Australian sovereign AI infrastructure pioneer SCX.ai and global AI data intelligence leader DDN today announced a landmark partnership to expand and accelerate Australia's largest sovereign AI inferencing cloud. The alliance will scale sovereign AI capacity as demand for Australian-based AI infrastructure grows, delivering secure, high-performance inference entirely onshore.
The partnership brings together SCX's ASIC-accelerated infrastructure with DDN's Infinia data intelligence platform. The combined solution provides Australian enterprises, government agencies and research institutions with a secure, high-performance, multi-tenant AI factory designed to accelerate inference and lower the cost per token, while ensuring models, workloads and data remain strictly within Australia.
Building on the successful launch of SCX's first sovereign AI node at the Equinix SY5 data centre in Sydney, the integration of DDN Infinia ensures the underlying data layer can keep pace with massive concurrency and high-throughput inferencing demands. By delivering sub-millisecond latency and up to 27x faster KV cache loading, Infinia eliminates I/O stalls and maximises hardware utilisation, enabling large context windows and agentic AI workloads without compromising speed, privacy or compliance.
SCX.ai's infrastructure uses purpose-built SambaNova AI processors and is designed to generate significantly more AI compute from the power and physical footprint inside existing commercial data centres. The architecture uses air cooling, avoiding large water volumes required by conventional AI cooling systems. Testing ahead of its ASX listing showed SambaNova-based infrastructure delivering approximately 2.5x to 5.6x performance per watt versus GPU-based systems across selected stable inference workloads.
"For the first time, Australian organisations have access to a fully domestic, enterprise-grade AI cloud that scales effortlessly," said SCX founder and CEO David Keane. "By integrating DDN's world-class data platforms into our architecture, we are ensuring that our infrastructure can handle the most data-intensive workloads on the planet. This partnership supercharges our mission to deliver advanced AI entirely onshore, without compromising speed, security or sovereignty."
The joint infrastructure addresses power and cooling challenges confronting global AI expansion, improving compute per watt and footprint efficiency.
"Sovereign AI isn't just about where data resides, it's about whether a nation can operate AI at scale, efficiently and without compromise," said DDN CTO Sven Oehme. "Our partnership with SCX brings together purpose-built inferencing infrastructure with DDN's Infinia data platform to remove the single biggest barrier to AI performance: the data layer. By eliminating I/O bottlenecks and enabling extreme concurrency with sub-millisecond latency, we're fundamentally changing the economics of inference – delivering higher utilisation, lower cost per token and true enterprise-grade sovereignty. This is how countries turn AI ambition into real, operational capability."
The expanded capacity will support bespoke enterprise workloads and SCX.ai's Project MAGPiE, a sovereign LLM fine-tuned for Australian cultural and commercial context. Node 1 at Equinix SY5 in Sydney is operational, Node 2 targeted by end of 2026, with additional nodes planned for national sovereign AI inference network.
About SCX.ai
SCX.ai is Australia's leading provider of sovereign AI infrastructure, delivering high-performance, energy-efficient cloud solutions fully aligned with strict domestic data security and privacy requirements. Through its national network of advanced inferencing nodes, SCX enables government and enterprise clients to operate cutting-edge AI under complete domestic control.
About DDN
DDN is a leading AI and data intelligence company, powering demanding AI workloads by keeping GPUs fed, efficient and productive at scale – so organisations can train, checkpoint and infer faster with less footprint and power. DDN delivers data intelligence at exabyte scale across hundreds of thousands of GPUs for hyperscalers, next-gen cloud builders, enterprises, governments and research institutions.
TechIntelPro empowers B2B technology decision-makers with the latest industry trends, deep insights, leadership perspectives and actionable intelligence to drive both organizational and professional milestones, and thrive on the tech pulse.
