Australian-founded AI infrastructure startup Firmus Technologies is heading to mainland Australia with a $73.3 billion plan in partnership with CDC Data Centres and Nvidia to build four more AI data centres in capital cities.
The initial deal for Project Southgate – the plan to build an AI data centre in Tasmania – is worth $4.5 billion, and includes a second site already under construction in Melbourne.
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CDC Data Centres will provide the critical, sovereign digital infrastructure for Project Southgate.
Last month, Firmus raised $330 million in a round backed by US chip giant Nvidia, at a post-money valuation of $1.85 billion.
That funding was earmarked for the first stage of Project Southgate, a renewable energy-powered “AI factory” with 36,000 Nvidia GPUs in northern Tasmania, in a partnership with the state government.
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The Melbourne site involves 18,500 Nvidia GB300 GPUs, which are expected to come online by April 2026, for enterprise, education, government, startup and scaleup customers across Australia through the Firmus AI Cloud.
The two sites offer a combined 150MW of AI compute.
The bigger picture now includes new sites in Perth, Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney as well, at a total cost of up to $73.3 billion, delivering 1.6GW of compute at five Firmus sites by 2028.
A recent announcement by the NSW government to smooth the way for $1 billion+ data centres and renewables will no doubt support the unicorn AI infrastructure startup’s ambitions, which dwarf the much-hyped $20 billion, five-year investment by AWS in Australian data centres.
Firmus believes the project will deliver 20,700 direct jobs created through 2028, across construction, advanced manufacturing, operations, and technical roles.
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Central to the project is renewable energy to power the energy-ravenous data centre sites. Firmus estimates that Project Southgate could support the development of up to 5.1GW of new wind, solar, storage and hydro generation projects in Tasmania, Victoria, NSW, and the ACT.
Firmus Technologies was founded in 2019 by Tim Rosenfield, Jonathan Levee and Oliver Curtis, the husband of publicist Roxy Jacenko. The business, now based in Singapore, initially focused on cooling systems for bitcoin mining in Tasmania, before redirecting its focus to become “a leader in energy-efficient AI infrastructure”.
Curtis, the CEO, said the project’s network of “AI factories across Australia will accelerate the country’s path to net zero by providing long-term demand certainty for new clean energy projects”.
“Project Southgate is a blueprint for how Australia can lead the world in scalable, sovereign AI infrastructure,” he said.
“We’re building a new kind of national capability — Australian-designed, powered by renewables, and ready to meet global demand for energy-efficient intelligence.”
DGX Cloud, Nvidia’s managed AI platform on cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and AWS, is setting up a new region at Southgate Melbourne in partnership with Firmus.
Nvidia APAC senior VP of sales and marketing Raymond Teh said, “Firmus’s Nvidia AI infrastructure will support Australia’s leadership in building and deploying efficient, sustainable AI to solve its greatest challenges and shape the next generation of growth”.
CDC founder and CEO Greg Boorer said Project Southgate will play a critical role in positioning Australia as a leader in sustainable AI.
“This project will create tens of thousands of safe, high-paying Australian jobs across trades, construction, operations and knowledge work and send a clear signal that Australians can benefit from applying ingenuity, innovation and world-leading designs to shape the future of AI,” he said.
The next question is finding more cash for the project. Firmus is expected to continue raising capital ahead of a slated ASX listing in 2026.
This article was first published by Startup Daily.
