Wedoany.com Report-Dec.26, AirTrunk has announced plans for a new data centre campus in Melbourne's north-west, to be called MEL2. The facility is designed to provide more than 354MW of capacity and will be built in several phases.

This development involves more than A$5 billion in new direct investment. When fully completed, MEL2 will raise AirTrunk's total deployable capacity in Melbourne to over 630MW across its two local campuses. With this addition, the company's overall planned investment in Victoria will surpass A$7 billion.

The project is expected to support substantial employment. Construction activities across the multiple phases should create more than 4,000 jobs. Once the campus is operational, it will maintain more than 200 direct positions, while also contributing to over 1,000 full-time roles within the local supply chain.

AirTrunk now operates five campuses in Australia, with three located in Sydney and two in Melbourne. Together, these sites offer more than 1.2GW of capacity, delivering large-scale, high-density infrastructure with geographic diversity to meet the needs of global cloud and artificial intelligence providers.

AirTrunk founder and chief executive Robin Khuda said the Melbourne expansion reflects growing demand for AI-ready infrastructure as Australia pursues ambitions to become a global AI hub. He added that the company’s balance sheet and delivery track record provide customers with confidence in the timely deployment of large-scale capacity.

This announcement comes shortly after AirTrunk revealed plans for a new hyperscale campus in Osaka, Japan. The two projects will become the company's 14th and 15th data centres, increasing its global platform to more than 2.6GW of capacity across six markets in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions.

The Melbourne initiative aligns with Australia's National AI Plan, which was released in late 2025 and highlights infrastructure as a central focus for promoting AI adoption throughout the economy. Data centres continue to serve as an essential foundation for this progress, enabling advancements in public services, enterprise solutions, and broader digital development.

The development also illustrates the ongoing growth in Australia's data centre industry. Rising requirements for cloud computing and artificial intelligence workloads are drawing significant investment to the sector. Melbourne's expanding hyperscale environment is establishing the city as a key element in the wider regional digital infrastructure network.