At a glance
Firmus secured full commitments for a US$2 billion equity round on 7 August, at a post-money valuation above US$10.5 billion.
Coatue and NVIDIA re-invested in Firmus, while Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Jane Street came in as new equity holders.
Jane Street runs a 4,032-GPU liquid-cooled cluster in Texas and is planning a facility of 100MW to 200MW, Bloomberg reported in June.
Firmus will fund Project Southgate, its 1.6GW Australian build to 2028, and a 360MW campus on Batam.
Regal Partners and Wilson Asset Management have been reducing Firmus holdings as offshore capital buys in.
Firmus secures US$2bn at a valuation above US$10.5bn
Firmus said on 7 August it had received full commitments for a US$2 billion strategic equity investment, about A$3.1 billion, at a post-money valuation the Sydney company put above US$10.5 billion. Coatue and NVIDIA took follow-on participation. Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and other Blackstone vehicles took equity for the first time after leading February's debt facility, and Jane Street joined them.
The round takes Firmus' new equity over the past twelve months beyond US$3 billion, on top of the US$10 billion debt facility Blackstone and Coatue led in February. Blackstone lent to Firmus in February and took an equity position six months later.
Date | Instrument | Post-money valuation |
|---|---|---|
September 2025 | A$330m equity, Ellerston cornerstone | A$1.85bn |
November 2025 | A$500m equity commitments | about A$6bn |
February 2026 | US$10bn debt facility, Blackstone and Coatue | not applicable |
April 2026 | US$505m equity, led by Coatue | US$5.5bn |
August 2026 | US$2bn equity, fully subscribed | above US$10.5bn |
Source: Firmus newsroom releases, September 2025 to August 2026.
Oliver Curtis, Firmus co-chief executive, said the investment "allows us to move on multiple fronts at once," scaling in Australia while bringing forward capacity in the wider Asia-Pacific.
Jane Street runs 4,032 GPUs of its own in Texas
Jane Street is a New York proprietary trading firm, which trades with its own capital. It booked US$39.6 billion of net trading revenue in 2025 and US$16.1 billion in the first quarter of 2026, on Bloomberg's reporting of its bond disclosures, more than JPMorgan's trading desk earned across the same full year.
Firmus quotes Daniel Pontecorvo, Jane Street's head of physical engineering, in the release. On the firm's own podcast Pontecorvo described that team as responsible for "all of our physical spaces, be it data centers, offices," including "designing and building them and operating them in a way that allows us to run our business."
In May Jane Street published a tour of its Texas AI training site, 4,032 liquid-cooled GPUs. In June Bloomberg reported that the firm already had tens of thousands of GPUs running, wanted hundreds of thousands, and was in discussions to develop a facility of 100MW to 200MW of its own. It sources compute today from a Dallas data centre and from CoreWeave, and has not confirmed a location. Ron Minsky, co-head of technology, said Jane Street "just can't get all the compute we want all in the same place."
CoreWeave sold Jane Street US$1bn of equity and US$6bn of compute
Jane Street took equity in a compute supplier in April. CoreWeave announced on 15 April that the firm had signed a US$6 billion AI cloud agreement covering NVIDIA Vera Rubin systems across several facilities, and had taken a US$1 billion equity stake at US$109.00 a share. Jane Street's private holdings also include a stake in Anthropic, acquired from the FTX estate in 2024.
Firmus' Batam campus is specified on Grace Blackwell and on the same Vera Rubin generation Jane Street contracted at CoreWeave, under Firmus' own supply relationship with NVIDIA running to 2034.
Project Southgate targets 1.6GW by 2028
Firmus is a neocloud, a company that sells GPU computing as a service, and Project Southgate is its Australian build programme: 1.6GW by 2028 across Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth, from an initial A$4.5 billion scaling to A$73.3 billion, with CDC Data Centres supplying the physical data centre infrastructure. Melbourne is the first mainland deployment, contracted in March to a global hyperscale customer for about 18,400 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs and scheduled to come online during 2026.
Firmus signed a 600MW twelve-year wholesale supply agreement with commodity trader Gunvor in June, linked to 1.2GW of new renewable generation and 1.5GWh of battery storage in South Australia by 2032. Firmus has separately published a commitment to build more renewable capacity than it consumes, and is underwriting Bernacchi-1, the SUBCO subsea cable branching off the Sydney to Melbourne system into northern Tasmania, carrying more than 60Tbps from the second quarter of 2027.
Offshore, Firmus is co-developing a 360MW campus on Batam with DayOne and NVIDIA, sized at up to 170,000 NVIDIA accelerators and scheduled to begin operating in the first quarter of 2027. Firmus expects that campus to generate US$25 billion to US$30 billion from committed offtake agreements over its first six years.
Regal and Wilson Asset Management reduce Firmus holdings
ShareCafe reported on 5 August that Regal Partners and Wilson Asset Management have been trimming their Firmus positions to manage portfolio concentration, while Blackstone and offshore funds accumulate.
On ShareCafe's account Tectonic Investment Management holds about 45 times its 2021 entry, Regal about 30 times and Wilson Asset Management about five times. The Australian reported in April that Firmus pre-IPO shareholders face no escrow restrictions, an account a company insider subsequently disputed to Capital Brief, leaving the lock-up terms unconfirmed.
Sharon AI is also preparing an ASX debut, funded through a US$350 million five-year convertible note anchored by Oaktree.
What to watch
The ASX listing. The Australian reported in April that Firmus was working towards a float at A$8 billion to A$12 billion in June or July. The float did not occur in that window, and this round values Firmus above the A$12 billion top of the range. The 7 August release makes no mention of a listing.
Whether a compute arrangement follows the equity. Firmus' 7 August release describes an equity investment only, and CoreWeave's April announcement paired equity and capacity on the same day.
Batam's first quarter of operations. The campus is scheduled to start running in the first three months of 2027, on hardware NVIDIA is contracted to supply through 2034.