Australians could enjoy safe, higher-speed access to artificial intelligence models while using less water and energy, according to a homegrown AI infrastructure company.
As the world positions for the global data centre build-out, Southern Cross AI (SCX.ai) has built a platform to operate AI models within Australia’s existing commercial data centres.
SCX.ai makes inference infrastructure, systems that support trained AI models to make predictions on unseen data.
Inference refers to the “doing” process of AI models and requires significantly less computing power than training them, SCX.ai founder and chief executive David Keane said.
“To power those AI applications and agents that we hear so much about, they need these things called tokens … basically a measure of work,” he told AAP.
“We believed there was a need to create high-speed, cost-efficient, and fully sovereign capacity to build those tokens right here in Australia.”
SCX’s platform uses specialised, air-cooled AI accelerator processors, which use 99 per cent less water, 75 per cent less electricity and produce results up to five times faster than graphics processing units (GPUs).
“It’s clear we need AI, we must compete in our region and use it right throughout our economy, but we have to do it in a way that’s environmentally responsible,” Mr Keane said.
Sovereignty, as much as efficiency, was a key selling point.
“Think of all the people that are putting their financial returns into ChatGPT, or maybe even their health records, and they’re sending that overseas right now,” Mr Keane said.
“Australians need AI that is servicing Australians, not Australians servicing AI.”
The platform uses open-weight models, effectively open-source versions of popular AI models, that companies can run on their own infrastructure up to 80 per cent cheaper than under the current flagship proprietary models.
SCX.ai is set to list on the Australian Securities Exchange on Tuesday after a $40 million capital raising, which will be used to fully fund its second factory, having already built its first.
“We believe that this is going to be an interesting option for Australian investors to consider because SCX will be the first pure-play AI inferencing service available in Australia,” Mr Keane said.
The broader AI infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market is expected to grow to $177.4 billion globally by 2030, surging from just $15 billion in spending in 2025.
In Australia, IaaS spending is expected to accelerate from $300 million to $3.5 billion over the same period, with inference workloads increasing their share of that spend from 49 per cent to 69 per cent.
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