ResetData opens AUD $1 million AI award for Australians

ResetData has opened applications for its 2027 AI Impact Award, which offers AUD $1 million in AI service credits to one Australian organisation.

The announcement follows the first award to Children's Medical Research Institute, whose ProCan cancer research project used ResetData's computing services to speed up analysis of cancer protein samples and expand a large research database.

ResetData says the ProCan team increased its pace of analysis sixfold over the past year. The work focuses on linking protein data with digitised pathology slides to examine whether molecular features of cancer can help predict patient outcomes and treatment responses.

Children's Medical Research Institute and ProCan have collected digitised pathology images since the project's early stages. Researchers say access to additional computing resources has made it possible to connect those slide images with proteomic data at scale.

"We started digitising pathology microscope slides right from the beginning of the ProCan project in the hope that one day the computation would become available to allow us to solve the problem of connecting the information embedded in the slides with the protein data," said Professor Roger Reddel, Director of Children's Medical Research Institute, Head of the Cancer Research Unit, and Co-Director of ProCan.

"That day has arrived now because that's exactly what the ResetData computation power is allowing us to do. By combining our unique proteomic data and pathology resources with ResetData's cutting-edge AI, we're unlocking new possibilities for personalised treatment planning that has the potential to benefit every cancer patient," Reddel said.

The first project

ProCan is a cancer research effort focused on the molecular characteristics of tumours. It aims to determine how those characteristics relate to disease progression and treatment response, with the longer-term goal of improving clinical decision-making.

The work has helped create one of the largest databases of its kind worldwide, according to ResetData. The award is part of the company's broader AI Growth Program, which aims to give Australian organisations access to domestic AI infrastructure and related services.

The annual award is intended for organisations that can demonstrate both technical readiness and a clear AI use case. Eligible applicants include startups, scaleups, larger companies, research institutes, not-for-profits, and selected public sector bodies.

Applicants are expected to show a need for compute resources and outline the likely impact of the project if access is granted. Judging will consider technical readiness, existing traction, compute requirements, potential Australian impact, and future growth.

Broader push

ResetData has positioned the award as part of a broader push to expand the use of sovereign AI services in Australia. That reflects growing interest among local technology providers and policymakers in keeping sensitive data and computing workloads on Australian infrastructure.

The AI Growth Program also includes partnerships and work with government agencies. ResetData did not disclose how many applications it expects for the latest round.

The judging panel includes Bass Salah, Joint Chief Executive Officer of ResetData; Brendan Hopper, Managing Director, Innovation Ecosystems at CBA; and Dr Catherine Ball, Scientific Futurist. The panel will review submissions from organisations seeking support for AI projects with practical use cases.

"Through the AI Growth Program, ResetData is backing the Australian organisations that are ready to scale and are demanding access to sovereign AI compute capacity to create meaningful business and research outcomes," said Bass Salah, Joint Chief Executive Officer of ResetData.

"We are proud to do our part in showcasing Australian AI expertise through this year's AI Impact Award and as we roll out the AI Growth Program to more partners," Salah said.

The award gives ResetData a case study in medical research at a time when demand for AI infrastructure is expanding beyond software development into healthcare, science, and public sector work. For cancer researchers, the ProCan project offers an example of how larger compute allocations can accelerate analysis in data-heavy research programs.

The underlying research challenge remains substantial. Protein datasets and pathology images are both large and complex, and linking them in ways that produce clinically useful insights requires extensive processing and validation before findings can be applied in routine care.

Reddel said the project had reached a point where that connection could now be investigated at scale through the additional compute made available to the team.