Anthropic's products are growing faster than its infrastructure can handle. The company needs new data centers to keep up. But finding the right places to build them is getting harder.
Anthropic posted 13 open jobs in its compute department. Eight of those are in Australia and Japan - a clear sign of where it wants to expand next. Six roles in Australia are for data center engineers and operators. Two roles in Japan focus on sourcing data center deals and electrical engineering.
In April 2026, a London-based role focused on securing data center deals for Europe offered an annual salary of £225,000 to £270,000. Claim your free investing masterclass bonus and daily updates here.
Australia offers physical safety. "It has distance from military threats, which have proved such a vulnerability for the Gulf states," said David Wroe, head of the AI and Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. But Australia also has a big problem: copyright laws that "put an AI company at risk of being sued by rights holders," Wroe added.
Japan looks attractive for different reasons. Aalok Mehta, who oversees the Wadhwani AI Center, observed that Japan's advantages include "political stability, reliable power grid, highly developed Internet and subsea cable infrastructure, and technically skilled workforce." Additionally, Microsoft announced a $10 billion investment into Japan in April 2026, including AI infrastructure. GMI Cloud said in March 2026 it would spend $12 billion on a sovereign AI project.
But even stable countries face a tough challenge: finding enough electricity. Xiaonan Feng, a principal analyst covering Asia-Pacific power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie, said, "Securing power is becoming more challenging than securing land, financing or permits." He added, "Grid availability is emerging as the defining constraint on data centre growth."
Anthropic's need for new data centers is driven by rapid customer growth. The company's revenue run-rate - a measure of current income projected over a full year - was "around $9 billion" at the end of 2025. By May 2026, that figure had crossed $47 billion.
In an April 2026 blog post, Anthropic said, "Growth at this pace places an inevitable strain on our infrastructure; our unprecedented consumer growth, in particular, has impacted reliability and performance." In a May 2026 blog post, it explained its location strategy: "We're very intentional about where we'll add capacity - partnering with democratic countries whose legal and regulatory frameworks support investments of this scale, and where the supply chain on which our compute depends - hardware, networking, and facilities - will be secure."
The biggest hurdles for Anthropic in Australia and Japan are legal and energy related. In Australia, copyright lawsuits could slow progress. In Japan, the grid may not have enough spare power for large data centers.
Globally, the competition for energy is becoming the main limit on how fast AI infrastructure can grow. The race to build AI data centers will likely hinge on who can secure reliable power first.
