Firmus, the ‘Southgate’ AI datacenter builder backed by Nvidia, hits $5.5B valuation | TechCrunch

Asia AI data center provider Firmus on Monday announced a fresh $505 million raise led by Coatue at a $5.5 billion post money valuation. With this round, Firmus has raised $1.35 billion in six months, it says.

The Singapore-based data center company previously raised AU$330 million (approximately $215 million) at an AU$1.85 billion ($1.2 billion) valuation from investors, including Nvidia.

Firmus is developing an energy-efficient “AI factory” network of data centers in Australia and Tasmania, a project it dubs Project Southgate. It is using Nvidia’s reference designs for building these efficient data centers. These new data centers will use Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform — the chip giant’s next-gen AI computing system succeeding its Blackwell architecture, expected to ship in the second-half of 2026.

Firmus originally provided cooling technologies for Bitcoin mining and has become yet-another crypto-roots-turned-AI provider company that investors love.