Sharon AI Lands $200M to Build Sovereign AI Cloud for APAC

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – January 19, 2026 – Australian cloud innovator Sharon AI has secured a landmark investment of up to US$200 million from Digital Alpha, a digital infrastructure investment firm, in a move set to dramatically accelerate the build-out of high-performance Artificial Intelligence infrastructure across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The deal is bolstered by a strategic technology partnership with networking giant Cisco, creating a powerful trifecta aimed at meeting the voracious demand for AI-specialized computing.

The equity and revenue-sharing agreement will fuel a significant expansion of Sharon AI's footprint, enabling the company to scale its cloud services specifically designed for demanding AI workloads like large language model (LLM) training, fine-tuning, and real-time inference. This positions the company, which trades on OTC Markets under the ticker SHAZ, as a critical enabler for enterprise, government, and research sectors looking to harness the power of AI on a sovereign, high-performance platform.

“This partnership with Digital Alpha and Cisco enables us to further accelerate customer deployments and expand our cloud infrastructure for enterprise AI and high-performance compute in Australia and Asia Pacific,” said James Manning, Co-Founder and Chairman of Sharon AI.

The Rise of the 'Neocloud'

Sharon AI identifies as a "Neocloud," a new breed of cloud provider purpose-built for the AI era. Unlike traditional hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure that offer a vast menu of general-purpose services, Neoclouds are laser-focused on providing one thing exceptionally well: access to massive clusters of high-end graphics processing units (GPUs).

This specialized model addresses a critical bottleneck in the AI industry. The development of sophisticated AI models requires immense computational power, primarily delivered by NVIDIA's accelerated computing platforms. Neoclouds engineer their entire infrastructure—from power and cooling to networking—around these GPUs. They offer bare-metal or thin-virtualization access to this hardware, often at a more competitive price point and with greater availability than their larger counterparts, who frequently have long waitlists for their most powerful chips.

By focusing on a GPU-centric architecture with high-speed, low-latency interconnects, Neoclouds provide the raw performance necessary for distributed training across thousands of processors. Sharon AI's proprietary orchestration and automation platform is designed to simplify the deployment and management of these complex resources, making enterprise-grade AI infrastructure more accessible. This approach is gaining significant traction globally as companies seek more efficient and cost-effective ways to build, train, and deploy AI models without being locked into a single hyperscale ecosystem.

A Strategic Triple Alliance

The collaboration between Sharon AI, Digital Alpha, and Cisco creates a vertically integrated solution, combining capital, specialized cloud services, and foundational hardware. Each partner plays a distinct and crucial role in the venture's success.

Digital Alpha provides the financial muscle, with an investment of up to US$200 million. The firm, which has a long-standing strategic partnership with Cisco, specializes in digital infrastructure and has a track record of backing next-generation AI platforms. Their investment model, which includes revenue sharing, signals a deep, long-term commitment to Sharon AI's growth. “Sharon AI represents the next generation of cloud infrastructure providers delivering AI workloads and high-performance compute to enterprise and public sector customers,” said Rick Shrotri, Managing Partner at Digital Alpha. “We are excited to partner with the Sharon AI team to scale the Company across the Australia and Asia-Pacific region.”

Cisco brings the technological backbone. The partnership will see Sharon AI's cloud built upon Cisco's cutting-edge hardware, including its Unified Computing System (UCS) servers, which are engineered for GPU-intensive workloads. Critically, it will also leverage Cisco's Nexus Hyperfabric switching solution. This technology is designed to create a high-performance, low-latency network fabric essential for AI clusters, where thousands of GPUs must communicate seamlessly. Cisco's involvement is part of its broader strategic pivot to become a key architect of the infrastructure powering the AI revolution.

"Sharon AI is poised to lead the Australian enterprise AI space, delivering critical use cases like inference and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)," commented Will Eatherton, SVP, Head of Networking Engineering at Cisco. He highlighted that the platform, "Powered by Cisco’s UCS servers, Nexus Hyperfabric switching, security, and observability stack, provides a sovereign, high-performance infrastructure for Australian businesses.”

Powering Australia's Sovereign AI Ambitions

Beyond the technological and financial implications, this partnership directly addresses a growing national imperative: sovereign AI. The concept refers to a nation's ability to develop and control its AI capabilities using its own infrastructure, data, and talent, ensuring that AI development aligns with national interests and legal frameworks.

For Australia, this is a matter of economic competitiveness and national security. Relying solely on foreign-owned cloud infrastructure for sensitive government, research, or corporate data creates risks related to data privacy and potential access by foreign governments. The Australian government has been increasingly focused on this issue, with ongoing reforms to the Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act and a developing National AI Strategy.

By building high-performance data centers on Australian soil, Sharon AI's expanded network will provide a crucial onshore alternative. This allows organizations to keep sensitive data within Australia's jurisdiction, subject to its privacy laws. It enables the development of AI models that are trained on local data and fine-tuned to reflect Australia's unique cultural, linguistic, and regulatory contexts. This capability is vital for critical sectors like defense, healthcare, and finance, where data sovereignty is not just a preference but a requirement. The investment ensures that the compute power needed for this sovereign capability is available locally, reducing latency and strengthening the nation's digital autonomy.

Tapping into the APAC AI Gold Rush

While the initial focus is on strengthening Australia's sovereign capabilities, the strategic vision extends across the entire Asia-Pacific region. APAC has become a global hotspot for AI development, driven by massive, digitally-native populations and rapid technology adoption. This has ignited an "AI gold rush" as companies race to build the infrastructure needed to power this growth.

The demand for GPU capacity, particularly from NVIDIA, consistently outstrips supply, creating a significant market opportunity for specialized providers like Sharon AI. The expansion funded by Digital Alpha will help meet this demand, offering a regional alternative for enterprises struggling to secure compute resources from global hyperscalers.

Australia's political stability, robust regulatory environment, and advanced infrastructure make it a strategic and secure location to host compute resources for the wider APAC market. By scaling its operations, Sharon AI is not just building a national resource but is also positioning itself as a key player in the regional digital economy. The partnership aims to provide the foundational layer for the next wave of accelerated computing adoption, fueling innovation for researchers, governments, and businesses from Sydney to Singapore and beyond.