Coming of age story? Now Canberra has inked an MOU with US AI giant Anthropic

Data centres are nothing new for Australia (just look at NEXTDC (ASX:NXT)), and we’ve all been discussing to death the modern topic of artificial intelligence, like the rest of the world, for the last three years.

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But now Canberra has inked an MOU with U.S. AI giant Anthropic, the company behind the Agentic AI product ‘Claude,’ which was ultimately responsible for this year’s ‘SaaSpocalypse’ where software stocks were basically cannibalised by the AI trade.

That comes down to two modes of thinking, mixing into one Orthros – firstly, that AI agents could replace human staffers at companies that buy enterprise software packages, thereby limiting the need for those package purchases.

Secondly, part of that scare maintained Claude’s coding abilities (and those of other Agentic AI products) could effectively plagiarise in-house versions of software like Salesforce and Adobe products, leading to share price downside.

The effects of the tech scare in the U.S. were, as ever, amplified Down Under. And they’re still visible on the charts.

Troubled tech gem WiseTech Global (ASX:WTC) remains in the red down over 40% YTD (-42.43% at the time of writing), and Xero Ltd (ASX:XRO) (which now has a cap surpassing WiseTech) is down over -30% YTD and over -50% on a 1Y basis.

Data Centre players are faring better in a mixed bag: NEXTDC was spared the worst of the crunch down over -5% YTD while similarly exposed Goodman (ASX:GMG) is sitting on YTD losses down over -16%; the worst off is Digico REIT (ASX:DGT) – which was always a questionable vehicle to list – is down over -30% YTD.

But the latter is backed largely by HMC Capital (ASX:HMC) which, along with DigiCo, jumped on Wednesday afternoon – HMC Capital was at one point the top gainer intraday with shares over +18% higher.

Regardless of the low base effect, while Anthropic isn’t an ASX-listed stock, I’m willing to bet its Wednesday MOU with Canberra is a driving factor behind HMC’s Wednesday outperformance. (HMC did on Tuesday outline its recent visit to a big battery storage site in Victoria, but vague promises of using renewable energy aren’t the kind of thing that ASX investors usually care about.)

I am willing to throw it out there, the Anthropic MOU – which, for all intents and purposes, is a PR stunt, really, with a commitment to spend a paltry A$3 million in Australia on experimental medical applications, no doubt liable for an R&D rebate – is a driving force behind HMC’s good news day.

I would further argue that’s largely vibes, given there’s no real meaningful substance to the announcement: Just that Anthropic agrees to work with Canberra on its AI Safety framework and that it wants to use green energy and be a good custodian.

That remains to be seen. But it’s worth noting Anthropic is the company that pissed off Trump when it refused to hand over full access to Claude to the U.S. Department of War, so perhaps it’s the best-case scenario.

It also puts Australia on the wider AI map, a country that many true believers here protest isn’t doing enough in the space to gain an edge.

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