Australia’s ambitions for sovereign artificial intelligence infrastructure have taken a major step forward with the launch of InsightEngine, a next-generation AI data platform developed by SHARON AI and VAST Data.
Now operational within NEXTDC’s Tier IV Melbourne data centre, the InsightEngine platform is powered by SHARON AI’s newly activated sovereign “supercluster” — one of the country’s most advanced AI compute environments.
The platform enables organisations to process and analyse structured, unstructured and streaming data in real time, combining hybrid and vector search capabilities for large-scale AI workloads. It has been designed with strict security, governance, encryption and access-control measures to meet Australian sovereignty and compliance requirements, particularly across government and regulated sectors.
SHARON AI CEO Wolf Schubert said the milestone demonstrated the importance of keeping advanced AI capability within Australian borders. “With our supercluster now live at NEXTDC, we’re creating the foundation for enterprises and government institutions to run cutting-edge AI workloads locally, securely and without compromise.”
VAST Data’s Regional Director Ofir Zan added that real-time reasoning over massive datasets would be critical for Australia’s digital competitiveness. “As AI models become more capable, being able to securely manage and query data at scale will define the next generation of enterprise intelligence,” he said.
The first research projects on the cluster are already underway in partnership with the University of New South Wales (UNSW), focusing on improving small language model reasoning, fine-tuning large models for domain-specific tasks, and enhancing high-resolution weather prediction.
By combining SHARON AI’s sovereign GPU cloud with VAST Data’s AI operating system, the partnership aims to help Australian organisations move from AI experimentation to production-grade operations while ensuring data remains onshore.
