Agenda at a glance

JOINT KEYNOTES (with The AI Summit Australia)

Opening Ministerial Address

Australia’s Digital Future

• What is the vision for Australia as a regional AI hub?
• How can the government encourage investment but also grow responsibly?

The NVIDIA Vision for an AI World

• NVIDIA’s global perspective on the use cases for AI
• Australia’s role as an digital and compute leader

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The Importance of Sovereign Data Centres

• Sovereign, resilient and high-performance data centre ecosystems—underpinned by secure connectivity—are now foundational to digital growth.
• Insights into the critical connectivity considerations required to interconnect data centres across Australia and globally, enabling secure, resilient and future-ready digital infrastructure.

Panel Discussion 1: Working With the Grid

• Ensuring power supplies can meet the needs of modern data centres, especially with the power-hungry inferencing AI workloads
• On-site battery storage and UPS systems to manage loads
• The use of bridging power to get up and running quick until the grid can support the data centre

Panel Discussion 2: Data Centres Are Good Neighbours

• Overcoming NIMBY through more effective communication strategies
• Shifting from reactive approaches to proactivity in community/local council outreach
• How data centres positively transform regional towns/communities

Data Centre Construction: Learning From Asia’s Modular Model

• Lessons derived from Asia’s approach to pre-fabricated design
• In a market like AU that has plentiful skilled labour, is this the right approach?
• With supply chain pressures, will modular become more appealing

Panel Discussion 3: Strategies For Attracting and Retaining Data Centre Talent

• Recruitment and training strategies
• Grooming the next generation of talent and operational expertise required in the modern data centre
• Partnerships with universities and TAFE, including recent announcements

Fireside Chat: Regionalizing the Data Centre Supply Chain

• Shortages, delays, tariffs and geopolitics might require rethinking where to source gear
• Exploring how regional approaches can improve operational resilience, reduce latency and mitigate risks associated with global sourcing

Panel Discussion 4: Site Strategies: Keeping Australia Competitive

• How Australia compares to other geos in time to get operational
• Ensuring fast/sustainable access to power
• What Australia can do to cut red tape and become an even more attractive destination for buildouts

Panel Discussion 5: Renewables, Clean Energy and Data Centre Sustainability

• Overcoming the variability of renewables: developments in battery storage and hybrid solutions to bridge gaps in availability
• Sustainability and water use
• Nuclear as a power option

Quantum and the Data Centre

• Will Quantum capacity move out of specialized labs and research institutes
• What’s the roadmap for data centres to have native Quantum rooms
• Overview of the implications from an implementation perspective including power/cooling and hybrid algorithms for switching between tasks