AI Accelerator initiative and Digital ID development win big in 2026-27 federal budget

The 2026-27 federal budget has introduced the expansion of support for private sector adoption of AI by making up to $70 million of funding available through ‘AI Accelerator’ rounds of the Cooperative Research Centres program.

The AI Accelerator initiative, first announced back in March, initially allocated up to $20 million for projects to help businesses and researchers across Australia accelerate AI development and commercialisation.

The $70 million boost follows on from previous investments, such as $47 million for the Next Generation Graduates Program and $39.9 million to strengthen Australia’s AI ecosystem.

It also builds on the launch of AI.gov.au, a resource to help organisations understand, plan for and use AI responsibly; collaborations with the likes of Anthropic and Microsoft; recently published expectations of data centre developers; and the establishment of an AI Safety Institute.

Elsewhere, the Government announced that it is investing $654.3 million into Digital ID to enable individuals to reduce the sharing and storage of personal data across businesses, government and individuals, and to securely access 255 government services, including myGov, ATO, Centrelink and the NDIS.

iTNews reported that the ATO will receive just over half of the funds “to maintain operation of myID and the relationship authorisation manager, including implementation of additional security controls and functionality.”

Services Australia will receive $135.2 million in its role as Digital ID system administrator and maintainer of the Digital ID Exchange and myGov LinkID; while $98 million goes to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for regulatory functions.

Outside of Digital ID, My Health Record received close to $600 million over two years; the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing was granted over $250 million for the sustainment of aged care ICT systems; and Services Australia landed just over $160 million over four years for a cyber security uplift program.