Sydney, Australia - January 29, 2026 - Australian AI infrastructure specialist SCX.ai has deployed what it calls Australia’s first sovereign AI inferencing node at Equinix’s SY5 International Business Exchange (IBX®) data center in Sydney, a move designed to support low-latency AI workloads while complying with domestic data residency and sovereignty requirements.
The deployment uses an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-accelerated architecture, which SCX.ai says delivers significantly higher energy efficiency compared with traditional graphic processing unit (GPU)-based systems. The company has stated that the ASIC-based node achieves about ten times the energy efficiency of conventional AI compute deployments and does so without relying on water-intensive cooling infrastructure typical of high-density AI data centers.
Hosted within Equinix’s SY5 facility, a carrier-dense campus with direct interconnectivity to cloud and network operators, the sovereign AI node is intended to serve customers in regulated sectors such as financial services, government, and healthcare, where data control and local processing are critical. Equinix officials said the location gives users access to robust connectivity, private interconnection options, and hybrid cloud on-ramps.
SCX.ai Founder and Chief Executive Officer David Keane said the Sydney deployment represents “a fundamental shift in how Australia can deploy AI at scale.” He noted that the combination of onshore infrastructure, data sovereignty, and energy efficiency supports both performance and sustainability goals for enterprise and public sector AI applications.
The Sydney node will also support Project MAGPiE, a large language model developed by SCX.ai that is tailored to Australian linguistic and cultural contexts. SCX.ai said hosting MAGPiE on sovereign infrastructure in Australia can help organizations run advanced AI models without exporting sensitive data overseas.
SCX.ai said the Sydney facility is the first in a planned national network of sovereign AI infrastructure deployments across Australia. The company intends to roll out additional nodes later in 2026 to broaden coverage and further reduce regional latencies for customers outside the Sydney metro area.
Industry analysts said the move underscores a growing trend toward regionally located AI compute infrastructure as enterprises and governments balance performance demands with compliance, data sovereignty, and sustainability considerations. The model may appeal to organizations seeking alternatives to offshore hyperscale AI services and those with strict governance requirements.
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