Firmus has agreed to become a cornerstone customer on SUBCO's APX East submarine cable system, committing approximately US$300 million (A$418 million) for up to 150 terabits per second (Tbps) of dedicated trans-Pacific capacity over 25 years to support its Australian AI infrastructure ambitions.
The agreement gives Firmus a direct connectivity path between its Australian AI Factory network and the United States, with APX East designed as an independent express route across the Pacific.
The cable is expected to be ready for service in Q4 2028.
Firmus said the capacity is central to its strategy of producing and exporting AI tokens - the outputs of AI training and inference workloads - from its gigascale AI Factory build programme across Australia. The company described the investment as securing the delivery path for those tokens for decades to come.
Bevan Slattery, founder and co-CEO of SUBCO, said AI is fundamentally reshaping demand patterns on international subsea routes.
"With millions of AI GPUs planned across the region in the next two to three years, generating petabits of tokens per second, AI Factories are front and centre of that need. Firmus is leading that charge, and we are delighted to be their trusted partner," Slattery said.
"Securing up to 150 terabits per second of dedicated capacity gives us the scale and performance to connect Australian AI infrastructure directly with the United States, ensuring the AI infrastructure we build here can reliably serve the world's leading AI-Natives," Tim Rosenfield, co-CEO and co-founder of Firmus, stated.
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