Australian startup seeks $10 billion for Nvidia chips
Australian AI startup Firmus Technologies is in talks with lenders to raise around $10 billion. The company plans to use the funds to buy Nvidia chips for a data center in Indonesia. If completed, the deal could become one of the largest AI infrastructure financings in Asia.
According to sources cited by Bloomberg, Firmus is looking to raise about $7.5 billion in debt and another $2.5 billion in equity. The loan could have a five-year term. The company declined to comment.
One of the region’s largest projects
The scale of the deal reflects the rapid growth in data center investment. PwC forecasts that spending on such infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region will reach $8.2 trillion by 2050.
For comparison, Brookfield signed a preliminary agreement in July to provide up to $9 billion in financing for an AI data center in South Korea being developed jointly with Naver and Nvidia.
Firmus plans to use the new funds to buy graphics processors for a 360-megawatt Nvidia DSX AI Factory campus on the Indonesian island of Batam. The project is being developed with DayOne Data Centers as part of an eight-year partnership with Nvidia.
Firmus prepares for a major IPO
The financing talks come ahead of Firmus’ planned IPO in late October. The company aims to raise up to $5 billion, which could make it one of the largest public offerings in Australian history.
Firmus has already been expanding its capital base. In February, the company secured a $10 billion loan from a consortium of investors that included Blackstone. Six months later, investors including Jane Street agreed to invest $2 billion in the company.
Firmus started in Tasmania in 2019 as a Bitcoin mining company. It later shifted toward AI infrastructure as demand for computing capacity surged.
The company now operates seven AI facilities across Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Earlier in September, Firmus also announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI. Part of the computing capacity at two of its Malaysian sites will be dedicated to the U.S. AI company.
AI instead of mining
More mining companies are starting to use their data centers not only for Bitcoin mining but also for artificial intelligence workloads. The reason is simple: miners already have what AI companies need most — large power supplies, cooling infrastructure and facilities capable of housing thousands of powerful computing systems.
For some companies, the shift to AI looks more attractive than traditional mining, where revenue depends on the price of Bitcoin, network difficulty and electricity costs. As a result, former mining sites are gradually being converted into high-performance computing centers, while the companies themselves sign contracts with AI developers and cloud service providers.
As a reminder, Nvidia’s valuation is approaching a decade low.
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