Australian Neocloud Sharon AI Secures Digital Alpha Backing to Scale Cisco

Sharon AI will use Cisco and Nvidia technology to grow its GPU-powered AI infrastructure in Australia and Asia-Pacific.

Australian neocloud Sharon AI is set to significantly expand its use of Cisco's networking technology following an investment from Digital Alpha. Through the agreement, Sharon AI will have access to Digital Alpha's exclusive technical alliance with Cisco, which will give the neocloud access to Cisco's Nvidia-integrated AI infrastructure products, including the Nexus HyperFabric switching solution for AI clusters.

According to a statement from Sharon AI Co-founder and Chairman James Manning, this collaboration with Digital Alpha and Cisco allows them to expand their cloud infrastructure for enterprise AI and high-performance computing in Australia and Asia-Pacific, as well as further accelerate customer deployments.

With its Melbourne cluster and leased facilities in Equinix's Sydney data centers, Sharon AI, founded in 2024 by Manning and Andrew Leece, is one of a new generation of companies using GPU-focused compute infrastructure to address AI demand. Through a joint venture with New Era Energy & Digital, Neocloud also operates in the United States, with a planned data center campus in Ector County, Texas.

Sharon AI has access to Nexus HyperFabric, a cloud-managed fabric that links CPU, GPU, and storage resources over current Ethernet networks for AI applications, thanks to its Digital Alpha collaboration. Cisco's UCS server family, which includes the rack-mount C-Series, high-density B-Series, and modular X-Series, is also included in the agreement.

With important use cases including inference and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), Sharon AI is positioned to lead Australia's corporate AI industry, according to Will Eatherton, SVP and Head of Networking Engineering at Cisco. Sharon AI provides Australian organizations with a high-performance, independent infrastructure based on Cisco's UCS servers, Nexus Hyperfabric switching, and security and observability stack.

Founded in 2017 by former Cisco executive Rick Shrotri, Digital Alpha is closely associated with Cisco and gains access to its partner ecosystem, engineering, and sales. According to Shrotri, Sharon AI is eager to expand throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific area and represents the future generation of cloud infrastructure providers for AI and high-performance computation.

According to reports, Sharon AI was getting ready for a pre-IPO financing prior to Digital Alpha's investment, with negotiations starting in November 2025 in advance of a scheduled Q1 IPO. With funding intended to build GPU infrastructure using Nvidia and Cisco technology, the company now joins Digital Alpha's portfolio after Massed Compute.