Beetaloo Energy has secured land from the Northern Territory Government for a massive $40 billion "hyperscale" AI data center near Darwin, which would be powered by 2 gigawatts (GW) of gas-fired energy [1]. This project is seen as controversial due to its significant carbon footprint. Meanwhile, Reuters and The New York Times have reported that Meta Platforms and Anthropic are in talks for a $10 billion compute lease deal over two years [2], [3], [4]. While the specifics differ slightly—Beetaloo's data center focuses on AI while the potential deal with Meta and Anthropic is about computing power—the core of both stories revolves around large tech companies exploring significant investments in energy-intensive infrastructure.