At a glance
Firmus named Meta on 29 September 2026 as a customer running NVIDIA GB300 systems at its Melbourne AI factory, and co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield called Meta the company's foundational partner in Australia.
Meta has also signed for contracted GPU capacity and expansion options at Firmus AI factories in Southeast Asia, with no site, size or price disclosed.
Capital Brief reported the new agreements cover one of three planned AI factories on Batam and are expected to add about US$750 million to the annual earnings Firmus is pitching to investors.
The Australian Financial Review reported in June that Meta, Firmus's biggest customer, holds the right to acquire capacity at any or all of its Australian sites.
Firmus is due to lodge its prospectus on 8 October, ahead of a planned 22 October ASX listing seeking about A$7 billion.
Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus announced agreements with Meta on 29 September 2026 for GPU computing capacity at its AI factories in Southeast Asia, three weeks before its planned listing on the ASX. The same Firmus release describes Meta as "an existing Firmus customer in Australia", running NVIDIA's latest liquid-cooled chip racks at Firmus's Melbourne AI factory.
Firmus's 2 March release, for a Melbourne contract of about 18,400 NVIDIA GPUs, described the buyer as "a leading global technology company". The Australian Financial Review reported in June that Meta was Firmus's biggest customer. On 29 September Firmus co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield called Meta "the foundational partner of Firmus Technologies in Australia".
Meta is now a named Firmus customer in Melbourne and in Southeast Asia, weeks before Firmus asks public investors for about A$7 billion. Investors in the float will be pricing contracted customers, and Meta is now a name Firmus attaches to both its Australian and its Asian business.
Firmus's Melbourne AI factory runs NVIDIA's newest racks for Meta
An AI factory is a data centre built to train and run AI models on large clusters of specialised chips such as GPUs. The GB300 NVL72 is NVIDIA's Blackwell Ultra generation, sold as a whole liquid-cooled rack of 72 connected GPUs, and Firmus calls Meta's Melbourne installation the largest Blackwell Ultra deployment in the Southern Hemisphere. Rosenfield wrote that the site, which he called Melbourne 1, is delivering tokens, the units of output an AI model produces, "in production and at scale for Meta".
NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems at Firmus's Melbourne AI factory. Image: Firmus.
Firmus's 2 March release set out "a multi-billion dollar commitment for approximately 18,400 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs to be deployed at the Melbourne facility", its second large-scale customer for Project Southgate, the Australian AI factory programme whose first was NVIDIA. On 27 August Firmus said the Melbourne AI factory was running a customer's models after installation and testing, in a hall on the Brooklyn campus of data centre operator CDC in Melbourne's west.
Firmus deploys the racks in its HyperCube, a factory-built module carrying the cooling, power and pipework, and in August agreed to buy the Benmax businesses that manufacture it for A$300 million. Meta's vice president of engineering and infrastructure, Gaya Nagarajan, said in the release that Meta sees Firmus "as a long-term strategic infrastructure partner as we build for the next generation of AI across Asia-Pacific".
Contracted capacity in Southeast Asia comes with options for more
The agreements cover contracted capacity plus options for more, at Firmus AI factories in Southeast Asia built on NVIDIA's DSX platform, its full design for AI factories from the building to the software. The capacity will support Meta's AI research, model development and training. Neither company disclosed a site, a megawatt figure or the value, Reuters reported.
Business news site Capital Brief reported on 29 September that Meta will take one of Firmus's three planned AI factories on Batam. Citing two people with knowledge of the matter, it said the deal is expected to lift Firmus's forecast earnings before interest and tax by about 15 per cent, or roughly US$750 million a year, on top of the US$5 billion a year Firmus estimates its AI factories will earn once built.
Batam is an Indonesian island about 20 kilometres from Singapore, where Firmus and data centre developer DayOne are building a 360MW NVIDIA AI factory campus sized for up to 170,000 GPUs, delivered from the first quarter of 2027. Firmus is seeking about US$10 billion to buy NVIDIA chips for Batam, US$7.5 billion of it as debt.
Meta buys GPU capacity from several specialist providers. CNBC reported in July that US provider CoreWeave holds a Meta agreement worth about US$21 billion, in coverage of Meta's plan to sell its own spare GPU capacity to outside developers.
NVIDIA, Fireworks AI, OpenAI and Meta are Firmus's named customers
Firmus builds GPU capacity and rents it to AI developers, one of the neocloud providers in Australia. These are the customers it has named in its own announcements and its partners'.
Customer | Where Firmus says it runs | Announced |
|---|---|---|
NVIDIA | Anchor customer, Project Southgate, Australia | 16 October 2025 |
Fireworks AI | Firmus's Asia-based AI Cloud Region | August 2026 |
OpenAI | Two AI factories in Malaysia | 8 September 2026 |
Meta | Melbourne AI factory; AI factories in Southeast Asia | 29 September 2026 |
Source: CDC, Firmus and NVIDIA joint release, 16 October 2025; Firmus releases, August to September 2026.
NVIDIA is also Firmus's chip supplier and a shareholder, and it listed Firmus among the cloud providers adopting its Vera Rubin platform in May. Fireworks AI, a US company that runs AI models for developers, deploys on Firmus's Asian cloud. OpenAI signed as anchor customer for two Malaysian AI factories on 8 September, in the release that put Firmus's contracted capacity above 900MW.
Meta's name had surfaced earlier in Firmus's own recruitment copy. A San Francisco sales advertisement, reported by Capital Brief on 18 September, described nine Firmus accounts spending, or on a path to spending, $1 billion or more a year, and said Meta and NVIDIA each had a dedicated team.
Firmus has also raised equity through 2026. It secured a US$2 billion round on 7 August at a valuation above US$10.5 billion, with Jane Street joining as a new shareholder and Blackstone moving from lender to shareholder after leading the separate US$10 billion debt facility behind Project Southgate.
Firmus's Australian capacity is open to Meta, the AFR reported
The Australian Financial Review reported on 30 June 2026 that "Firmus' biggest customer, US social media giant Meta Platforms, has the right to acquire the group's compute capacity at any or all of the Australian sites under a deal agreed earlier this year." Firmus counts two operating AI factories, one in Australia and one in Singapore, and its 29 September release confirms Meta at the Melbourne site.
Firmus's Australian pipeline beyond Melbourne runs through Tasmania and South Australia. In Tasmania it has approval for 90MW at St Leonards outside Launceston, and for 288MW at Bell Bay, which George Town Council approved on 25 August. It is underwriting Bernacchi-1, a subsea cable built by SUBCO to carry more than 60 terabits a second between Tasmania and the mainland, targeted for service in the second quarter of 2027.
In South Australia, Firmus plans AI factories at Tailem Bend and Stirling North under a 12-year, 600MW energy supply agreement with commodities trader Gunvor, whose first asset is GreenPoint Energy's 200MW Koolunga battery. Its energy and water policies commit it to build two megawatts of new renewable generation for every one it contracts. Firmus has also secured up to 150 terabits a second on SUBCO's APX East cable to the United States, for 25 years from the fourth quarter of 2028.
What to watch
The prospectus. Institutional bidding runs on 6 and 7 October, Firmus is due to lodge its prospectus on 8 October and trading is due to start on 22 October, in a float of about A$7 billion. Investors will look to it for Meta's share of revenue, the terms of the Australian arrangement the AFR described, and contracted capacity set against billed revenue, the two figures that framed Nscale's US$103 billion contract book for New York investors.
The Batam site. Capital Brief places Meta on Batam and Firmus has not named the site. A confirmed site and megawatt figure would size the agreement against the 360MW campus and the chip financing Firmus is raising for it.
St Leonards. The Tasmanian site outside Launceston is expected to begin operating in early 2027, the ABC reported in June. A named customer there would show how far Meta's Australian arrangement reaches, and once running it would add to the operating capacity listed in the data centres in Australia directory.