Australian AI infrastructure company SCX.ai, also known as Southern Cross AI, began trading on the ASX under the ticker SCX on 21 August 2026 after raising $40 million in a fully underwritten float at 30 cents a share.
The listing is a test of public market appetite for sovereign AI, the idea that government agencies and businesses will pay to keep their AI workloads and data inside Australia rather than sending them to overseas providers. SCX.ai is one of the few Australian AI infrastructure companies that retail investors can buy into directly.
The business
SCX.ai does not train AI models. It runs existing models for customers, a process known as inference, from Australian data centres under Australian jurisdiction. Instead of the graphics processors that dominate the market, it uses application-specific chips from US company SambaNova Systems.
The company points to an industry report claiming those chips deliver 2.5 to 5.6 times the performance per watt of comparable GPU setups for selected stable inference workloads, IT Brief Australia reported. Many of those performance figures remain the company’s own and are awaiting independent validation, according to Kalkine.
Its first node is operating in Equinix’s SY5 data centre in Sydney, and a second node is targeted for the end of calendar 2026.
The numbers
SCX.ai reported $6.5 million in annual recurring revenue at 31 July 2026, up from $5.4 million at the end of May. Paying customers rose to 49 from 13 over roughly two months, and active users grew from 298 in late June to more than 400, according to IT Brief Australia.
Founder and chief executive David Keane reportedly started the business in late 2025, which makes the path to listing unusually fast. “The numbers that matter most right now are capacity utilisation and conversion,” Keane said, as reported by IT Brief Australia.
What the money is for
Proceeds will fund the second node and additional Australian locations. Near-term priorities include converting active users into paying customers, increasing usage among existing clients, and expanding enterprise and government sales. This article describes the listing only and is not financial advice.
Jack’s take
A homegrown sovereign AI business listing on the ASX is a genuine first, and it is rare for a company I cover to be one the public can actually own a piece of. The growth in customers is real, but so is the fact that much of the performance story still rests on the company’s own numbers. Early days, big ambition, and I am keen to watch how it runs.