Blackstone Leads $10B in Debt Financing for Aussie AI Data Centre Startup Firmus

Blackstone has upped its exposure to digital infrastructure Down Under, with the private equity titan leading a $10 billion debt facility for Australian AI data centre developer Firmus Technologies.

The capital injection by funds under Blackstone’s tactical opportunities and credit and insurance platforms, with support from fellow Manhattan-based investor Coatue Management, will finance Firmus’s national rollout of up to 1.6 gigawatts of infrastructure through 2028, the Tasmanian startup said Monday in a release. 

Blackstone’s financing package comes as Firmus gears up for an initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange, with the data centre company’s co-founder Oliver Curtis indicating in comments to the Australian Financial Review on Monday that an IPO is expected this year. The company raised A$500 million in equity in November at a A$6 billion valuation — triple the value achieved in a September round, according to the AFR report, with the company said to be targeting a mid-year ASX debut.

“The picks and shovels powering the AI revolution are one of our highest conviction investment themes, and we are excited to finance Firmus’s continued growth,” said John Watson, senior managing director in Blackstone’s tactical opportunities group. “AI is driving one of the most significant infrastructure buildouts in decades, and we believe Australia can play a central role in that transformation.”

Tasmanian Flagship

The transaction, one of the biggest-ever private debt financings in Australia, builds on Blackstone’s strategy to target large data centre platforms, coming 14 months after the US giant teamed with Canada’s CPPIB on the $16.1 billion takeover of Sydney-based platform AirTrunk.

With Curtis sharing co-founder and co-CEO titles with Tim Rosenfield, Firmus specialises in what it calls AI factories — purpose-built data centres capable of training and generating artificial intelligence models, using the latest chip architectures from key player Nvidia.

Founded in 2019, Firmus’s September equity placement of A$330 million (then $217 million) included a cornerstone investment by Sydney’s Ellerston Capital and participation from Nvidia. The funds were earmarked to accelerate development of Project Southgate — a renewable-powered AI factory in Tasmania with 36,000 Nvidia graphics processing units — to be built in two stages.

Firmus data centres are now under construction across multiple Australian sites, with thousands of GPUs planned for deployment, according to the company. Firmus said Monday that the fresh financing would accelerate deployment to serve hyperscale and AI-native customers worldwide.

“This milestone reflects the trajectory of Australia as a global player in powering AI,” Curtis said. “With Blackstone and Coatue’s financing, we’re helping meet the rising global demand for AI compute. On the ground, we’re focused on rapidly scaling our energy-efficient AI factories to meet demand and create lasting value for both our customers and the broader local economy.”

Digital Megadeals

Blackstone’s latest digital megadeal comes after rival KKR last week announced its $10.9 billion buyout of Singapore’s ST Telemedia Global Data Centres alongside Singtel. Upon completion in the second half of 2026, the acquisition will rank as the second-largest M&A deal ever in Asia Pacific, behind only Blackstone and CPPIB’s AirTrunk buy.

Coatue, the investment manager founded by French financier Philippe Laffont, led a $2 billion Series C funding round last month for DayOne, the overseas arm of Shanghai-based data centre giant GDS Holdings, with participation from the Indonesia Investment Authority. The capital will support the growth of DayOne’s footprint across Singapore, Malaysia’s Johor and Indonesia’s Batam, as well as markets in Thailand, Japan and Hong Kong.

In November, Canadian goliath Brookfield unveiled an AI infrastructure strategy in partnership with Nvidia and the Kuwait Investment Authority, aiming to acquire up to $100 billion in assets at every stage of the value chain, from energy and land to data centres and compute tech.