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Launceston-based artificial intelligence infrastructure group Firmus Technologies has secured $330 million via an equity placement backed by Ellerston Capital and NVIDIA to fast-track development of Project Southgate, the company’s flagship initiative in partnership with the Tasmanian Government.
Firmus Technologies, which creates “AI Factories” designed to operate at the max-q of AI token generation and profitability, says the final sum raised was “materially upsized” from the original target after attracting strong interest from both institutional and high-net-worth Australian investors.
Project Southgate will be located in northern Tasmania’s AI Factory Zone, a world-first initiative announced by the state government with a plan to lead the world in sustainable artificial intelligence.
The proposed development by Firmus Technologies, which was founded by Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee in 2019, will be largest deployment of the company’s AI Factory platform to date.
The system is already operating successfully in Singapore, where it underpins Firmus’ AI cloud services for research, enterprise and government.
Project Southgate will establish Australia’s first sovereign, renewable-powered AI factory campus, a facility with 36,000 NVIDIA GPUs built over two stages and optimised for compute density, energy efficiency and AI workload flexibility.
“Our mission is to create the most efficient AI infrastructure,” says Tim Rosenfield, co-CEO of Firmus Technologies.
“The Firmus AI Factory is built for peak efficiency in every form - cost, energy, water and space.
“With efficiency as our foundation, we’re working to change the conversation: giving Australians genuine agency over how AI becomes part of our country’s future.”
Fellow co-CEO Oliver Curtis describes Project Southgate as the beginning of Australia’s AI factory era that will build sovereign capability, create new industries and ensure Australia “plays a defining role in the global AI economy”.
“This multibillion-dollar investment into Tasmania will bring new skills, hundreds of local jobs, and the opportunity to repurpose industrial infrastructure into a globally relevant AI industry,” says Curtis.
The capital raising drew strong support from Australian institutional investors, with Ellerston Capital making a cornerstone investment in the company.
"Firmus is pioneering a new era of efficient AI deployment, and we're excited to lead this raise as they expand their sovereign infrastructure footprint," says David Leslie from Ellerston Capital.
Firmus Technologies employs advanced “liquid-everywhere” data centre technology to innovate across all layers of the AI Factory, from energy grid management and thermal innovations to GPU and networking telemetry and control.
The company says this holistic approach creates AI Factories that operate at peak efficiency, delivering high uptime, throughput and profitability with future-proofed designs.
Firmus, which is an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, has designed its modular liquid-everywhere AI Factory platform to evolve with NVIDIA’s latest architectures, including NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet Networking, NVIDIA Nemotron open models and AI software to support agentic AI workloads.
Firmus says its proprietary technology is highly energy-efficient and allows purpose-built AI Factories to be constructed significantly cheaper than legacy data centres, creating more cost-efficient AI tokens.
The Tasmanian Government sees the AI Factories providing a new digital baseload to support the growth of the state’s renewable energy sector while enabling sustainable expansion of AI infrastructure.
“The establishment of the Green AI Factory Zone marks a new era of investment and innovation for Tasmania,” says state Premier Jeremy Rockliff.
“We are proud to support Firmus Technologies as it builds Australia’s first green AI factory right here in the north, delivering jobs, skills and economic momentum for generations to come.
“By unlocking access to renewable energy for advanced digital industries, Tasmania is leading the way in sustainable infrastructure and sovereign capability for all of Australia.”
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