About
An engineering practice,
not a reseller.
Newcastle AI Hub is run by Matt Cook — a Newcastle-born software engineer who has spent decades building production systems, and the last several years working exclusively in applied AI: agents, retrieval systems, media pipelines and self-hosted model deployments that run every day, unattended, in the real world.
A lot of what sells as “AI consulting” is a subscription with a markup. This practice is the other thing: we specify hardware, deploy open-weight models, build the retrieval and integration layer around them, measure the results, and hand your team the keys. The data-sovereignty specialisation isn’t marketing — it’s the natural consequence of actually engineering systems instead of renting them.
The Hub is part of Newcastle Rising, a broader initiative to build serious technical capability in this city — including locally hosted, community-accessible AI infrastructure. Keeping capability (and data) in the region is the whole thesis.
- Principal
- Matt Cook
- Base
- Newcastle NSW 2300
- ABN
- 61 169 007 954
- Focus
- Sovereign / self-hosted AI
- Models
- Open-weight (Llama, Qwen-class)
- Engagements
- Fixed price, in writing
Principles
How we work.
Sovereignty by default
If data is sensitive, it stays on hardware you control. We design the boundary first and the features second.
Measured, not vibed
Systems are tested against agreed measures before rollout. If the accuracy isn’t there, we say so and fix it — or tell you not to ship.
Plain English, straight answers
You’ll always know what the system does, what it costs, and where its limits are. Including when the honest answer is "you don’t need this."
Come and argue with us about it.
Thirty minutes, no charge, and a straight answer on whether sovereign AI stacks up for your operation.