Firmus announced on Friday that it has secured $2 billion in equity funding in its latest fundraising round, designed to accelerate the construction of AI factories in Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region. This investment has pushed the company's post-money valuation above $10.5 billion.

Backing the round once again were NVIDIA and technology investment firm Coatue Management, with additional support coming from the BX.N fund, a vehicle managed by Blackstone Group LP, and Jane Street. The latest capital injection nearly doubles the Australian-based AI infrastructure company's valuation from its $5.5 billion figure recorded in April.

Firmus stated the proceeds will be used to hasten the next phase of "Project Southgate," an initiative aimed at developing AI training and inference infrastructure within Australia, while also enabling expansion into other Asian markets. The company builds its infrastructure using NVIDIA's DSX AI Factory reference architecture, building on a late June agreement that allows Firmus to procure NVIDIA hardware and sell cloud services based on the chipmaker's technology.

"This investment allows us to move forward on multiple fronts at once. We are scaling up comprehensively in Australia while accelerating our expansion into the wider Asia-Pacific region, including the initial work on our recently announced development project in Indonesia, which will serve native AI clients," said Oliver Curtis, co-CEO of Firmus.