Australia’s Firmus Technologies has signed a long-term, multi-billion-dollar contract with a leading global technology platform for dedicated AI infrastructure capacity at the Melbourne site of its Project Southgate programme. The agreement covers approximately 18,400 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs to be deployed at the Melbourne AI Factory, representing the second large-scale customer secured under Project Southgate. Firmus said the contract marks the arrival of hyperscale AI factories in Australia for the first time, positioning the country as a potential producer and exporter of AI compute and tokens.
Firmus co-chief executive Tim Rosenfield described the agreement as a milestone for both the company and Australia’s role in global AI infrastructure. “A commitment of this scale from one of the world’s leading technology platforms validates what we’ve been building – AI Factories that are co-designed from model to grid, where every decision in power, cooling and network is engineered for production performance at hyperscale,” he said.
Firmus said its AI Factory platform is built around a co-design model that integrates compute, cooling, power systems and supply chain partners from the outset, rather than retrofitting existing data centre designs. The Melbourne deployment will use NVIDIA’s Grace-Blackwell architecture, with infrastructure designed to accommodate future accelerator generations without major redesign.
National programme
Project Southgate is envisaged as a multi-site national programme. In October 2025, Firmus announced a strategic alliance with CDC Data Centres and NVIDIA to expand the initiative to 1.6GW of planned capacity across Australia. The initial Southgate Melbourne phase, valued at AUD 4.5 billion, included a 150 MW build featuring around 18,500 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs scheduled to come online in 2026.
In February 2026, Firmus secured a USD 10 billion private debt facility led by funds managed by Blackstone, with support from Coatue, to fund the next phase of Southgate. The financing ranks among the largest private debt transactions in Australian corporate history and reflects growing investor appetite for AI-driven data centre platforms.
John Watson, senior managing director in Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities Group, said at the time that AI infrastructure represented one of the firm’s highest-conviction investment themes, adding that Australia could play a central role in the global build-out.
The Melbourne contract forms part of a broader pipeline. Firmus is also progressing construction of a greenfield AI Factory campus in Tasmania, expected to host approximately 36,800 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs when completed in late 2026. The company has positioned the Tasmanian site as a renewable-powered facility designed to set new benchmarks for energy-efficient AI infrastructure.
Firmus has committed more than AUD 300 million to building a domestic supply chain, including partnerships with local manufacturing groups such as Benmax and Maas Group.
According to the company, this investment supports the delivery of up to 1.5GW of AI facility capacity per year and could create up to 400 skilled advanced manufacturing jobs.
The company has previously said Project Southgate could scale to around 1.6GW by 2028 and has estimated total programme investment reaching into the tens of billions of dollars over the same period. Beyond data centre construction, the model includes energy integration and infrastructure manufacturing, signalling a vertically integrated approach to AI compute rather than a conventional colocation expansion.