Nvidia-Backed Firmus Raises $505 Million as Asia-Pacific AI Data Centre Race Heats Up
Australian AI infrastructure builder Firmus Technologies has closed a $505 million funding round led by Coatue Management, with chipmaker Nvidia also participating. The deal values the company at $5.5 billion and marks its third equity raise in six months, bringing total capital raised during that period to $1.35 billion. Firmus builds GPU-dense data centres purpose-built for large-scale AI workloads, with its flagship Project Southgate aiming to deploy multiple "AI Factories" across Australia in partnership with Nvidia and CDC Data Centres. An IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange is expected as early as June, in what would be the country's largest tech listing this decade.
Why it matters for Asia
Firmus already operates data centres in Singapore through a partnership with Temasek-backed ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, and co-founder Oliver Curtis has said the Singapore deployment provides "a proven blueprint for scaling across Southeast Asia." As regional AI spending approaches $78 billion, the race to build sovereign-capable AI infrastructure in Asia-Pacific is attracting serious capital - and enterprise buyers across the region stand to benefit from more locally hosted compute options that reduce latency and satisfy data residency requirements.^
