Lenovo builds 'sovereign' AI cluster with Sharon AI

Lenovo has inked a deal with Australian neocloud company Sharon AI to deliver a 1,000 GPU cluster, powered by the NVIDIA B200 GPU.

The cluster will be located at NEXTDC’s Tier IV M3 data centre in Melbourne.

The deployment leverages NVIDIA’s DGX Blackwell architecture that's specifically optimised for massive-scale workloads, including large language models (LLMs), sophisticated recommender systems, and real-time chatbots, this deployment offers a transformative leap in computational efficiency.

Equipped with eight Blackwell GPUs interconnected via fifth-generation NVLink, this infrastructure delivers up to three times the training performance and 15 times the inference performance compared to previous-generation systems, according to Lenovo.

The Melbourne deployment builds on Lenovo’s ongoing support of Australia’s AI and high-performance computing ecosystem and further expands Sharon AI’s local GPU fleet, which already includes NVIDIA A40, L40s, H100 and H200 architectures. Looking ahead to 2026, Lenovo will continue to support Sharon AI’s roadmap with next-generation B300 and GB300 platforms as they become available.

Lenovo says the Sharon AI deal is its largest-ever ‘Tru-Scale’ Infrastructure as a Service engagement, and the cluster is expected to be used by local businesses, research organisations and the public sector.

“Australia is well poised to be a global leader in AI, and Lenovo is proud to be enabling this next phase of sovereign AI capability,” Sumir Bhatia, president of Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group, Asia Pacific said.

“By expanding our relationship with Sharon AI, we’re helping Australian organisations access cutting-edge AI compute on their own terms, securely and at scale.”

Sharon AI’s chief executive and founder, James Manning, noted the deployment marks a "major milestone for sovereign AI capability in Australia.”

“In partnership with Lenovo, we are bringing one of the region’s most advanced NVIDIA Blackwell GPU clusters online in Melbourne, giving Australian enterprises, government and researchers access to world-class AI infrastructure on home soil,” he said.

“Beyond scale, this is about national capability, data sovereignty and accelerating innovation locally, while positioning Australia as a serious contender in the global AI economy.”