WinDC partners with Armada for modular, portable AI data centres

WinDC, an Australian developer of modular, portable AI data centre infrastructure, has inked a deal with edge infrastructure firm Armada to deploy what it says are the nation’s first network of portable AI factories powered by renewable energy.

Under the partnership, WinDC will deploy 11 megawatts of modular data centres designed and built by Armada. These will be placed at wind, solar and battery sites across NSW, WA and in other locations served by the National Energy Market.

Each modular unit takes about three months to get up and running, and they run on 100 percent renewable energy. The units are shipping-container sized, ISO-conformant, and fully relocatable by truck.

The Armada hardware is currently built in the US and EU; however, the two organisations have agreed to a ‘made in Australia’ vision as part of the partnership and are planning a shift to Australian-based production once WinDC reaches a defined number of units in-country.

WinDC said it helps minimise energy transmission wastage by putting data centre infrastructure at the generation site, where the energy is created, thus avoiding the need to be powered by the "already congested" transmission grid.

Armada Edge Platform handles deployment and operations across distributed sites and integrates with the WinDC SWARM platform, which prioritises and manages the efficient use of renewable energy during operations.

“Australia has the wind, the sun and the land to be a genuine force in global AI infrastructure,” said Andrew Sjoquist, WinDC founder and chief executive.

“What has been holding us back is the grid. We identified that problem ten years ago working alongside renewable energy providers on the east coast, and this is the solution we built.”

“The demand for real-time data processing and AI inference is growing faster than centralised infrastructure can support,” said Dan Wright, co-founder and CEO of Armada.

“This partnership with WinDC enables sovereign AI factories to be built where energy is produced, delivering resilient, scalable compute without waiting on grid expansion in Australia.”