Sharon AI and NEXTDC: Scaling Australia's Sovereign AI Cloud
Australia has the energy, connectivity and ambition to export AI capability, not just consume it. Turning that ambition into capacity takes sovereign compute built at scale, at home, and neoclouds are becoming how that capacity reaches the market.
Sharon AI runs a full-stack AI cloud platform on top of GPU infrastructure, serving workloads from fraud detection and weather mapping to human genome research. To scale at pace, without compromising on speed, security or sovereignty, it needed a data centre partner that understood AI infrastructure end to end: power, cooling, connectivity and the reach to turn compute into commercial value.
Reaching beyond the GPU
Deploying AI at scale goes well beyond the GPU. Power density, cooling and interconnection decide whether a neocloud can grow, and how fast. Australia’s real constraint is not compute. It is reachable compute: capacity that can be contracted, connected and consumed.
For Sharon AI, that meant securing high-density capacity quickly, running it without interruption, and reaching time to first token sooner, the point where a customer’s investment starts producing value.
Trust and speed
Andrew Leece, Co-founder and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Sharon AI, points to two factors behind the decision: trust and speed. Trust came from certification. Every Sharon AI workload runs onshore in an Uptime Institute Tier IV certified facility, the highest classification for resilience, with a partner also certified in the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Center program and Certified Strategic under the Australian Government’s Hosting Certification Framework.
“Finding a data centre partner who is NVIDIA certified, government certified and even Tier IV uptime certified was the holy grail.”
Andrew Leece, Co-founder and Head of Strategic Partnerships, Sharon AI
Co-designed, and running today
Speed came from how the infrastructure was built. Sharon AI co-designed facilities with NEXTDC as sites came out of the ground, engineering power, liquid cooling and connectivity together for AI factories built on NVIDIA DSX, energised and operating today, not promised in a pipeline.
What NEXTDC delivered:
- Custom, build-to-suit data halls for exact power, cooling and rack density needs
- AI factories built on NVIDIA DSX, liquid-cooled and energised today
- Uptime Institute Tier IV certified facilities with a 100% uptime SLA
- Interconnect speeds up to 100Gbps and access to cloud on-ramps
- Lower-PUE design for more efficient token generation and lower energy use
- NEXTDC AI experts co-designing with Sharon AI’s technical leads to fast-track deployment
The result is measurable efficiency that shortens time to first token and speed to market.
Interconnection for commercial reach
A GPU cluster with no route to market is a stranded asset. What turns compute into commercial value is reach. Through NEXTDC’s AXON platform on a Network-as-a-Service model, Sharon AI reaches customers over secure, low-latency links to an ecosystem of clouds, carriers and co-located businesses, nationwide and across APAC, in the right sovereign jurisdiction, alongside the clouds and networks they already use.
“Connectivity plays an incredibly important role in an AI factory, and Sharon AI will be able to take advantage of our AXON fabric. Our focus is to turn energy into intelligence, and to work with companies like Sharon AI to turn their investment into revenue.”
David Dzienciol, Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, NEXTDC
The results
Working with NEXTDC, Sharon AI has:
- Achieved 100% uptime for its AI workloads
- Scaled its GPUaaS platform across Australia’s east coast
- Simplified its network architecture through NEXTDC’s virtual interconnection ecosystem
“Having a hands-on infrastructure partner like NEXTDC allows us to sleep better at night. We’re able to deliver services confidently and reliably every day.”
Andrew Leece, Co-founder and Head of Strategic Partnerships, Sharon AI
Part of Australia’s AI factory buildout
On 9 September 2026, NVIDIA named eight Australian cloud and data centre partners, including NEXTDC and Sharon AI, to deliver up to 2GW of AI infrastructure by 2027, built on the NVIDIA DSX platform. The Sharon AI partnership is that national shift in practice.
Why it matters
For neocloud operators like Sharon AI, the right infrastructure partner turns energy into productive compute, interconnected with the commercial fabric that makes it usable. In practice, that means being able to:
- Enter new markets with confidence
- Deliver GPU-powered AI services with speed and precision
- Meet sovereign, regulatory and enterprise-grade expectations
Let’s talk AI deployment
Whether you’re designing your next AI factory, scaling GPU cloud capacity, or entering the market for the first time, NEXTDC delivers the high-density, liquid-cooled foundations, and the commercial reach, behind Australia’s sovereign AI cloud.
“When NEXTDC handles the core infrastructure complexity, it allows Sharon AI to focus on innovation and growth.”
Andrew Leece, Co-founder and Head of Strategic Partnerships, Sharon AI
Contact the NEXTDC team to design your AI-ready deployment with confidence, flexibility and speed.
Related content: What is a Neocloud? · Neoclouds vs Hyperscalers · AI Ready Checklist for Neoclouds & Hyperscale Platforms
