OpenAI announced the launch of "OpenAI for Australia" on 4 December 2025, establishing a local presence with Sydney-based infrastructure and partnerships with Australian government agencies and enterprises [source].

The announcement detailed new data residency options for Australian customers, with model inference processing available through Sydney-region servers. OpenAI stated that enterprise customers can now request that prompts and completions remain within Australian geographic boundaries, addressing data sovereignty requirements under Australian privacy law.

The company disclosed partnerships with the Australian Taxation Office and Department of Defence for pilot programs evaluating GPT-4 and o1 models in administrative workflows. No technical specifications for these deployments were provided in the announcement.

OpenAI confirmed pricing parity with US-region API access, with no additional fees for Australia-region processing. The Sydney infrastructure will support GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, and o1-preview models at launch, with GPT-3.5 Turbo available in a subsequent rollout.

The announcement included a commitment to "work closely with Australian regulators" on AI safety standards, referencing ongoing consultations with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. OpenAI did not specify whether Australian-region processing would be subject to different content filtering policies than US-region deployments.

The company stated that existing Australian customers using US-region endpoints will see no service interruption, with migration to Sydney infrastructure available on an opt-in basis. Enterprise customers were directed to contact their account representatives for data residency configuration.

This marks OpenAI's first dedicated regional infrastructure outside North America and Europe, following similar announcements for UK and EU data residency options in 2024.