Firmus, an Australian company building the physical infrastructure behind artificial intelligence, has raised $2 billion in fresh equity at a valuation above $10.5 billion — nearly doubling its worth in just four months. The round, led and participated in by Nvidia, with backing including Coatue, comes as investors race to fund the data centers, power and networking that frontier AI models depend on.

The company, which began life as a Bitcoin miner before pivoting to AI, builds large-scale "AI factories" based on Nvidia's data-center platform, with projects planned across Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Firmus said the funds will speed up construction of facilities to meet surging demand from model developers and enterprises.

The raise underscores a shift in where the AI boom's money is going: while frontier labs grab headlines, infrastructure builders are becoming strategic assets in their own right, with capital requirements that increasingly resemble energy and telecommunications projects rather than conventional software startups.

Sources