Australian AI data center company Firmus raised $2 billion in a strategic equity round backed by Coatue, Nvidia, Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, and Jane Street, valuing the company above $10.5 billion. This brings Firmus' total equity raised in the past 12 months to more than $3 billion, with the company's valuation roughly doubling since April 2026 when it was valued at $5.5 billion. Founded in 2019 as a Bitcoin miner, Firmus has pivoted to become a major Asia-Pacific AI infrastructure builder.
The capital accelerates Project Southgate, Firmus' A$73 billion initiative to build 1.6 gigawatts of AI compute capacity across five Australian cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Perth) by 2028, with the first phase (150 MW Melbourne facility carrying 18,500 Nvidia GB300 GPUs) already underway. Additionally, Firmus is developing a 360-megawatt Nvidia DSX AI factory campus in Batam, Indonesia (26km from Singapore) with a Nvidia deal announced in June. The company plans to expand into other Asia-Pacific markets.
For practitioners: Firmus exemplifies the shift from venture to infrastructure-scale financing. The company is simultaneously borrowing $10 billion in credit-backed debt (from Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Blackstone Credit & Insurance), revealing how AI data centers now operate like toll roads or transmission lines—financed through debt + strategic equity, with long-dated tenancy agreements (via CDC Data Centres). This model concentrates risk but unlocks the multi-billion capex required to build compute at hyperscaler scale.