An ASX-listed tech powerhouse has plans for a $56 million data centre expansion in Malaga, pursuing what it calls an artificial intelligence “megatrend”. NextDC went to equity markets in April seeking $1.3 billion to help fund dramatic growth of its services across the country. The company — best known in Perth for an enormous dark cube next to the Graham Farmer Freeway — touted big new data centres in Sydney and Melbourne to potential investors, and added there would be further opportunities across the Asia-Pacific. The Malaga plan will include a new five-storey building on a 10,000 square metre site adjoining an existing NextDC data centre, at a location with ready connection to the power grid and subsea cable links. Data centres are usually sized up by power demand, and it’s believed the project will draw about 2 megawatts. That compares to 20MW at the Northbridge facility. The City of Swan has backed the plan and a development assessment panel will make a decision next Wednesday. The surge of big data and machine learning has accelerated demand for data centres. GreenSquareDC is developing a huge $600m project in the City of Belmont. WA’s data use has been driven by autonomous vehicles in the resources industry and will soon grow even further with the construction of the Square Kilometre Array in the Murchison. NextDC did not respond to a request for comment. “Artificial Intelligence is now shaping up to be the next megatrend for the data centre industry,” the Brisbane-based business told investors in mid-April. “The unprecedented speed of AI technology adoption is expected to further drive demand for data centre capacity.”