NVIDIA just wrapped its biggest Australian AI showcase yet, drawing over 1,000 attendees to Sydney for a deep dive into sovereign AI technologies. The two-day event featured 16 breakout sessions covering everything from agentic AI to robotics, signaling Australia's push to become a major player in the global AI race. With partnerships spanning from Commonwealth Bank to Canva, the event highlighted how enterprise Australia is betting big on locally-controlled AI infrastructure.
NVIDIA just made its biggest play yet for Australia's AI market, and the response was overwhelming. The chip giant's AI Day Sydney drew over 1,000 attendees last week, marking a pivotal moment for the region's tech ambitions. The event wasn't just another corporate showcase - it was Australia announcing its intention to build sovereign AI capabilities that don't depend on foreign infrastructure. "It was a privilege to join NVIDIA AI Day Sydney and hear how the next generation of compute is driving AI," Commonwealth Bank of Australia CIO Brendan Hopper told attendees, according to NVIDIA's event coverage. His bank is among the major Australian institutions betting that locally-controlled AI infrastructure will become a competitive necessity. The numbers tell the story of Australia's AI acceleration. The country now hosts over 600 NVIDIA Inception startups, has three quantum computing companies working directly with NVIDIA platforms, and counts 20+ universities using NVIDIA technologies for research. That's a dramatic expansion from just two years ago when Australia's AI ecosystem was largely nascent. Canva, the Sydney-based design platform with hundreds of millions of users globally, took center stage to showcase how it's using NVIDIA infrastructure to train video foundation models. "We make extensive use of NVIDIA technologies to train, fine-tune and serve AI features to millions of users," Paul Thompson, Canva's senior director of engineering for generative AI, explained during his presentation on video model training workflows. The event's focus on sovereign AI reflects growing global concerns about AI supply chain dependencies. Countries worldwide are racing to build domestic AI capabilities, from the EU's AI Act to China's national AI strategy. Australia's approach centers on leveraging its strong research institutions and mining-tech expertise to carve out a niche in high-performance computing and quantum AI applications. "AI Day Sydney highlighted how quantum and high-performance computing, empowered by AI, are redefining the pace and precision of scientific discovery," said Giuseppe M.J. Barca, cofounder of QDX Technologies and professor at both Monash University and Australian National University, in . The quantum angle is particularly strategic for Australia. Four Australian quantum companies - Diraq, PsiQuantum, Q-CTRL, and Quantum Brilliance - presented at the event, all using NVIDIA's CUDA-Q platform. This positions Australia as a potential leader in the intersection of quantum computing and AI, a field that could reshape everything from drug discovery to financial modeling. Local cloud partners including Firmus Technologies, ResetData, and SHARON AI demonstrated how Australian companies are building the infrastructure layer for the country's AI ambitions. "Australia is ready to step into its place as a global hub for AI infrastructure and innovation," Tim Rosenfield, co-CEO of Firmus Technologies, declared at the event. The startup ecosystem was equally represented, with lightning talks from NVIDIA Inception members BrainFish, Eklipse.gg, and Zetaris showcasing applications spanning customer service automation to content creation. Healthcare AI company Heidi Health demonstrated how it's using NVIDIA's Parakeet speech recognition model for medical transcription - a practical example of how specialized AI models are finding real-world applications. NVIDIA's first-ever "Australia Startup, VC and Partner Connect" session brought together venture capital firms including Airtree and Breakthrough Victoria, signaling that the investment community is taking notice of Australia's AI potential. The timing couldn't be better, as global VC funding for AI startups reached new highs this quarter. But perhaps the most significant development was the emphasis on AI factories - localized facilities for training and deploying AI models. "NVIDIA AI Day Sydney proved that Australia is ready to step into its place as a global hub for AI infrastructure and innovation," said industry veteran Dragan Dimitrovici, founder and CEO of XENON Systems, according to . The event positioned Australia's AI future at the intersection of the country's traditional strengths - high-performance computing, visual effects, and animation - with emerging quantum and robotics industries. NVIDIA Country Manager Sudarshan Ramachandran emphasized that this convergence could drive breakthroughs in simulation and sustainability applications.
