Firmus Technologies raises $330m for renewable-powered 'AI factory'

Energy-efficient AI infrastructure provider Firmus Technologies has closed a $330m equity placement to establish what it describes as "Australia’s first sovereign, renewable-powered AI factory campus".

The cornerstone investment was made by Ellerston Capital, with NVIDIA also participating.

The funds will accelerate the development of Project Southgate, Firmus' flagship initiative in partnership with the Tasmanian Government.

Located in the newly announced Green AI Factory Zone in northern Tasmania, the AI factory is a facility with 36,000 NVIDIA GPUs built over two stages and optimised for compute density, energy efficiency, and AI workload flexibility.

Firmus is an NVIDIA Cloud Partner and has designed its modular, liquid-everywhere AI Factory platform to evolve with NVIDIA’s latest architectures — including NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking, NVIDIA Nemotron open models and AI software to support agentic AI workloads. 

Project Southgate marks the largest deployment of Firmus’ AI Factory platform to date - a system already operating in Singapore, where it underpins Firmus’ AI cloud services for research, enterprise and government.

“Our mission is to create the most efficient AI infrastructure,” said Tim Rosenfield, co-CEO of Firmus Technologies.

“The Firmus AI Factory is built for peak efficiency in every form — cost, energy, water, and space. With efficiency as our foundation, we’re working to change the conversation: giving Australians genuine agency over how AI becomes part of our country’s future.”

"Project Southgate is the beginning of Australia’s AI factory era, building sovereign capability, creating new industries, and ensuring Australia plays a defining role in the global AI economy," Oliver Curtis, co-CEO of Firmus, said.

"This multibillion dollar investment into Tasmania will bring new skills, hundreds of local jobs, and the opportunity to repurpose industrial infrastructure into a globally relevant AI industry.”

“The establishment of the Green AI Factory Zone marks a new era of investment and innovation for Tasmania," said Jeremy Rockliff, the Premier of Tasmania.

"We are proud to support Firmus Technologies as it builds Australia’s first green AI factory right here in the North, delivering jobs, skills, and economic momentum for generations to come."

Morgans was the sole lead manager, with Highbury Partnership acting as financial advisor to Firmus for the raise. The raise closed at a post-money valuation of $1.85 billion.