Firmus Technologies has raised $2 billion in fresh equity at a valuation above $10.5 billion, nearly doubling the Australian AI infrastructure startup’s valuation in just four months as investors pour billions into the physical infrastructure behind the AI boom.

The funding round includes follow-on investments from Nvidia and Coatue Management, joined by funds managed by Blackstone and trading firm Jane Street. Firmus was valued at about $5.5 billion in its previous funding round in April.

That jump is striking even by the standards of the AI investment frenzy. Firmus is attracting capital at a scale usually reserved for the biggest names in technology, yet its business sits largely behind the scenes. Rather than building AI models or consumer applications, the company is building the computing infrastructure needed to train and run them.

“This investment allows us to move on multiple fronts at once. We’re scaling across Australia while fast-tracking our capacity to expand into the wider Asia-Pacific region, including the early steps behind our recently announced Indonesia development that will serve AI-native customers. We’re excited to see continued backing from Coatue, NVIDIA, Blackstone and Jane Street as we build one of the world’s leading AI infrastructure platforms from Australia,” Oliver Curtis, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Firmus, said in a news release.

The $2 billion raise comes just months after Firmus secured a Blackstone-led $10 billion financing package tied to its Australian AI infrastructure plans. Fundpluse reported on that deal in February, when the Nvidia-backed company laid out plans to build a major AI data center network across Australia.

The latest investment puts even more capital behind that effort.

Firmus said the new money will accelerate Project Southgate, its initiative to develop large-scale AI training and inference infrastructure across Australia. The company is pursuing projects elsewhere in Asia-Pacific, including Indonesia.

“This investment allows us to move on multiple fronts at once. We’re scaling across Australia while fast-tracking our ⁠capacity to expand into the wider Asia-Pacific region, including the early steps behind our recently announced Indonesia development that will serve AI-native customers,” Firmus Co-CEO Oliver Curtis said.

Investors are chasing the infrastructure behind AI

The investor list may be just as revealing as the size of the round.

Nvidia is selling the chips and systems that make AI factories possible. Blackstone has become one of the largest financial backers of data centers and digital infrastructure. Coatue has placed major bets across the AI ecosystem, and Jane Street brings another deep pool of institutional capital into the deal.

Firmus sits where those interests converge: compute, data centers, energy and AI.

The company builds infrastructure around Nvidia’s DSX AI Factory Reference Architecture. Firmus and Nvidia deepened their relationship in June through an agreement covering Nvidia infrastructure purchases and Nvidia-based cloud services.

That relationship gives Firmus access to technology at the center of the global race for AI compute. It gives Nvidia something valuable too: another large infrastructure partner capable of deploying its systems across markets where demand for AI capacity is rising.

The deal arrives amid a more complicated backdrop for AI investing. Questions about the enormous sums being spent on chips, data centers and electricity have grown louder as investors ask how quickly those investments will produce returns.

Yet private capital continues to chase the infrastructure layer.

“The pace at which Firmus has re-rated demonstrates how private capital views AI ‌infrastructure as one of the few capital-scarce opportunities in global markets right now,” Emanuel Ajay Datt, managing director of investment manager Datt Group, said, according to Reuters.

There is another reason Firmus stands out. Much of the AI investment story has centered on the United States and a small group of giant technology companies. Firmus is making a different bet: that Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region will need their own massive pools of AI compute.

The company’s valuation suggests some of the world’s largest investors think that bet could pay off.

A move from roughly $5.5 billion to more than $10.5 billion in four months does more than mint another AI unicorn. It shows how the AI trade is moving deeper into the infrastructure stack, where access to chips, electricity, land and capital may prove just as valuable as the models running on top of them.

Firmus founders