Firmus Technologies, an Australian start‑up building large‑scale AI data centres, announced a US$10 billion debt financing package led by Blackstone funds with participation from tech investor Coatue. The deal, structured as private credit and insurance-led debt, is earmarked to accelerate deployment of the company’s “AI factory” platform across Australia and to underwrite Project Southgate, a major cluster of data centres powered by Nvidia’s DSX architecture.
The financing marks one of the largest private credit transactions in Australia’s history and follows a A$500 million equity raise in November that valued Firmus at roughly A$6 billion. Firmus says construction has already begun at multiple sites; it aims to reach an aggregate capacity of up to 1.6 gigawatts by 2028, a scale that would make the company a significant buyer of power and infrastructure services in the region.
Blackstone’s involvement — via Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, Blackstone Credit & Insurance and affiliated funds — underlines institutional appetite for AI‑related infrastructure, which Moody’s and other analysts forecast will be heavily debt‑funded. Blackstone senior MD John Watson described AI infrastructure as a core investment theme, framing Australia as a potential hub in the global build‑out of compute and data centre capacity.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia research cited by the company places Australia third after the United States and China as an AI investment destination, and projects roughly A$150 billion (about US$105 billion) of new data‑centre investment as hyperscale and AI demand broadens. Projections from Moody’s put five‑year global AI‑infrastructure spending above US$3 trillion, much of it expected to flow through debt markets.
The deal highlights why Australia has become attractive: relatively stable policy, proximity to large Asian markets, and available land and grid connections for large, energy‑intensive facilities. Firmus is explicitly pitching its AI factories at hyperscalers and “AI‑native” customers and plans a Sydney listing later this year, signalling an ambition to combine debt, project finance and public equity to fund rapid capital expenditure.
But the financing also crystallises the sector’s risks. Building out 1.6GW of capacity requires long‑term power contracts, complex grid upgrades, and close coordination with energy partners; Firmus has said the funds will support energy integration as well as infrastructure manufacturing. Analysts on Wall Street remain cautious about whether massive, debt‑levered capacity builds will translate into sustainable returns if demand growth or pricing from customers softens.
Geopolitical and technology dependencies add another layer of uncertainty. The architecture of Firmus’s AI factories leans on Nvidia hardware, tying its fortunes to a narrow set of suppliers and to fluctuations in chip cycles. At the same time, regulators and investors are starting to scrutinise the environmental and social footprint of large‑scale data centres, particularly in jurisdictions where new generation capacity is required.
Viewed from afar, the Firmus transaction is both an emblem of AI’s infrastructure moment and a stress test for the financing model that will underwrite it. The scale of capital being mobilised by private credit and alternative investors accelerates build‑out but raises questions about market concentration, energy supply, and the risk profile of an industry still in the early innings of commercialisation.