Australian data center builder Firmus secures over $500 million in funding, with partner NVIDIA (NVDA.US) participating in the investment.

Zhitong Finance APP learned that Firmus Technologies, an Australian data center builder, raised $505 million in a round of financing led by Coatue Management LLC. On Monday, Firmus said the deal values the company at $5.5 billion. As an AI chip powerhouse and also a partner of Firmus, NVIDIA (NVDA.US) participated in this round of financing.

NVIDIA often partners with venture capital firms, having invested tens of billions of dollars in AI companies. Its goal is to help nurture an industry ecosystem that has already driven explosive sales growth and has elevated NVIDIA into the world’s most valuable company. Similar to this Firmus financing, NVIDIA also supports companies that buy its products at the same time. Although some investors have raised concerns about the “revolving nature” of deals of this kind, NVIDIA has pushed back.

The funding will be used to rapidly deploy AI hardware in the Asia-Pacific region based on upcoming NVIDIA computer technologies. Firmus currently has data center projects in Australia and Singapore. Including this latest round of financing, the company has raised $1.35 billion over the past six months.

It is understood that Firmus is taking the lead in advancing a plan called Southgate, which aims to build renewable energy–driven data center capacity in Australia, with the first site located in Tasmania. After the first two rounds of technology deployments are completed, the facility will deploy computers based on 36,000 NVIDIA accelerator chips. These high-performance processors help develop and run AI models by feeding massive amounts of data into the models.

This Australian project echoes NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s “sovereign AI” strategy—building local data centers so countries and enterprises can keep their data within their own borders. Huang views this area as one of NVIDIA’s key growth directions.

Firmus is adopting Vera Rubin DSX, a design scheme provided by NVIDIA for building its so-called “AI factories.” Vera Rubin is the code name for NVIDIA’s next-generation chips and computers, and the company plans to begin shipping in the second half of this year.

Firmus previously said the Southgate project has attracted a global “hyperscaler” customer. BlackRock, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, is also providing financing support for the project.