Gilbert + Tobin has advised Australian AI infrastructure company Firmus on its USD10 billion GPU financing facility, one of the largest private credit financings in Australia’s data centre and AI sector Backed by cornerstone lender Blackstone, this transaction will accelerate the rollout of critical AI infrastructure across Australia.
This sector‑shaping transaction is the largest GPU financing for an Australian AI infrastructure company and positions Firmus to rapidly scale high-performance AI compute capacity to meet surging demand from hyperscalers and other blue-chip AI customers.
Structured to support the staged acquisition and deployment of high‑performance GPU clusters (NVIDIA GB300 chips) and associated networking, storage and data‑centre infrastructure, the debt facility will be drawn against executed long-term customer contracts with leading hyperscalers and other blue‑chip AI customers.
The G+T team was led by special counsel James Frixou with support from lawyers Sophie Barber and Abbey Crawley. The deal team was also supported by partners Anna Schwartz, Julian Cheng and lawyer Sophie Jiang.
James Frixou commented:
It was our pleasure to support our long-standing client, Firmus. This financing underscores how quickly AI has become core national infrastructure. Firmus is building at scale and this debt facility puts them at the centre of Australia’s next phase of AI growth. We thank Firmus for their trust and we look forward to supporting them in the years to come as they deliver Project Southgate.
Project Southgate is Firmus’ blueprint for a national AI infrastructure rollout, pairing capacity inside leading data‑centre campuses such as CDC with sites purpose‑built for high‑density compute, and deploying successive waves of GPU clusters as customer demand converts to long‑term contracts. The power and capacity roadmap is anticipated to scale to 1.6 GW by 2028 across DC campuses throughout Australia.
Background
AI infrastructure companies like Firmus are a new breed of specialist digital infrastructure provider that deliver scalable, high‑performance GPU‑accelerated computing for AI training and inference. They operate dense GPU clusters with high‑speed interconnect fabrics and, increasingly, liquid cooling, and monetise this by renting that capacity to customers such as Meta and OpenAI for critical AI workloads. Unlike hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, which offer a broad set of cloud services, Firmus focuses on purpose‑built GPU compute and leaner delivery models that can enable lower cost to the customer for comparable GPU capacity and performance.
As demand for AI compute accelerates and Sydney facing grid-capacity constraints and tightening land availability, Melbourne is currently one of the fastest-growing DC markets in Australia. The Victorian Government has recently set out an “AI Mission Statement” and strategy to lead the country in AI, by promising to back investment by minimising red tape and streamlining approvals, and signalling the use of PPPs to bolster high-performance computing research. Also, through its Sustainable Data Centre Action Plan-an initiative harnessing transport, energy and water data to identify optimal sites-Victoria is positioning for rapid, sustainable scale.
Meanwhile, a shift in the US regulatory landscape is pushing more AI infrastructure investment towards Australia. Recent export controls under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and General Prohibition Ten (GP10) restrict the flow of advanced US-origin AI chips to China and other restricted destinations and prohibit transactions that circumvent those controls. As a trusted AUKUS partner and APAC destination outside the China- and Macau-focused licence requirements, Australia holds a strategic advantage and is attracting increased investment from hyperscalers and vendors (such as Nvidia and its authorised OEM and server partners and distributors).
