Trellis Data launches near-frontier model Agentaus 1
Trellis Data has launched Agentaus 1, a 220-billion-parameter AI model it says is designed to support “sovereign” AI use cases for Australian businesses and government.
The company’s announcement follows the federal government’s plans for new AI safety and security protections flagged earlier this week. Trellis Data said the model was built with safety and security requirements in mind from the outset, positioning it as an option for organisations seeking local data handling and controls.
Agentaus 1 is available via the Agentaus platform and is offered through free, subscription, enterprise and API tiers, the company said.
Trellis Data said the model is about 50 per cent larger than its previous model and cited a “world ranking of 43” on the MMLU-Pro benchmark. It also claimed performance improvements in accuracy, multi-step reasoning and output length, while being able to operate at scale on smaller compute clusters.
In a statement, Trellis Data founder Michael Gately said: “Agentaus 1 puts Australia on the global stage as an LLM AI model producer. It’s the next generation of Trellis Data’s sovereign AI capability, giving Australian organisations a more secure, effective, and cost-efficient model while keeping their data and investment here in Australia.
“As the Australian government seeks to introduce new mandatory AI safety and security protections to build trust and mitigate risks associated with Frontier AI use in this country, Agentaus 1 and all of our products already meet these standards. Trellis Data has always prioritised the development of safe and secure AI.
“We’re already working on what comes next. Our ambition is to keep building world-class AI here at home and demonstrate that Australia can be a producer of advanced AI, not simply a consumer of technology built elsewhere. It is critical to our productivity, economic prosperity and national resilience.”
The company said the model includes “Defence-grade encryption” and local data hosting, and is intended to address concerns including control of sensitive data and rising technology costs as organisations pursue AI-driven productivity gains.
Trellis Data said it has a Canberra-based team supporting deployments and described its background as including work in high-security environments across government, intelligence, defence and law enforcement.
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