What NEXTDC Does

NEXTDC is Australia’s largest independent data centre operator. The Brisbane-founded company builds and runs carrier-neutral facilities where businesses and government agencies colocate their servers and network equipment: paying NEXTDC for the physical space, power, cooling, and connectivity rather than building and running their own infrastructure.

The “carrier-neutral” part matters. Unlike a telco-owned data centre that pushes customers toward its own network products, NEXTDC lets customers connect to any of the hundreds of networks, cloud providers, and internet exchanges that terminate in its facilities. That flexibility is a significant selling point for large enterprises and cloud-heavy businesses.

Founded, HQ, and ASX Listing

NEXTDC was founded in Brisbane in 2010 by Bevan Slattery, one of Australia’s most prolific infrastructure entrepreneurs. Craig Scroggie joined as CEO early on and has led the company through its growth from a startup to an ASX 100 company. NEXTDC lists on the ASX under the ticker NXT.

The company is headquartered in Brisbane and operates 16+ data centres across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, Darwin, and the Sunshine Coast: with additional facilities in development or planning across Australia and internationally in New Zealand, Japan, and Malaysia.

Key Infrastructure and Products

NEXTDC operates at significant scale:

Colocation: rack space, private cages, and private suites for businesses of all sizes
AXON Interconnectivity Platform: virtual cross-connects between customers and cloud providers, allowing direct private connections to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others
ONEDC Self-Service Hub: customer portal for managing space, power, and connectivity without waiting on account teams
Mission Critical Spaces (MCX): hardened high-security environments for government and defence workloads
Liquid Cooling: high-density cooling infrastructure designed for AI and GPU compute workloads

AI Infrastructure: Why NEXTDC Is Central to Australia’s AI Future

The AI era runs on hardware: specifically on GPU clusters that require enormous amounts of power and cooling. Training large models or running inference at scale is not something you can do from a standard office server room. You need high-density power (often 40-100kW per rack, versus 5-10kW for typical compute), advanced cooling to manage the heat, and low-latency connectivity to move data in and out.

NEXTDC has invested heavily in building this kind of infrastructure across its Australian facility portfolio. The company’s liquid cooling capability, in particular, is designed for the heat loads that AI GPU clusters generate: something most older Australian data centres cannot handle. As Australian businesses and research institutions scale up their AI workloads, NEXTDC’s facilities become the natural landing zone.

The company has also positioned itself as a hub for cloud connectivity. Direct connections to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle through AXON mean businesses can access cloud AI services with lower latency and more predictable costs than going over the public internet.

Scale and Financial Position

NEXTDC reported revenue of approximately $430 million AUD in FY2024, with strong forward bookings driven by AI and cloud demand. The company carries significant capital investment commitments as it builds new facilities to meet contracted demand: a sign that large enterprise and hyperscaler customers are locking in capacity years in advance.

For the broader Australian economy, NEXTDC’s role is foundational. Every business that runs workloads in an Australian cloud region is, often indirectly, relying on data centre infrastructure of the kind NEXTDC provides. The company’s investment in AI-ready facilities is infrastructure spending that benefits the entire ecosystem: from startups training models to banks running fraud detection at scale.

This profile is part of SmallBizAI.au’s guide to Australian AI companies by industry.

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