Meta has signed strategic AI infrastructure agreements with Australian AI factory developer Firmus Technologies for GPU compute capacity at Firmus sites across Southeast Asia, the companies announced Tuesday. The agreements cover contracted capacity plus options to expand, and Capital Brief reports Meta will take one of three AI factories Firmus plans in Batam, Indonesia.
The capacity will support Meta's AI research, model development and training. Neither company disclosed financial terms or specific sites.
The agreement
Meta is already Firmus' anchor customer in Australia, where it runs NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems at Firmus' Melbourne AI factory, which Firmus describes as the largest deployment of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra systems in the Southern Hemisphere. The new agreements extend that relationship into Southeast Asia on NVIDIA's full-stack DSX platform. "We see Firmus as a long-term strategic infrastructure partner as we build for the next generation of AI across Asia-Pacific," said Gaya Nagarajan, vice president of engineering and infrastructure at Meta.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Capital Brief, citing anonymous sources, reports the Meta commitment will add about US$750 million to Firmus' future annual earnings and lift projected earnings before interest and tax by roughly 15 percent in two years.
Firmus' Southeast Asia pipeline
Firmus currently operates two AI factories, one in Australia and one in Singapore, with five more under development and expected ready for service within 24 months, according to Light Reading. In Batam, Firmus is building a 360 MW campus with Singapore-based operator DayOne that is expected to house 170,000 GPUs and come online by the end of the first quarter of 2027. In Malaysia, two new AI factories will be anchored by OpenAI, a deal DCD reports lifted Firmus' total contracted capacity beyond 900 MW.
"Meta's AI research and model development activities require infrastructure capable of supporting some of the world's most demanding AI workloads," said Tim Rosenfield, co-founder and co-CEO of Firmus. "Firmus' AI Factory build-out across Asia-Pacific has the scale to support and grow these ambitions."
The IPO backdrop
The Meta agreement lands days before Firmus opens the books on its initial public offering. The institutional bookbuild on the ASX has been pushed from October 6 to October 8, and the listing date from October 22 to October 23, so prospectus materials can reflect the new deal, Light Reading reports. Firmus is aiming to raise $5 billion, which would make it the second-largest Australian IPO behind Telstra's 1997 float. Under a June partnership with NVIDIA, Firmus expects $25 billion to $30 billion in committed offtake revenue over the first six years.
The Sydney-based company raised $505 million in April at a $5.5 billion post-money valuation, led by Coatue, according to TechCrunch, capping $1.35 billion raised in six months.
Market context
Baxtel tracks 19 data center facilities in Batam, six of them under construction, with DayOne the market's largest provider at three sites. Across Indonesia, Baxtel counts 153 facilities operated by 51 providers. Firmus' own Baxtel-tracked footprint remains concentrated in Tasmania, where it is developing three sites under its Project Southgate program, including the 104 MW Bell Bay campus. Baxtel previously covered Firmus' proposal for a third Tasmanian facility earlier this month.
Why it matters
Hyperscalers spent the past two years pre-leasing neocloud capacity across the United States. Meta signing in Southeast Asia, weeks after OpenAI anchored in Malaysia, shows the same land grab is now underway along the Singapore, Johor and Batam corridor, and regional specialists are the landlords.
For Firmus, the customer list now does the IPO talking. The constraint in this corridor is power and build speed, not demand.