Australian data-center operator NEXTDC closed a fully underwritten A$1.5 billion entitlement offer at A$15.40 per share to accelerate the fit-out of its S3 and S4 Sydney facilities, driven by surging demand from North American cloud providers and enterprise AI workloads, Yahoo Finance reports. The company's pro-forma forward order book grew 83% to 544 MW in the March quarter, while contracted utilization rose roughly 60% to 667 MW. TechAU notes CEO Craig Scroggie cited "a significant increase in demand" specifically for AI requirements. Sydney's position as Australia's primary international submarine cable gateway underpins the strategic rationale for concentrating high-density GPU cluster capacity there.