How an obscure Aussie AI firm is cashing in on Trump’s chip wars

As the US-China computing battle intensifies, Sydney-based Sharon AI sees explosive demand from Asian firms scrambling for Nvidia’s GPUs.

Sharon AI founder Andrew Leece stands to benefit from US restrictions on the export of high-performance semiconductors. Louie Douvis

Jessica SierNorth Asia correspondent

Updated May 28, 2025 – 8.20am, first published at May 27, 2025 – 1.15pm

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Tucked away inside a data centre in Melbourne’s north-west, row after row of high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) hum inside the Sharon AI super cluster – a new supercomputer built using Nvidia’s cutting-edge chip architecture.

Its mission is simple: rent out computing muscle to companies across Asia that are desperate for access to artificial intelligence power and locked out of the United States’ tightly monitored chip supply chain.

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Jessica SierNorth Asia correspondentJessica Sier is the North Asia Correspondent for The Australian Financial Review. She is based in Tokyo, Japan. Jessica has previously written on technology, global capital markets and economics.