Firmus partners with Nvidia to expand cheaper AI compute access

Firmus Technologies said it has signed a strategic partnership with Nvidia to help emerging AI firms get more cost-effective access to computing power, a deal built around hardware sales, cloud services and revenue sharing. Under the arrangement, Firmus will buy Nvidia hardware and sell Nvidia-powered cloud services to customers described as AI Native users, while Nvidia collects product revenue and a share of cloud revenue.

The agreement puts a sharper price tag on the bottleneck shaping AI development: access to compute. For younger companies that cannot afford to build large data-center footprints, a broker that can assemble chips, power and cloud capacity can determine whether a product gets launched at all. Firmus has also appointed investment banks to work on a possible initial public offering, turning the current AI buildout into a capital-markets play as well as an infrastructure business.

Firmus is not a newcomer chasing the trend. The company was founded in 2019 by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee, and it originally focused on bitcoin mining before shifting into AI infrastructure. Firmus says it was already designing systems for 1,000-plus GPUs in 2019, a detail that helps explain why it is now being treated less like a generic startup and more like a specialist in high-density infrastructure.

The Nvidia tie-up also extends a relationship that was already visible in Firmus’s financing. In September 2025, Firmus raised A$330 million at a post-money valuation of about A$1.85 billion, with participation from Nvidia and Ellerston Capital, a round that pushed the company into unicorn territory. That money is tied to Project Southgate, which Firmus has pitched as Australia’s first sovereign, renewable-powered AI factory campus.

Tasmania has become the physical center of that plan. In July 2025, the state announced a world-first AI Factory Zone in Northern Tasmania to clear the way for Project Southgate, with Stage 1 targeting 90MW by 2026, including a 44MW Stage 1a and a later Stage 1b designed to double total Stage 1 capacity to 90MW. Later 2025 reporting said Firmus and partners CDC Data Centres and Nvidia planned to scale Southgate to 1.6GW across Australia, with some estimates valuing the broader expansion at A$73.3 billion.

That scale raises the stakes well beyond one company’s balance sheet. Local reporting said the northern Tasmania buildout could make Firmus the state’s largest electricity user, putting grid planning, power supply and community acceptance at the center of the project as it grows. For Tasmania and for Australia’s wider AI ambitions, the deal shows that the next fight in artificial intelligence is increasingly about who can secure the chips, the power and the financing to keep pace.