Firmus expands to Indonesia through AI access deal with Nvidia

　　The Australian AI infrastructure firm Firmus Technologies has announced a major partnership with Nvidia to build a 360MW data center campus in Batam, Indonesia. Batam is an island located just off the coast of Singapore.

　　Firmus and Singapore-based DayOne are now constructing the facility that is expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2027.

　　Unlike Firmus' Australian projects that target hyperscaler customers (the largest cloud computing companies), the Batam facility will be a multi-tenant project designed for AI-native customers.

　　The partnership between Firmus and Nvidia is eight years long, running through 2034. Through an economic alignment model that includes revenue sharing and credit support, Firmus can procure Nvidia infrastructure for AI-native, enterprise and ISV customers.

　　Through the partnership, Firmus will sell Nvidia-powered cloud services. Nvidia will earn standard product revenue and a share of the cloud revenue on the supported capacity.

　　Firmus expects to receive between $25 billion and $30 billion from committed offtake agreements during the first six years of the partnership.

　　The agreement covers the deployment of up to 170,000 Nvidia AI accelerators across the Grace-Blackwell, Vera-Rubin and Vera platforms through 2027 and 2028. This makes the Batam campus one of the largest AI infrastructure developments in the Asia-Pacific region. This agreement also significantly increases Firmus' deployed AI Factory capacity in the region.

　　"AI-native companies need access to scalable, energy and cost-efficient compute infrastructure to compete globally. This partnership with Nvidia provides AI-natives with unprecedented access to the most advanced AI accelerators in the world, with the certainty, scale, and flexibility that best fits their high-growth trajectory," Firmus Co-CEO Tim Rosenfield said in a statement on Monday.

　　He added that the partnership will provide small AI firms a leg up in a competitive field.

　　"We have worked to figure out how to close the gap between the cost benefits that the large guys have access to, which they do because they have great credit ratings, and the guys that are up and comers. This is actually a really material way to level the playing field a little bit to give the next a chance to compete with the big guys," Rosenfield said, as quoted by Reuters.

　　Strategic significance

　　This latest partnership between Firmus and Nvidia is one of the largest AI infrastructure deployments in Southeast Asia. It also establishes Firmus as a major player in the region's rapidly expanding AI ecosystem.

　　The partnership also represents a significant expansion of Nvidia's DSX program, which partners with data center operators to deploy GPU infrastructure on a revenue-sharing basis rather than requiring upfront purchases – making advanced AI infrastructure more accessible to a broader range of customers.

　　The Batam location is strategically close to Singapore, one of the most active financial and technology hubs in Asia. This makes it ideal for meeting the growing demands of the Asia-Pacific region's AI infrastructure.

　　The deal comes as the Australian startup, which was valued at $5.5 billion during an April investment round backed by Nvidia, prepares for an initial public offering in 2026.

　　Firmus Technologies was founded in Australia in 2019 as a cryptocurrency mining operation, later pivoting into the AI infrastructure sector. It began operations as a Bitcoin mining startup in Tasmania, leveraging access to renewable, green-powered energy.

　　The company rebranded to focus on purpose-built AI factories, which are modular, energy-efficient, and GPU-dense data centers. Firmus uses Nvidia's accelerated computing and reference architecture, with Nvidia's DSX helping to streamline the design, deployment and operations of AI factories. The liquid-cooled Firmus HyperCube is engineered to align with the Nvidia DSX platform and optimize low cost per token.

　　Beyond its project in Indonesia, Firmus is expanding its AI factory footprint across Australia and Southeast Asia through Project Southgate, developing facilities in Tasmania, Melbourne, South Australia and New South Wales. The company has also deployed AI infrastructure in Singapore through a partnership with ST Telemedia Global Data Centres.