New Zealand investment company Powerhouse Ventures is investing in Tasmanian data centre company Firmus.
Powerhouse’s investment in Firmus will consist of $250,000 in convertible notes and warrants, according to a report in The Market Herald. Firmus is an emerging ultra-efficient, low power-usage-effectiveness (PUE) data centre developer and operator that uses intellectual property (IP) relating to immersion cooling.
Its data centres are 100 per cent compatible with industry standards for air-cooled servers and can host the most demanding lodes for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. Firmus has an existing 20-megawatt data hall in Tasmania and will double its footprint to 40 megawatts with a second 20-megawatt data hall planned for completion in mid-2022.
Along with the investment in Firmus, Powerhouse also invested in CourseLoop, a provider of course management software (CMS) platform to universities across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Non-Executive Director Joshua Baker said both investments were incredibly worthwhile.
“PVL views the investments into CourseLoop and Firmus as compelling from both a financial and strategic perspective, bolstering PVL’s network amongst the university community and our technical know-how in the commercialisation of distributed energy resources respectively,” Baker said.
“Further, by being later-stage investments with nearer-term potential liquidity events, we are seeking to broaden the maturity profile of the PVL investment portfolio with the aim of delivering a more consistent and predictable value set for our shareholders.”
