Amazon already has 37 major data centre “regions” across the world, including one in each of Melbourne and Sydney, and the expanded investment will see these centres significantly expanded. The US-based company, best known for its ubiquitous online shopping services, has already spent about $9 billion in Australia and had planned to increase its spend to $13 billion, but surging demand for its web services meant the company’s investment would rise to $20 billion by 2029. “We think that AI has really the ability to change every industry, and we look at a couple of our customers. First, we look at a customer like CommBank. CommBank is launching an AI factory powered by AWS to completely change how they do innovation,” Garman said. “They expect that AI will allow them to drive innovation up to four times faster than they do today ... We can look at the Australian national swimming team, we used AI to help their swimmers improve, and actually led to improvements in their performance in the pool, helping them win seven gold medals in the Paris Olympics.”