Australian, Nasdaq-listed neocloud Sharon AI is hiring staff and looking to raise capital for a data centre campus in regional New South Wales, to be delivered by a mysterious “affiliated venture.”
In September Australian neocloud Sharon AI confirmed it had bought a retired paper mill in Albury, a regional city between Sydney and Melbourne. It has now revealed why.
The area will be the site of a “next-generation AI compute campus,” according to a slate of job ads Sharon published on Tuesday which also describe it as a “landmark infrastructure development.”
Sharon AI, which holds a market cap of US$920 million ($1.3 billion) on the Nasdaq, may not build the campus itself. Instead, the ads reveal, it is recruiting “on behalf of an affiliated new venture.”
It is unclear if the new venture is a spin-off from Sharon AI or a company incubated by it. Sharon AI declined to comment.
Like other neoclouds, Sharon AI’s business model has thus far been to secure valuable Nvidia GPUs and then set up compute clusters within data centres operated by the likes of NextDC and Equinix.
Building its own data centres would make it more like Firmus, the ASX-hopeful whose ambitions are to construct huge “AI factories” stocked with Nvidia chips, selling capacity on to the likes of OpenAI and Meta.
Jobs published by Sharon AI show it is not only seeking people with the technical knowhow to set up and run such a facility, but also people to help fund it. It is hoping to raise funds for the AI compute campus from “institutional investors, infrastructure funds, family offices and strategic financing partners.”
Sharon AI has established a valuable book of customers, and is now working to build out GPU clusters to convert commitments into revenue. It reported $8.8 billion in total contract value as of August 6 – but just $1.93 million in revenue for the three months up to June 30.
It has secured US$2.6 billion in equity and debt financing. Sharon AI’s biggest investor is Situational Awareness, an investment house run by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner that held onto its Sharon stake through a near-collapse in July that saw it sell a large chunk of its assets to Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
It will need more, however, as it plans to spend around $6 billion on infrastructure, GPUs and other equipment, according to its filings with the US corporate regulator.
It comes at a shaky time for both neoclouds globally and data centres in Australia.
Firmus tried and failed to list on the ASX after investors balked at its decision to raise capital at a market cap of $44 billion. Meanwhile rising interest rates in the US have made some look askance at neoclouds looking to fuel their growth with debt. CoreWeave, the global leader in the space, has fallen 46 per cent to US$32 billion in the past six months.
Sharon AI has itself been caught in that souring sentiment. It listed on the Nasdaq at US$30 per share in February before rising to over US$90 by late June. Its stock price has been cut in half over the past month to US$25.75.
Meanwhile Australian data centre company NextDC tanked 40 per cent after delays to a large expansion of its M3 facility in Melbourne caused it to revise down its expected revenue for the financial year by over 20 per cent. Its troubles were caused by electricity provider Jemena pushing back grid upgrades for the site, citing “community and stakeholder” opposition.
Sharon AI operates a GPU cluster inside NextDC’s existing M3 operations.
Sharon AI is anticipating community concerns of its own in Albury: It is hiring a community lead tasked with “protecting our reputation, supporting project approvals and ensuring our developments deliver meaningful local benefits.”
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