5 billion investment in Taiwan to launch a new cloud services region on the island. 



  AWS has more cloud and infrastructure regions in the pipeline, including in Chile, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. 



  Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com 



  (END) Dow Jones Newswires



  June 16, 2025 00:12 ET (04:12 GMT)


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