From corporate boxes to tech billionaires: Inside the Allan government’s data centre courtship

Former Victorian minister Danny Pearson spent his final months on the frontbench locked in a flurry of talks with global artificial intelligence and data centre giants, including hosting international executives at the Australian Open.

The charm offensive – including one critical meeting also attended by Premier Jacinta Allan – reveals the state government’s increasingly frantic pitch to attract multibillion-dollar data infrastructure to Victoria, amid its growing reliance on global technology giants to sustain state economic growth.

Recently released ministerial diaries reveal that Pearson, the former minister for economic growth and jobs, held 12 meetings with data centre and artificial technology firms in the first three months of this year alone – marking a massive escalation in the state’s engagement with the sector.

During the same three-month period in 2025, Pearson met industry stakeholders just twice.

The ministerial diaries show that technology negotiations over the summer months included private briefings with global executives from Nvidia, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and US technology heavyweight Anthropic, alongside local firm Sovereign Australia AI.

The blitz included a closed-door industry dinner on March 23, hosted by Victorian Governor Margaret Gardner at Government House, and attended by Allan, Pearson, top government officials, academics and industry heads.

On March 26, the premier stepped directly into the meetings, joining Pearson for a high-level “meet and greet” with billionaire Robin Khuda, founder and chief executive of data centre company AirTrunk.

AirTrunk operates two data centre campuses in Melbourne’s north-west. Its planned investment pipeline in Victoria is surging past $7 billion.

Data centres are vast warehouses that house computing infrastructure needed to store, process and manage digital data. They support everything from streaming movies to artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Earlier in the year, on January 28, Pearson used the Australian Open to wine and dine tech giants, with a guest list made up entirely of heavy-hitting tech and data centre bosses including people from CDC Data Centres, Amazon, NextDC and AirTrunk.

Pearson stepped down from cabinet in April after announcing he would not contest November’s election.

The meetings also came at the same time as one major data centre player made a donation to the Victorian Labor Party, according to separate political disclosure logs.

Documents published before the High Court’s landmark April ruling which struck down the state’s strict d